#9101 - Feb 1991

Digital Archiving Completed by the Ethnography Lab, A University of Toronto Anthropology Initiative
and Produced in Collaboration with David Perlman/Wholenote Media Inc between July-December 2015.
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KENSINGTON
ENVI'RONMENTAL
U-N arne-It, We Chuck It
by Bob the Waiter
It's 3 a.m. and it's cold in the
market - one of those nights
when everything should be frozen
but thanks to a bunch of symbols
on the CITY TV weather map the
air still feels damp. It's so cold the
chickens stacked up on death row
in that truck parked on St. Andrew
don't have much to say and even
the guys spotting for the dealers
have finally gone back to their
rooms. 1bere 's not even a yuppie
BMW driving around trying to
score. It's lonesome.
I'm out on Kensington Ave
looking at garbage. I don't mean
the kind that wears expensive furs
and argues with the market
vegetable vendors over the price
of asJmagus because they read in
'Toronto Life that's what you are
supposed to do; I mean that
aromatic stuff piled up in front of
all the stores and stands of our
neighbourhood like frozen
Picassos.
It always amazes me what
people throw out. Sometimes I
find some really great stuff. Those
big plastic jugs _that black olives
are shipped in make excellent food
storage containers and there's
enough wood stacked up out there
to build a bungalow. Which brings
me to the point of this article:
garbage is a poorly managed
resource. 1bere' s gold in them thar
frozen Picassos.
A quick investigation of a
couple of garbage bags from in
front of one of my favourite
rruuket shops will prove my point.
Our neighbourhood is unique but
what we toss out is similar .to what
comes out of an average Canadian
kitchen. Okay I've got the bags
·back home on my kitchen floor so
here goes.
The Bob the waiter garbage
content check list looks like this:
organic material 50%
paper and wood 25
plastic and foil 15
styrofoam 5
frozen gluck 5%
Somehow we've got to get this
stuff off the street and circulating
back in the economy.
The organic garbage is the stuff
that really stinks. Everything from
week old eggplants to chicken
heads is slowly unthawing onto
my kitchen floor like a librarian
after a couple of shooters. The
answer on what to do with it is right
here under my nose. Actually it's
right under my feet Out on the
farm they call this compost and
mat's what we should do with it. If
we could acquire the funding, I'm
sure most of this organic relish
could be collected, shipped out of
town and buried on exhausted
farm land where it would break
down into saleable compost.
Imagine this, "Natural Authentic
Kensington Compost" $5 per bag.
Perhaps the whole operation could
pay for itself.
We obviously need two more
blue boxes added to the basic
paper, glass, and tin-can
receptacles we already use (or
should use). They could
occommodate the recycling of tin
foil, styrofoam, plastic and metal.
Wood could be reconstituted as
paper or particle board type
building materials. This would
take a lot of organization and
money to start up but when we
consider that it's estimated
Toronto will have exhausted an
the available landfill sites by 1993,
we may not have much chOice.
As for the froien gluck melting
into scime sort of rat's ass pate on
my kitchen floor, I guess we could
dry it in the microwave then
enamel if and make mood rings.
Present plans· by Metro are to
ship everything that's not
presently recycled north to
Kirkland Lake, where it would be
compacted at a twenty to forty
million dollar processing plant
then stashed.in the empty Adam's
Mine - · a two thousand by six \
hundred foot underground dome.
Unfortunately it doesn't make
much sense to burn fossil fuels to
ship garbage all that way at a
$30.00 per tonne disposal charge.
Besides a mass exodus of our
refuse out of here may discourage
recycling. It looks like mass
composting and a more aggressive
recycling plan are our best bets.
This is war folks and we're all in
the trenches up to our ankles in
pate. I think we an could take a frrst
step by buying one of those
stretchy nylon mesh bags, then
refuse all plastic and paper bags
when we shop. Bags, bags, and
more bags. I must have fifty plastic
bags under my sink. I usually end
up taking them to Jamaica with me
where my friend makes umbrellas
out of them. Maybe stores should
start charging for bags or else
make them so artistically pretty we
wouldn't want to throw them
away.
These are reasonable measures
but what we need is a really
creative twist to deal with all that
big stuff garmge that takes up so
much room in our land fill sites. I
believe we can solve this problem
by throwing another problem at it.
Consider the following. Every
year I go south to Jamaica and stay
with my Jamaican friends orr a
farm. I usually take down a couple
of hockey bags filled with
discarded tools, clothing and
buckets etc. that I come across in
my wanderings. The Jamaican
mind being the inventive thing that
it is converts all this junk into some.
of the most creative and practical
devices i_maginable. Plastic bags
become umbrellas, flattened tin is
reborn as roofmg material and an
old bicycle, a length of rope, some
metal hooks and a few plastic jugs
is synergized into a chain powered
irrigation pumping system.
Let's send otic junk to the third
world! .
Don't snicker yet. It gets better.
From labour day to spring
break"up, a significant percentage
of Canada's rural and inner city
population sputters along on UIC.
Why not ship them south for
twenty weeks instead of leaving
them here to rot? Two-hundred
and fifty dollars per week slowly
spent in the inexpensive rural
environment of emerging nations
would be a boost to these low tech
economies and if each
unemployed Canuck was
accompanied 'by a requisite
package of junk ...
UIC thus dispersed could be
deducted from our present foreign
aid budget thus paying for the
whole project. We could thus
convert our unemployed and our
big junk from an economic dnlg to
a positive international asset Most
foreign aid we pour into the third
world, like the one hundred
million dollars we fronted Haiti
MARKET MARKET Tfie Kensington Market Drum, February 1991
The ·Market· GOtirmet
Guatemalan Tamales a Ia Kensington
by Peigi Rockwell
he Solorzano family· prepare
les just as they would in their
tative Guatemala And they find
he special spices and banana
,eaves required for their recipe in
te Kensington marlcet.
They came to Canada four years
.go as refugees. Originally
ttling in the Kensington area,
,ey now live in Toronto's east end
ut come to Kensington every
·eekday so the children can attend
.ensington Community School.
.ory Solorzano accompanies her
hildren and then shops in the
arket for fruits, vegetables and
.atin american foods.
''When I first came to Canada 'I
'ldn't think I would fmd the food
m my country, but in the marlcet
can fmd everything I need," says
ory.
Tamales are complicated to
take so they are usually reserved
or special occasions, like
'hristrnas. We are featuring the
·ecipe now so you can practice up
:fare another holiday. Although
tales aie made throughout Latin
.•• merica, recipes differ from
ountry to country and from
amily to family.
Fresh banana leaves are
metimes available in the market,
not, you can pick them up frozen
n Vietnamese food stores or at
'erola Supermarket, 247 Augusta
,ve. In Guatemala Flory wraps
Flory Solorzano and her daughter Ulinova outside
their favourite market shoo. the Oxford Fruit Market
te tamales only in banana leaves but she says they're not quite the same here so she also wraps the banana
.eaves in foil before she boils them in water.
2 lbs masa mix
10 oz lard
2lbs pork
2 large turkey legs
10 tomatellos (green tomatoes)
10 red tomatoes
2 guagillo chills
3 tsp sesame seeds
1(2 cup green pumpkin seeds
1 stick cinnamon .
Guatemalan Tamales
3 tsp ajioti (pellets of red colouring)
5 cloves
1 tsp black pepper
2-3 tsp salt
2 red peppers
1 cup olives
1 onion, -diced
4 garlic cloves
~ ancho chili
4 lbs banana leaves (4 packages if frozen)
Add 8 cups water to the masa and stir until smooth. Add lard and salt and stir constantly over medium heat
or 20 minutes. Pour into bowl to cool.
Cut pork and turkey meat into cubes.
Heat red tomatoes and tomatellos in a dry pan over low heat stirring constantly. Peel cooked tomatoes.
Heat red pepper in dry pan and set aside.
Hea:t sesame seeds and green pumpkin seeds in a dry pan over low heat until brown.
In new pan dry heat chills, 1(2 diced onion, garlic, cinnamon, clove. Mix with browned seeds ang peeled
>matoes. Puree until smooth.
Brown remaining onion in 4 tsp lard, add puree and stir until mixture boils. Add turkey and pork and boil
or 15 minutes, stirring constantly. Salt to taste. Add 1(2 cup masa and boil for 5 minutes.
Grind ajioti (food colouring pellets), add them to 1/4 cup water and put through sieve. Add red liquid to meat
~~ .
To form a tamale: place 1' of foil on table and cover with banana leaves. Place 1(2 cup masa mixture (a
1ing handful) onto leaves and flatten leaving an indentation iii centre. Into indentation place 1 piece of pork
d 1 piece of turkey, a large spoonful of the puree, 1 olive, 1 piece of red pepper. Cover with masa mixture
form a pocket and fold over banana leaves and foil.
Repeat until the ingredients are all used up. Boil tamales in a large pot of water oyer medium heat for 3 hours.
'lace a rack in the bottom of the pan so tamales don't touch the bottom.
since 1960, disappears into some
dictator's Swiss bank account.
Money and junk dispersed at the
local level would go directly into
!he home economies of some of
the world's poorest people. Hey
General, try depositing a hundred
used bicycle frames into your
covert bank account
Oh well. I've retUrned the bags
to the sidewalk and I'm sitting here
by my window looking up
Kensington Ave. It's still cold out.
More numbing than the cold is the
dark. l'here' s darkness
everywhere around here.
Mankind first developed
decorative clothing to harmonize
his consciousness with the
unconscioUs Gods he perceived an
around him. Our Gods must be
pretty dark and angry. Dark like
the Amazonian rainforests which
are cleared for cattle pasture to
produce the black leather jackets
we wear to remind the suits that the
big monopoly game might have
some matl dogs waiting at the end.
Angry like the dark I saw in the
artist's eyes as he cried brandy
driven tears at my Christmas
dinner table because he was so
sure Saddam's biological plague
weapons were going to be released
into the earth's weather system.
Bleak like Goof lyrics, dark like
Johnny Crash's tattoo.
I'm watching the garbage truck
roll by and I"m reminded of the
Springstein song where Bruce is
chanting "listen to your junk
man ... he's singing, singing."
I hear our junk man singing on
the street below. It's that awful
Black Velvet Elvis song by
Alannah Myles.
Now that's garbage.