Hosting the rad Pork Futures crew was a wonderful way to celebrate the beginning of summer here in Montreal. I’ve wanted to work with Andrew and Nick on an event at Le Pick Up for a long time, and for our first collaboration they had the best suggestion: how to build your own smoker. (Out of a wine crate! Genius.) Just in time for summer! It was a fun and relaxing afternoon — both educational and delicious. Who says no to smoked mozzarella, anyway?
Posted in celebration, outdoors, work
Tagged depanneur le pick up, pork futures, smoking food, workshop
The only downside to being in France for the last two weeks was missing a weekend-long event with Brooklyn chef and butcher Berlin Reed at Le Pick Up that I helped organize. And from all reports, it was a gigantic success! (Big thanks to Marc for taking control of this one). I posted a bunch of photos taken by oe of the students from the butchery workshop and the dinner the following night over at the Pick Up blog, if you’d like to take a peek.
And as for our next event… we have a sausage-making workshop with Bartek on Saturday! Yeah, it’s kind of non-stop awesometimes around here.
Posted in announcement, people, photography, work
Tagged butchery, depanneur le pick up, photos, whole hog bbq, workshop
And now, for a Dépanneur Le Pick-Up-related missive, another workshop that I’ve organized….
Our friends Meghan Murphy and Claudia Abbott-Barish, two lovely California-based food and food justice activists, are traveling across North American in their cherry red 1980 Ford Courier pickup truck and touring bicycles… and making a stop in Montreal! They will be hosting the workshop “Radicalizing Herbalism and Activating the Healers” at the Dep on Sunday, August 14 at 6pm.
Both have been local food and food justice activists for many years and have come to look at their herbalism studies as another side of the same coin. Feeling a significant lack of social analysis and activism around herbal medicine as they have encountered it, they have been cultivating a common desire to radicalize herbalism, and mobilize healers to realize the innate activism in their pursuit of an alternative paradigm of healing.
Not to miss an opportunity for broad geographical and social engagement, the ladies have decided to fold their road trip, cycle trip and workshop tour into one jammed-packed adventure of intrigue, physical tests, emotional and psychological trials, community involvement and anarchist hedonism.
Here’s what they have to say about the Montreal workshop:
“Using popular education, our workshop will cover a brief history of corporate power and how herbal medicinal use has been prevented in the past, barring us from actions of self-sufficiency. We will focus on why cultivating, wild-crafting and teaching about herbs creates new possibilities for us to create more healthy, reciprocal systems (social and economic) in the rest of our lives. This analysis will include examples, past and present, of how people have used herbs and herbal medicine to resist exploitation by those in power. The workshop will end with a dialogue on how to engage around these issues with members of our communities; what methods are inclusive, representative and equitable, and how to collaborate with the most people.“
They’ll also be doing fun, hands-on activities like making salves, tinctures, and tea blends.Spots for registration are extremely limited, so please email me at natasha.pickowicz AT gmail.com for a spot. Unlike our other workshops, this event will be charged on a sliding scale of $10-20. Please pay an amount with which you feel comfortable.
This workshop is aimed at healers, herbalists or self-taught herbal-medicine makers, who are interested in how their work can have a greater community impact beyond the traditional forms of engagement. That said, it is open to ANYONE who is remotely intrigued by the subject matter. Your contribution is valuable no matter who you are.
For more information, please visit their website, Root Medicine. We hope to see you there!!
Posted in announcement, summer, work
Tagged depanneur le pick up, herbalism, montreal event, montreal workshop, radicalizing herbalism, workshop