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Add flavour to all your summer favourites with homemade condiments, snacks

COMFORT FOOD by NADINE FOWNES
Wednesday August 3, 2011, Chronicle Herald

SUMMER IS THE SEASON of hotdogs and hamburgers, chicken and ribs, chips and dip. For that reason, summer can also be the high sodium season.

A lot of what we tend to eat this time of year at backyard barbecues and other gatherings with family and friends is loaded with hidden salt, says Maureen Tilley, a registered dietitian with Capital Health in Halifax.

"Top your typical grilled hamburger with ketchup, mustard, relish and mayo and you can be well over 400 milligrams of sodium," Tilley says.

Add a pickle and you’ve just had half of your sodium intake for the day in one burger. Go over the top with bacon and cheese and you’re up to 1,150 mg, just 350 mg shy of the 1,500 mg recommended daily sodium intake for adults, she says.

Tilley has made raising awareness about the health risks of eating too much salt a major focus of her practice. She has just published her second cookbook on the subject, Hold That Hidden Salt!: Recipes for Delicious Alternatives to Processed, Salt-Heavy Supermarket Favourites, (Formac, $24.95), a followup to her first book, Hold the Salt.

Tilley explains that salt causes the body to hang on to extra fluid in the blood vessels, raising blood pressure and putting strain on the heart and blood vessels.

"Because of that, the heart has to work a lot harder," so people who eat a high-sodium diet can be putting themselves at risk of high blood pressure that can lead to heart attack and stroke, she says.

People tend not to think about salt because they consider it to be such a small part of the meal, Tilley says. But processed foods are loaded with it and our busy lifestyle has led to more and more people choosing processed, ready-to-eat foods rather than cooking from scratch at home.

To drive home the point of how much salt manufacturers are adding to foods, nearly every page of Tilley’s book includes photos and nutrition charts of many items we all buy and eat regularly, including ketchup, packaged rice and pasta side-dishes, deli salads and so-called "healthier" baked potato chips.

Tilley hopes people will start watching their sodium intake the same way we now watch our sugar, fat and trans-fatty acids.

One in five people has high blood pressure "but it is so easy to lower your blood pressure just by cutting back on salt," she says.

In fact, Tilley says, one third of people with high blood pressure could get off their medication just by reducing the amount of salt they eat.

Doing so is not only good for your health, it’s good for the health-care system because treating conditions related to high blood pressure is costing taxpayers millions, she says.

Unfortunately, the food manufacturing industry is not making enough healthy changes fast enough, so it’s up to consumers to do it themselves. That means avoiding processed foods and getting into the habit of making things from scratch — including your seasonings, condiments and snacks.

"We’re all so used to the taste of salt, but you can retrain your tastebuds," Tilley says, suggesting that you as you cut back on salt, bump up the flavour with herbs, spices and roasted peppers.

Atlantic Canada’s villians of the sea

By IAN FAIRCLOUGH
Sun, Aug 14 - 4:54 AM

THE Atlantic provinces have a long history of shipbuilding and fishing but their historic ties to the sea include a less than reputable industry: piracy.

For 250 years, starting in the early 1600s, the Atlantic region was struck by — and home to — a collection of pirates and privateers.

In Plunder & Pillage, a new collection of previously published work by the late Harold Horwood, readers are taken on a literary journey through the era of piracy on the high seas off our coast.

But it was not a time of romanticized pirate tales. While Horwood’s 15 stories included some tales of privateers and pirates who had mostly bloodless careers before ending up pardoned by their country, or another nation, and becoming part of its navy or merchant fleet, there was still plenty of blood shed and lives lost.

John Phillips had a successful but short-lived career as a pirate. He was immigrating to Newfoundland in 1720 when the ship he was on was captured by the pirate Anstis and he was forced into the crew as the ship’s carpenter. Horwood calls Anstis "one of the most blackhearted villains in the history of the sea" and "a sadistic cuthroat" who committed all the crimes normally associated with pirates.

"Anstis fought without quarter, tortured any prisoners who fell into his hands, then flung them to the sharks. Captured women were gang-raped and murdered," Horwood writes. "The Anstis gang seemed really to be at war with the human race."

But only a few months after Phillips was pressed into service, Anstis sought and received a pardon from Great Britain. Phillips finally made it to Newfoundland three years later, but couldn’t find work as a shipwright and ended up signing on as a poorly compensated crew on a fishing boat. He found some other disenchanted crew members and five of them stole a ship in August of 1723.

The five signed a set of pirate articles and, perhaps because of Phillip’s time with Anstis, they included one that stated that rape or molestation of women was to be punished by death.

Phillips and his ever-growing crew captured 33 ships in the following eight months. The last was a fishing ship that Phillips kept for himself while forcing the captain into service on his crew. But a mutiny led by the former captain and another man forced into service from a captured ship bought Phillips’ career — and life — to an bloody end. The first mate and chief gunner were attacked and thrown overboard, and Phillips was cracked in the head with a large hammer before his head was split with an axe. Ten other pirates were butchered and tossed overboard, while the others were locked up to be tried when the ship reached port.

The differences between pirates and privateers was slight: pirates were their own bosses, while privateers had the written authority of their government to capture enemy ships, either during wars or in parts of the world considered no-man’s land while nations were at peace.

One of these was Henry Mainwaring, who ended up in Newfoundland and stole from French and Portuguese vessels even though those countries were not at war with England.

Complaints to King James of England proved fruitless.

Horwood said Mainwaring wrote in a letter to the King that Newfoundland was "the best place in the world for outfitting pirate ships," as it had plenty of supplies, munitions and willing volunteers.

Christen Thomas, an editor at James Lorimer Company, of which Formac is an imprint, says Plunder and Pillage features the best of Horwood’s writing on pirates and privateers.

The stories were originally contained in the books Bandit and Privateers, and Pirates and Outlaws, written by Horwood, who passed away in 2006.

"We chose a selection that would cater more to a Maritime reader, as a lot of the content (of the two books) caters to western interests," Thomas said. "These stories essentially shape the brutal and bloodthirsty exploits of characters from the Canadian Atlantic, ranging from folk hero Peter Easton in Newfoundland to the wealthiest ship owner in British North America, Enos Collins."

She said the stories remain as thrilling and relevant today with piracy still making headlines off the coast of Somalia and thriving in popular culture.

With the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise, she said, there is a bit of romanticism about the life of pirates as well.

"There definitely is… there’s bit of this myth created that embellishes history even more."

She said there is always an interest in maritime history from people in the Atlantic Provinces.

"There’s a thirst for it. Being so close to the water makes people want to engage with the stories of its past."

Ian Fairclough is a staff reporter with The Chronicle Herald.

The Politics of Energy

Quest for coal, oil, gas and resulting jobs clouds judgment of politicians; author says focus should be on renewable energy sustainability by 2050
By PAUL BENNETT
Originally published in the Chronicle Herald Jul 17, 2011

THE ROLLER-COASTER history of energy politics in Nova Scotia has been a preoccupation for author Richard Starr over the past five years. Interviewed recently at a Dartmouth cafe, the 64-year-old veteran journalist and policy advisor was primed to talk about deep policy issues and the errors of past governments, but slightly uncomfortable being cast in the limelight.

Starr is a big thinker and one of the political activists who played a quietly influential role in the re-making of the Nova Scotia NDP. Over the past three decades, he’s worked as a journalist, a CBC Radio and TV producer, a communications specialist, a political staffer and now an independent policy wonk.

While serving as chief of staff to former NDP leader Robert Chisholm from 1996 to 1998, Starr earned a reputation for carrying weighty files and preparing thoughtful policy briefings. His wife Wendy Lill is a former MP, accomplished playwright, and creator of the CBC Radio series The Backbencher. Coming out of the shadows of the NDP backrooms is relatively new to Starr. With the release of Power Failure?, he has become the front-man, awakening Nova Scotians to the fallacy of pursuing an illusory "energy dream" and urging governments, including his own NDP friends in power, to focus not on short-term political gain but on achieving renewable energy sustainability by 2050.

Sharing a quiet coffee with Starr, one is struck immediately by his thoughtful, pragmatic, and sensible view of the world. If, as the author notes in his book, Nova Scotia is a "traditionally politically conservative province," then Starr is a living example of the moderate reformist thinking that brought the Nova Scotia NDP to power.

Why did Starr take on the perplexing energy issue? "Ever since coming home to the Maritimes in the mid-1980s," he said, "I’ve wanted to write non-fiction books about this province and region that have nothing to do with ghosts, rum-running or shipwrecks."

After toying with the challenge of tackling economic development, he settled on energy because it is a perennial issue that has bedeviled many past governments. He has also come forward to challenge Jim Meek and Eleanor Beaton’s 2010 book Offshore Dream for celebrating the Shell seismic team’s heroics in offshore energy development and perpetuating the myth that fossil fuels may yet be our economic salvation.>

Over the past 300 years, Starr contends that energy resources have been both a blessing and a curse, but more often a source of delusion. His new book shines much needed light on the energy politics quagmire and poses the uncomfortable question: "Will the next 10 years be any different?"

The peculiarly titled Power Failure? is actually a wide-ranging, soundly researched, stimulating history of the energy follies of past governments.

It begins by recounting the familiar saga of the rise and fall of Nova Scotia’s King Coal from 1720 until the late 1960s. Faith in the coal-based economy, Starr points out, persisted for far too long, even though the province’s reserves were limited and were being rapidly depleted.

Since Confederation, Starr demonstrates that the province’s premiers have shown varying degrees of attachment to the so-called "energy myth."

He depicts the 1956 election of Robert L. Stanfield’s Conservative government as a watershed because Stanfied expanded the reach of the Nova Scotia Power Commission, initiated the Cape Breton heavy water plants, promoted an oil refinery on the Strait of Canso, and resurrected a 50-year-old vision of generating electricity from the Bay of Fundy tides.

Former Liberal premier Gerald Regan is credited with completing the consolidation of the power grid and establishing a publicly owned utility, only to be sunk by runaway energy prices.

Riding the wave of high oil prices and federally funded offshore exploration, Conservative premier John Buchanan is criticized for his empty "boosterism," which contributed much to creating "an environment of energy-fuelled false optimism."

A Buchanan successor, Liberal John Savage, may have been in power when the Sable Offshore Energy Project (SOEP) rolled out in the mid-1990s, but Starr found him less "susceptible to energy illusions."

After flirting with national energy policy controls, premier John Hamm reversed himself by championing provincial Crown share energy rights and coming out in favour of "untrammeled gas exports to New England."

Starr’s book does tackle the biggest political issues in the energy and resource sector. As a journalist and political policy adviser, he is well versed on the death of Devco, the privatization of Nova Scotia Power, the Westray mine disaster, offshore natural gas exploration and rising public demands for green energy. In the book, he provides the much needed context often missed in the news media.

Starr is especially critical of Nova Scotia political leaders for making major energy decisions "behind closed doors" and "without public transparency."

While he treads carefully when analyzing Premier Darrell Dexter’s November 2010 deal between Emera and Nalcor to develop Lower Churchill power at Muskrat Falls, it too is described as "drenched in politics" and a familiar story of inflated expectations.

Unlike Meek and Beaton’s Offshore Dream, Starr offers more than the illusion of a future energy bonanza. The history of energy politics has taught him that Nova Scotia needs to begin taking charge of its energy future. Instead of pinning hopes on another Sable Island or Panuke, Starr advocates taking a coordinated approach in "moving away from dependence on fossil fuels."

His proposal for a Nova Scotia Energy Council, patterned after Howard Epstein’s 2001 private members’ bill, is worth serious consideration. Taking a 40-year time horizon and providing a vehicle for exploring alternative energy sources are both sound ideas. "If the Council provides a means for resolving conflicting interests and enhances public accountability, so much the better," he says.

Starr is characteristically modest when asked about his hopes for the book. He set out to write a kind of "public briefing note" providing readers with the background needed to make sense of the "energy circus."

With a healthy skepticism not uncommon among seasoned policy analysts, he’s content "to raise the questions and to help promote more informed policy decisions."

Starr’s Power Failure?, unlike past visions of energy salvation, delivers far more than it promises. It will stand as the standard history of Nova Scotia energy politics for years to come.

Paul W. Bennett is founding director of Schoolhouse Consulting in Halifax. He is the author of Vanishing Schools, Threatened Communities: The Contested Schoolhouse in Maritime Canada, 1850-2010.