Food

By Marisa Romano

This year’s Glebe Art in Our Gardens and Studio Tour featured 18 artists. The youngest of them is Teo Ouellette-Borza, a 26-year-old with a renewed passion for brushes and canvas, and a love affair with gastronomy.

I asked him how his first tour went. “I sold two pieces and received interest for a commission,” beamed Ouellette-Borza, delighted by the great feedback received from visitors of all ages. A success, I would say!

His paintings evoke the joy of travelling on the open road. The Volkswagen camper vans depicted on his canvases recall a sense of adventure and the freedom reclaimed by the rebellious 60s with the rejection of “the establishment” and the embracing of peace and love.

“Where does your inspiration come from?” I probed. A family road trip across California in a rented VW camper van 10 years ago is what stirred it all. Ouellette-Borza recalls the freedom to “just go” and the thrill of popping up the top of the van under the rain. Later, the family ventured on the road again and he eagerly joined in for tours of Prince Edward County and Prince Edward Island.

Ouellette-Borza’s passion for drawing and painting started at a young age. He took classes with Bhat Boy while attending Glashan Public School, worked on his portfolio and applied to Canterbury’s visual arts program. “After all that preparation I did very badly in my interview. I blanked out and did not remember what I had rehearsed,” he recalls. He was not accepted. He took art classes at Glebe Collegiate, but eventually he set aside his artistic aspirations.

After some searching for the right path, he enrolled in George Brown’s culinary program, a direction suggested by his aunt who owns a catering business.

“I always liked experimenting with food. As a child I created dishes with new ingredient combinations. Everything tasted good, but nobody wanted to eat it because the dishes looked terrible,” he chuckled.

The exhilarating experience at George Brown’s chef school offered him interesting opportunities in commercial kitchens where he could express his culinary creativity. With a degree in hand, he worked in several establishments here in Ottawa, including The Rowan, the Green Door and restaurants in TD Place.

A back injury that forced immobility brought him back to painting once again. He traded spoons for brushes and with time to reminisce, Ouellette-Borza has put on canvas sentiments that those family trips stirred in him years ago.

The kitchen is still his principal passion and his main career. I watched him sparkle when talking about his culinary experiments with gluten-free baking, vegan dishes, sourdough breads and various cuts of meat. Cheese and cured meats are probably his next ventures. His dream is to live in a small place. “A test kitchen, an art studio and a bed is all that I need,” he asserts with a big, big smile… and all being well, many will flock to view and taste his arts.

If you missed Ouellette-Borza’s work in the Glebe Art in Our Gardens and Studio Tour you may have spotted his work at Art in Strathcona Park this month. Or you can find him on Instagram: @teoborza.

After our chat, Ouellette-Borza sent me the recipes he had created that evening for his table. Here is Teo’s supper!

Marisa Romano is a foodie and scientist with a sense of adventure who appreciates interesting and nutritious foods that bring people together.

By Carolyn Best

In ancient Egypt the cult of Min lasted for 3,000 years. The dark-skinned deity, always depicted with an erect penis and a flail raised in his right hand, was known as “the maker of gods and men.” Lettuce was his food and his symbol. He controlled fertility within the kingdoms of humans and plants and was the patron of male sexuality.

Temples of Min, in which he is depicted standing before an offering table covered with heads of lettuce, were built and rebuilt throughout Egypt’s entire history. Murals in the tombs of Early Kingdom pyramids dating back to 2500 BCE feature the erect romaine type of lettuce with its thick stem and milky sap. Early three-dimensional portrayals of the god are the oldest examples of large-scale statuary in Egypt. His importance endured even to the Roman era; the emperor Augustus is pictured in a temple near Aswan making an offering of lettuce to Min.

Min’s skin is black, like the fertile soil of the Nile, so central to Egyptian life that the word “black” became a common term for the land of Egypt itself. And always about him, the lettuce.

The straight vertical surge of the lettuce’s growth and the milky juices exuded from it helped the god to perform the sexual act untiringly, the symbology apparent to all in ancient Egypt. After completing its vegetative development, producing a rosette of leaves, the lettuce enters its reproductive phase and sends up an erect seed stalk bearing flowers. Then the amount of latex in the plant increases and is under pressure. If the top of the stalk is cut off the latex spurts out in a manner suggestive of ejaculation.

The pharaohs were tasked with ensuring the fertility of the land. In sacred ceremonies, the pharaoh hoes and waters the ground while Min watches. Moreover, the sovereignty of the pharaoh, honoured at coronation rites, necessitated the siring of a male heir. Here too, Min and the lettuce were needed to ensure the pharaoh’s sexual vigour.

Son of Osiris and Isis, Min is the Lord of Processions. After the annual flooding of the Nile that restores the fertility of the land, his sacred plant was carried through the fields and offered to him in pavilions where festivities were held. Games were played naked in his honour, including the climbing of a huge tent pole in a connection with fertility not unlike the later European tradition of the Maypole. Min’s image was taken out of the temple and brought to the fields at the beginning of harvest season to bless the harvest. His sacred food, which he consumed for sexual stamina, accompanied him.

The population of ancient Egypt not only ate leaves of lettuce, they also prepared cooking oil from the seeds of the plant. It is a custom still practiced in Egypt.

Try the following endlessly versatile, creamy and protein-rich dressing to dress beautiful and crisp leaves and hearts of Romaine.

Carolyn Best is the former proprietor and chef of The Pantry vegetarian tearoom and a regular Glebe Report contributor on food.