Greetings all! A bumper Spring edition.
Kay Richardson pointed out that now that I have switched to Mialchimp to deliver this I have taken away your chance to respond and have the kind of crackling repartee you have in the past. I’m sure there is some way I can do this, I just haven’t been brave enough yet to find it. Till I do, you can always email me and I will add you comment into the next issue and so on.
Gourmet Food and Drink Quiz
So, you think you know your food and drink trivia eh. Well, apart from cheese and tomato, what is the favourite pizza topping in the US?
Answer at the end of this newsletter.
Disfigured food finds second life for sale on Sydney shelves
Growers from across Australia are getting a chance to turn a profit from their miss-shaped produce. From banana growers in Queensland, to potato growers in South Australia, farmers have been asked to pack their deformed produce and get it ready for sale in Sydney.
http://ab.co/1DidnPB
Aussie food hits the streets of Paris
From Barbara Santich: A food truck roaming Paris to promote Australian 'food' - courtesy of the Australian Tourism office (? where?) with such delights as prawn salad with lime and green peppercorns, beef ribs with pineapple and beetroot, garlic prawns with corn kernels and grilled peppers, and lamingtons. This is the gist of the information, for which I can find no other website. According to the tourism authority (which? not specified)
'People who have never visited Australia have little understanding of the gastronomic offering, according to a study in 15 of the principal sources of tourists. And only 26% of those in the survey associated Australia with a culinary destination. Once they've been there for themselves, however, 60% of visitors place Australia second in world ranking of cuisines, just after France and in front of Italy’.
I'd really like to know which tourism authority, but there you have it.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/sortir-paris/2014/09/12/30004-20140912ARTFIG00106-un-food-truck-pour-decouvrir-la-cuisine-australienne.php
Charles Spence; the food scientist changing the way we eat
‘Now, largely thanks to Blumenthal, the food industry is applying Spence’s sensory science to products left, right and centre. This includes his recent findings that higher-pitched music enhances sweetness, and lower-pitched and brassy sounds taste bitter. Last year, Häagen-Dazs released an iPhone app that played a concerto while your ice-cream softens (“From what I’ve read, they haven’t matched their music to the taste,” says Spence disappointedly, which is what Ben & Jerry’s is rumoured to be doing.) And in a few months, he says, one of the airlines will match music with food.’
Marinetti and his mob truly were futurists, though I don’t think they imagined the unconscionable torture of having to eat crap airline food matched to crap airline music. And heaven help us if MacDonalds starts to offer to supersize your symphony along with you meal.
http://bit.ly/1rnBYO3
Court bans Coles’ fresh bread advertisement for three years
Supermarket giant Coles has been banned for three years from advertising its bread was made or baked on the same day it was sold when this is not the case. Coles was also ordered to display a Federal Court notice in its stores and on its website telling shoppers that it had broken Australian consumer law by falsely advertising bread products as "freshly baked" and "baked today".
I am resisting the impulse to take a rise out of Coles and their-half baked marketing ideas.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/court-bans-coles-fresh-bread-advertisements-for-three-years-20140929-10nhi0.html#ixzz3EgryX5rz
Forget the hamburger: insects are better for you and the planet
I reckon I have eaten quite few insects in my time, mostly by accident either little bits of protein that pour out of packets with rice or lentils or the odd moth or three from flour that's been hanging around a bit. I first consciously ate large scale insects - roasted grasshoppers - ages ago in Thailand. Once I took my mate Marg's advice and stopped looking at them and just popped them in my mouth I thoroughly enjoyed them. I have been envious of those of my friends who have eaten tarantula and Cambodia. I have a long standing wish to some day eat the maggot cheese of Sardinia. Now I have a moral high ground on which to stand and chomp on a cricket or cockroach and shout Bugger me, that's delish.
'http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/28/eating-insects-good-for-you-sustainable-video_n_5890542.html?ir=Green&utm_campaign=092914&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-green&utm_content=Title
Would we opt out of food if given the chance?
This is the second article I have seen recently on Soylent. In one of those spooky coincidences, I have begun reading I Eat, Therefore I think. Food and Philosophy by Raymond D. Boisvert (of which more as I read further into it) where I had just hours before Helen Greenwood sent me the link to the article read this:
‘While we might not appreciate much about how the Laputans approach their food [these are the scientists in Gulliver’s third journey who make their food look like mathematical objects or musical instruments before eating them] their tables remain places where something partially recognizable as a meal is served. The next step in the rationalisation of eating would be to find someone who eliminated this connection altogether. Another delightful storyteller, L Frank Baum, has give us just such a character in The Magic of Oz, He is, of course, a ‘professor. His name: Wogglebug. Wogglebug revels in his wonderful invention, the meal-in-a-tablet. This is a time-saving, efficiency-enhancing device. It provides the equivalent of “a bowl of soup, a portion of fried fish, a roast, a salad and a dessert, all of which gave the same nourishment as a square meal’. Here is the highest ideal for abstract, instrumental rationality: provide nutrition in the most time-saving manner. Who could complain? Well the intended beneficiaries, for one. Wogglebug’s students were not at all impressed. He, the inventor, was stunned by their ingratitude. They longed for tasty food. “it was o fun at all to swallow a tablet with a glass of water and call it dinner; so they refused to eat the Square-Mel Tablets. When Wogglebug insisted, the students, rambunctious, disrespectful, food-loving bunch that they were, “threw him into the river – clothes and all.”
http://aeon.co/magazine/health/would-we-opt-out-of-food-if-given-the-chance/?curator=MediaREDEF
Squirrel burger?: No thanks, I’m fed up with stunts in buns
‘The burger – the beautiful, simple, iconic burger that you bought for loose change and then ate hungover in your car – has become a slave to the marketing departments. Got a boneheaded product you need to promote? Why not just bung a load of insane, barely edible junk into a bread roll? It works every time. The stunt burger is a tragic misappropriation of a design classic, and true burger fans cannot wait for this miserable fad to end.’
A friend of mine recently posted a picture of the burger he had in a town up the North Coast. All looked good - a white bread bun which was a good thumb thick at base and looked satisfyingly springy, minced pattie a tad over caramelised and possibly a little on the arid side, lettuce just on the edge of limpness, canned beetroot (how extraordinary that beetroot should have evolved so perfectly for canning, eh), three or four firm tomato slices – but there sitting on the very top was that symbol of Yankee imperialism, a slice of melted pus yellow cheese. How I empathise with the call to stop mucking around with the burger, though this author’s allusion to a certain prevalent fast food bun I hope is satiric in this context.
http://bit.ly/ZcUH3u
Of eggplants and food writing
And finally blog post from me post a stimulating discussion hosted by John Newton on food writers and food writing.
http://buthkuddeh.blogspot.com.au/
F & D Quiz answer
Pepperoni
Email:pvanreyk@optusnet,com.au
Blog: Proud Desperate Versatile Opportunistic Forage
Kay Richardson pointed out that now that I have switched to Mialchimp to deliver this I have taken away your chance to respond and have the kind of crackling repartee you have in the past. I’m sure there is some way I can do this, I just haven’t been brave enough yet to find it. Till I do, you can always email me and I will add you comment into the next issue and so on.
Gourmet Food and Drink Quiz
So, you think you know your food and drink trivia eh. Well, apart from cheese and tomato, what is the favourite pizza topping in the US?
Answer at the end of this newsletter.
Disfigured food finds second life for sale on Sydney shelves
Growers from across Australia are getting a chance to turn a profit from their miss-shaped produce. From banana growers in Queensland, to potato growers in South Australia, farmers have been asked to pack their deformed produce and get it ready for sale in Sydney.
http://ab.co/1DidnPB
Aussie food hits the streets of Paris
From Barbara Santich: A food truck roaming Paris to promote Australian 'food' - courtesy of the Australian Tourism office (? where?) with such delights as prawn salad with lime and green peppercorns, beef ribs with pineapple and beetroot, garlic prawns with corn kernels and grilled peppers, and lamingtons. This is the gist of the information, for which I can find no other website. According to the tourism authority (which? not specified)
'People who have never visited Australia have little understanding of the gastronomic offering, according to a study in 15 of the principal sources of tourists. And only 26% of those in the survey associated Australia with a culinary destination. Once they've been there for themselves, however, 60% of visitors place Australia second in world ranking of cuisines, just after France and in front of Italy’.
I'd really like to know which tourism authority, but there you have it.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/sortir-paris/2014/09/12/30004-20140912ARTFIG00106-un-food-truck-pour-decouvrir-la-cuisine-australienne.php
Charles Spence; the food scientist changing the way we eat
‘Now, largely thanks to Blumenthal, the food industry is applying Spence’s sensory science to products left, right and centre. This includes his recent findings that higher-pitched music enhances sweetness, and lower-pitched and brassy sounds taste bitter. Last year, Häagen-Dazs released an iPhone app that played a concerto while your ice-cream softens (“From what I’ve read, they haven’t matched their music to the taste,” says Spence disappointedly, which is what Ben & Jerry’s is rumoured to be doing.) And in a few months, he says, one of the airlines will match music with food.’
Marinetti and his mob truly were futurists, though I don’t think they imagined the unconscionable torture of having to eat crap airline food matched to crap airline music. And heaven help us if MacDonalds starts to offer to supersize your symphony along with you meal.
http://bit.ly/1rnBYO3
Court bans Coles’ fresh bread advertisement for three years
Supermarket giant Coles has been banned for three years from advertising its bread was made or baked on the same day it was sold when this is not the case. Coles was also ordered to display a Federal Court notice in its stores and on its website telling shoppers that it had broken Australian consumer law by falsely advertising bread products as "freshly baked" and "baked today".
I am resisting the impulse to take a rise out of Coles and their-half baked marketing ideas.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/court-bans-coles-fresh-bread-advertisements-for-three-years-20140929-10nhi0.html#ixzz3EgryX5rz
Forget the hamburger: insects are better for you and the planet
I reckon I have eaten quite few insects in my time, mostly by accident either little bits of protein that pour out of packets with rice or lentils or the odd moth or three from flour that's been hanging around a bit. I first consciously ate large scale insects - roasted grasshoppers - ages ago in Thailand. Once I took my mate Marg's advice and stopped looking at them and just popped them in my mouth I thoroughly enjoyed them. I have been envious of those of my friends who have eaten tarantula and Cambodia. I have a long standing wish to some day eat the maggot cheese of Sardinia. Now I have a moral high ground on which to stand and chomp on a cricket or cockroach and shout Bugger me, that's delish.
'http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/28/eating-insects-good-for-you-sustainable-video_n_5890542.html?ir=Green&utm_campaign=092914&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-green&utm_content=Title
Would we opt out of food if given the chance?
This is the second article I have seen recently on Soylent. In one of those spooky coincidences, I have begun reading I Eat, Therefore I think. Food and Philosophy by Raymond D. Boisvert (of which more as I read further into it) where I had just hours before Helen Greenwood sent me the link to the article read this:
‘While we might not appreciate much about how the Laputans approach their food [these are the scientists in Gulliver’s third journey who make their food look like mathematical objects or musical instruments before eating them] their tables remain places where something partially recognizable as a meal is served. The next step in the rationalisation of eating would be to find someone who eliminated this connection altogether. Another delightful storyteller, L Frank Baum, has give us just such a character in The Magic of Oz, He is, of course, a ‘professor. His name: Wogglebug. Wogglebug revels in his wonderful invention, the meal-in-a-tablet. This is a time-saving, efficiency-enhancing device. It provides the equivalent of “a bowl of soup, a portion of fried fish, a roast, a salad and a dessert, all of which gave the same nourishment as a square meal’. Here is the highest ideal for abstract, instrumental rationality: provide nutrition in the most time-saving manner. Who could complain? Well the intended beneficiaries, for one. Wogglebug’s students were not at all impressed. He, the inventor, was stunned by their ingratitude. They longed for tasty food. “it was o fun at all to swallow a tablet with a glass of water and call it dinner; so they refused to eat the Square-Mel Tablets. When Wogglebug insisted, the students, rambunctious, disrespectful, food-loving bunch that they were, “threw him into the river – clothes and all.”
http://aeon.co/magazine/health/would-we-opt-out-of-food-if-given-the-chance/?curator=MediaREDEF
Squirrel burger?: No thanks, I’m fed up with stunts in buns
‘The burger – the beautiful, simple, iconic burger that you bought for loose change and then ate hungover in your car – has become a slave to the marketing departments. Got a boneheaded product you need to promote? Why not just bung a load of insane, barely edible junk into a bread roll? It works every time. The stunt burger is a tragic misappropriation of a design classic, and true burger fans cannot wait for this miserable fad to end.’
A friend of mine recently posted a picture of the burger he had in a town up the North Coast. All looked good - a white bread bun which was a good thumb thick at base and looked satisfyingly springy, minced pattie a tad over caramelised and possibly a little on the arid side, lettuce just on the edge of limpness, canned beetroot (how extraordinary that beetroot should have evolved so perfectly for canning, eh), three or four firm tomato slices – but there sitting on the very top was that symbol of Yankee imperialism, a slice of melted pus yellow cheese. How I empathise with the call to stop mucking around with the burger, though this author’s allusion to a certain prevalent fast food bun I hope is satiric in this context.
http://bit.ly/ZcUH3u
Of eggplants and food writing
And finally blog post from me post a stimulating discussion hosted by John Newton on food writers and food writing.
http://buthkuddeh.blogspot.com.au/
F & D Quiz answer
Pepperoni
Email:pvanreyk@optusnet,com.au
Blog: Proud Desperate Versatile Opportunistic Forage
Mail chimp? deliver? I'm a member of your blog but not getting any mail from you ..... we must talk about this!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, thanks for another entertaining edition & especially the good news about the misshapen fruit & veg.