To kick off, two wonderful clips. Now, put these guys on at
a food event in Sydney and I will spend days in line in a sleeping bag drinking
really bad coffee and eating cronuts to be first to grin stoopidly and take a
gazillion pics and love/hate myself for eating the end product...are you SURE
that you can’t keep fairy floss under your pillow 4evah?
Gourmet F & D Quiz: This week’s question
Where were French fries invented.
Szathmary Culinary Manuscripts and Cookbooks
‘Handwritten cookbooks, ca. 1600s-1960s, documenting
culinary history in America and Europe and how tastes have changed over the
years. Help improve access to these historic documents by transcribing
handwritten pages, reviewing transcriptions (look for items marked "Needs
Review"), and correcting typewritten text.’
I wish I had the time to put into what looks like a terrific
project – anyone know if any library in Aus is doing something like this –
there must be similar handwritten cookbooks out there.
And if you haven’t checked it out before you might like to
see the ebook I have done of my grandmother’s cookbook. http://issuu.com/foodwriter/docs/the_recipe_book_of_ad_de_la_harpe_first_edition_20
Putting Food on the Table. Food Security
is Everyone’s Business. The Inaugural Food Security Conference of the Right
to Food Coalition. 13-14th October 2014
I couldn’t get to the Conference so it’s great that the
presentations have been put up so soon. Here’s some that I have had a look at
and recommend watching.
A terrific challenging presentation by Brigit Bussichia on
the institutionalising of food banks as a way that governments can avoid
scrutiny of government policies that lead to poverty which leads to food
insecurity, presented at the. Thanks Kay Richardson for alerting me to it. The
song at the end is a hoot!
Karen Beetson’s narrative about her experience of food
insecurity as an Aboriginal woman is a salutary reminder that food insecurity
is not a new phenomenon in Australia. It
is one of those talks whose honesty is humbling and compelling and again raises
really important questions about the kinds of judgements that are made about
the choices or lack thereof that people in poverty have to put good food on the
table, particularly where extended family obligations are a further
complication.
The full info on the conference is at http://righttofood.org.au/
John West and Princes accused of backtracking on tuna
commitments
‘The two biggest tuna fish brands in the UK are privately
looking at delaying or reviewing public commitments to eliminate the use of
controversial fishing methods, leaked documents show. In 2011, Princes and
John West pledged to phase out the use of purse seine nets and fish aggregation
devices (FADs) which are used to attract tuna but can inadvertently
lead to the deaths of other marine life such as sharks, rays and turtles. Each
company has around a third of the UK market share for tinned tuna.’
Looking forward to
Matthew Evans up-coming program on Aus fishing practices. Meantime, I reckon I
can reject the fish John West catches.
Are solar farms really hitting British food
production?
‘The environment secretary, Liz Truss, has stripped farmers
of subsidies for solar farms, saying they are a “blight” that was pushing food
production overseas. But the new minister has fundamentally misunderstood the
way solar farms operate, according to the solar industry and farmers.... “This
misguided attack by the environment secretary deliberately ignores the fact
that the planning system is already there to prevent unsightly and overly
dominant solar farms or their deployment on high-quality productive
agricultural land. Where they do go ahead on poorer grade soils, planning
conditions should ensure that they boost biodiversity and revert back to their
original use when appropriate.”
The environment secretary, it is revealed at the end of the
article, is a former ‘oil executive’...nope, no conspiracy theory to see, here,
move along please.
Analysis: Maps of Australian language – swimmers
versus cozzies, scallops versus potato cakes
‘The terms for the fried potato snack show a divide between
the southern states, with potato cake favoured in Victoria and southern New
South Wales, changing to scallop or potato scallop in NSW through to
Queensland. South Australians maintain some individuality with the term potato
fritter.’
The Greek caff at Liverpool railway station knew they were
scallops, thank heaven...and yes, they were cooked in god-knows-how-old-oil and
the more flavoursome for it, doused in malt vinegar (none of your foofy
balsamic), and crusted with salt, all wrapped in butcher’s paper (I knew
butcher’s were on the way out when it began being called ‘flip-chart’ paper)
that of course was guaranteed not to last the distance from the shop to home
via the back of the bus – and I hesitate to think where we wiped our fingers
but let’s just say brylcreem came a poor second.
Faith and fears in Wendell Berry’s Kentucky
‘Berry told the conference that when the industrial food
system finally reckons with its limitations and breathes its last breath,
there needs to be a knowledgeable community pushing the way
forward. “That’s why this little nucleus of people is so important,” he
said.’
I don’t see the industrial food system breathing its last in
my lifetime if ever and I’m not convinced that its demise would be particularly
helpful to meeting food scarcity. Making the industrial food systems more
ecologically sustainable on the other hand I think can help.
F & D Quiz
Answer
Belgium
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