Red Hen Recipes- Rewriting the Online
Recipe from "Seed to Fork"
‘Red Hen Recipes is a
user-generated recipe website that allows supports people in tracing a single
ingredient from where it was grown to how it was cooked and eaten. If you
participate you will fill out a short registration survey (15 mins) and use the
online software to create a Red Hen Recipe- this might mean anything from
visiting a farmers' market or farm, growing herbs on a balcony, to cooking in
the kitchen.’
I have contributed a recipe and I am looking forward to the follow up interview. Why not give it a go?
Illegal foragers are stripping UK forests of fungi
‘The growing popularity of foraging
for wild food may be part of the problem, says Sue Ireland, director of
green spaces for the City of London Corporation, which manages Epping forest:
“In rural areas, foraging is fine if you are picking for your own personal
use.” But the difference with Epping Forest is that it is on the doorstep of
the millions of people in London and can even be reached by tube train.’
Legal foraging...kinda sounds contradictory. I can’t see my
mate Charlie-across-the-road and his Portuguese, Spanish and Middle European
annual mushroom foragers registering for a licence. Granted, as far as I know,
they mostly forage for home use and not for sale. Granted too that as far as I
know there are only a few fungi types that are foraged in Oz and that the
pressure on them is probably not as great – it is somewhat of a hassle to get
to the pine forests around Orange for example. But there is still something
damned if you do and damned if you don’t about this story to me that is
unsettling.
Every fish you eat is an environmental mystery, but
would you pay more to know the truth?
‘I used to have an open mind about sustainable seafood.
After countless boat journeys, visits to numerous fish farms, wholesalers,
retailers and restaurants while filming What’s the Catch?, a
seafood documentary for SBS, I’ve now got a very strong opinion on eating fish:
if you don’t know what’s on your plate, if you can’t be sure you aren’t part of
the annihilation of the ocean, then don’t eat seafood.’
I’m looking forward to the program. I’m not hopeful,
though, that many people can handle the
truth let alone pay more to know it.
Peking duck fans
targeted in animal welfare ad blitz in Chinatown
Animal welfare activists have launched an
advertising campaign with images of sick and distressed ducks at NSW farms,
targeting Sydney's Chinese community, who they claim is fuelling the demand for
duck meat.
Animal Liberation wants to raise awareness that
millions of the birds are suffering on Australian farms because they are
routinely deprived of water to swim or bathe in, it says.
"Water deprivation is one of the most severe
welfare concerns within modern farming practices because ducks are designed for
a life on water," campaign manager Emma Hurst said.... Jonathan Yee, owner
of the sprawling Emperor's Garden Restaurant at the paifang entrance into
Chinatown, said it was unfair to target Chinese businesses because duck was
featured in many cuisines. "The ads should be in other suburbs, because
duck is not just in Chinatown. To have it where one cuisine is predominantly
based, that's quite biased," he said.
I had no idea of the practice being described and
do find it damnable. I do, however, also register the concern of Jonathon Yee
at the targeting of the campaign in Chinatown, or indeed at the Chinese
community as a whole if that is the substance of the campaign.
Shut up and Eat. A foodie
repents
‘If shopping and cooking really are the most consequential,
most political acts in my life, perhaps what that means is that our sense of
the political has shrunk too far—shrunk so much that it fits into our
recycled-hemp shopping bags. If these tiny acts of consumer choice are the most
meaningful actions in our lives, perhaps we aren’t thinking and acting on a
sufficiently big scale. Imagine that you die and go to Heaven and stand in
front of a jury made up of Thomas Jefferson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin
Luther King, Jr. Your task would be to compose yourself, look them in the eye,
and say, “I was all about fresh, local, and seasonal.”
Provocative in the best way. Lanchester doesn’t quite
repent, but does ask questions that resonate with me, as I too, become a person
who promotes ‘fresh, local and seasonal’ knowing that I am privileged and so
can make these choices. However, I take some comfort from going that small step
further when I can to also talk, post, write about the wider politics of
feeding the world and take actions when they present themselves even if it is
as minimal as signing an online petition. I am a community development worker
in my other life and I know how necessary it is to give people opportunities to
do what they can with their personal and social resources to add to the quantum
of change.
Thanks to Ross and Maria Kelly for bringing the article to
my attention.
Are seaweed snacks the future as the tide turns on
meat consumption?
‘A 2010 Wageningen University study estimated that a seaweed
farm covering 180,000 square kilometres - roughly the size of Washington State
- could provide enough
protein for the world’s population. And scientists at Sheffield
Hallam University have previously concluded that seaweed
granules could replace salt (pdf) in cheese, bread, sausages and
processed food such as supermarket ready meals. Even though seaweed is constantly
being touted as a superfood and has captured the imagination of trend chefs,
there is generally still an aversion to eating it. Part of the problem is it’s
a food that’s often been associated with poverty.’
Oh, gawd, here we go again...overpriced ‘superfood’ coming
to a trendy restaurant and providore near you any second now. Anyone wanna come
kelp raking with me at Bondi?
Chilaw fish market
I love Sri Lankan town and village fish markets – raw,
immediate, prolific, and enough sand and grit to horrify Australian Council
Health Inspectors.
