This fortnight's compost

Double the pleasure   - last week was very thin on the food ground so a fortnight’s work to make up for it J

1    1. BYO Cutlery: why we should all start carrying our own knives and forks

“Sadly, we are still at the point where it is considered weird to carry cutlery, rather than weird not to. I've lately started stashing bamboo sporks in my handbag and I get some odd looks when I produce them (in cafes, I hasten to add, rather than at other people's houses. I'm not that odd). But I don't care. Green issues aside, there's something satisfying about using a familiar and well-loved object rather than some impersonal plastic thing that doesn't even work properly. Those medieval knife-carriers were not so daft.”

Yeah but how will I explain it to Jetstar security?

http://bit.ly/1alNUWG

2    2. The McRib: Enjoy your symptom

‘The McRib is like Holbein’s skull: we experience it as (quasi-)foodstuff, as marketing campaign, as cult object, as Internet meme, but those experiences don’t sufficiently explain it. To understand McRib fully, we have to look at the sandwich askew.’

A delicious fun exploration of desire that may have its tongue firmly in its pork cheek or maybe not which would make it even funnier.

http://bit.ly/17rqbkB

3    3. Bibimbap: the ultimate comfort food.

“My bones can feel the cold weather coming and I have a caveman's urge to get close to fire and fill my belly. There's only one thing for it: bibimbap. This Korean dish is the champion of comfort foods. Try saying it aloud. Bi-bim-bap. Even the sound of the word is satisfying. “

I’ll see your bibimbap and raise you a mulligatawny!

http://bit.ly/1bWLxJC

4     4. No more free range eggs in Queensland

“The Queensland government has quietly brought about changes to state regulations that will now ensure the end of true free range egg production in Queensland. The recent change  to regulations of free range eggs, lifting the number of hens allowed per hectare from 1,500 to 10,000.”

Ah, Queensland, beautiful one day, a bad yolk the next.

http://www.ecovoice.com.au/no-more-free-range-eggs-in-queensland/

5     5. Eat Your History

Finally caught up with the Eat Our History exhibition at the Museum of Sydney. It's built around dining settings and kitchens from houses within what was the Historic Houses Trust but is now part of Sydney Living Museums. Some lovely recreations of the settings, well chosen crockery, cutlery, kitchen equipment and such, and clever and unpretentious use of video and e-book technology. Noice.

http://www.hht.net.au/whats_on/highlights/exhibitions/eat_your_history_a_shared_table

This weeks compost

1    1. Changing tastes; why foodies are the new food critics.

“Overall, I found the main attraction of blogging for foodies is that it functions as a form of what I call “creative production” – that is, it’s about finding everyday ways to express a sense of creativity and to have the feeling of making something in this postindustrial world where most of us no longer have an opportunity to make things or be creative in our paid work.

Restaurant blogging, then, is not simply an exercise in consumerism gone wild. It’s more a way of taking a consumer activity and making it productive and creative, turning it into a craft activity.”

A nice piece of research on food bloggers. As one, I concur with the conclusion that what I do is turn a consumer activity into a creative one – but then I would, wouldn’t I J

http://bit.ly/1a3GiYK

2     2. Real bun fight as Hungry Jacks and Wamberal takeaway shop Wambie Whoppers tussle over burger name

“Fast food giant Hungry Jack's has created a social media furore after demanding that a Central Coast takeaway shop stop using the name "Whoppers" in its name.

The takeaway shop on the Central Coast Highway at Wamberal has been known as Wambie Whoppers since the early 1990s - and the name is shared by its popular giant burger.”

I give full notice to Hungry Jacks that should they win an action against the Wambie Whopper I will be entering the fray with my own Petersham Whopper and urging all and sundry to do the same. This kind of bullying from the fast food has got to be stopped. In the meantime I support the call to get onto the Save Wambie Whopper Facebook page and like them, get others to like them and get onto Hungry Jack’s website and Facebook page and whop them good!

http://bit.ly/1a3IIqg

3    3. Community Kitchen brings together asylum seekers, public

“Asylum seekers in Australia are not allowed to work, so feeling isolated and lacking purpose is common. But a community kitchen in Sydney’s north west is fast becoming a place for many to socialise, share experiences and cultures.”

Wonder if any of the pollies who continue to demonise asylum seekers has ever bothered to sit down and eat with them.

http://bit.ly/1hf3Twc

4. Human need for protein causes us to over eat: study

“When the proportion of protein in a food is low, it is generally cheaper,” she said. “This works on two levels to dilute dietary protein: through the food industry and also through the consumer.” A study in which Dr Gosby was involved found that, when people dropped the proportion of calories they got from protein from 15 per cent to 10 per cent, their overall energy intake shot up by 12 per cent, or about 1000 kilojoules.

The sun never shines on the poor, does it.

http://bit.ly/1batihO

5    5. Why do we still waste so much food at home?

Just had a quick squizz at this report on domestic food waste in Britain and concur with a simple message of buy local, little and often.

http://bit.ly/1bguJg9

6    6. Claude Corne: Chef gave Sydney the French connection.

Vale.

http://bit.ly/1iL45ib

This week's compost

1    1. Fire-Eaters. The search for the hottest chilli.

“Chiliheads are mostly American, British, and Australian guys. (There is also a valiant Scandinavian contingent.) Chili growing is to gardening as grilling is to cooking, allowing men to enter, and dominate, a domestic sphere without sacrificing their bluster.

Ah, nothing like a little bit of pop sexology, eh. Gals, put down that chilli and get back to that lemon frangipani pie!

http://nyr.kr/HssxZq

2    2. Oooh, burn! Sriracha factory neighbours complain about smell.

“But the pepper sauce that kindles such adoration in its fans is reportedly scorching the olfactory systems of the factory's neighbors. According to the complaint filed with Los Angeles Superior Court by the city of Irwindale, the stench of cooking peppers isn't just unpleasant - it's painful.”

Wonder what the Scoville heat unit count is on the chillies being used?

http://cnn.it/1dqOljT

3    3. Recipe for disaster

 

"A thick river of treacle is threatening to swamp a town in Sao Paulo state in southern Brazil, after a fire in a warehouse melted more than 30,000 tons of sugar."

Where are the enterprising young kids dipping apples into it in preparation for a massive sale as tourist mementos!

http://ind.pn/16kHfv8

4     4. Vertical gardens.

Tess Corino sent this email and the pics attached to This week’s compost.

“ hi Paul,

a bit of freshly gathered compost for you maybe.

  thought you might be amused by this interpretation of the vertical garden trend, which I love, especially when at least some of the plants are  edible,  and so many people hold up as one way that we will be able to feed ourselves in the future.

I took these photos a few days ago at Sydney airport, in the Jetstar section.  A new cafe has just opened, in the sunniest spot of the whole terminal.  They have installed a huge space divider, made of metal, two storeys high.  Full of plastic plants!  To add to the absurdity, a lot of them look like they represent edible herbs, sage etc.

I asked one of the guys in the cafe who designed it, he said : "I did."

Apparently they wanted to put in real plants, but Sydney Airport was concerned that the watering system would be a security risk.  But the guy  (sorry, did not get his name, but obviously one of the owners) could not understand why I thought that putting in a huge number of plastic plants as a replacement was worse than dropping the idea altogether.  He said I was the first to complain.

I must be strange.  Pity it did not work, a bit of greenery and lovely herb smells would have been great in the airport.  There must be ways to keep them fed and watered that isn't inviting to the people who want to blow up Jetstar.  And I wonder how they will dust the ones on top.”

This week's compost

1     1. Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies okays junk food tax

“New taxes on high-calorie foods and sugary drinks were approved by Mexico's lower house of Congress in a marathon 18-hour session that ended Friday, and are likely to become law... The legislation taxes high-calorie foods, defined as those providing 275 calories or more per 100 grams, at 5% of the ticketed price and chewing gum at 16%. Soft drinks would go up in price about 8 cents per liter... But there is a downside. The items likely to be subject to new taxes are those that the poorest consume, and they will pay disproportionately...The business community also says that mom-and-pop stores, like that of Blas Luna, will be hurt the most. ‘The little stores rely on soft drink sales to keep their doors open," said Cuauhtemoc Rivera, spokesman for the Alliance for the Protection of Jobs.’ “

The bill is expected to pass through the Mexican Senate also.  I am conflicted on this issue of junk food tax and admit I haven’t read enough to comment. But alarm bells do go off for me when a measure is put in place to deal with a health crisis that will disproportionately take money out of the pockets of the poorest as intuitively looks true of a junk food tax, if it is done in isolation from strategies that support sustainable food habit changes that would ameliorate the financial impact. This article doesn’t say whether that will happen. That goes for both the consumers and also the ‘mom-and-pop’ stores if indeed they cannot keep their doors open if there is a downturn in sales of food that will be caught under a junk food tax.

I would welcome links to other articles that look at the social justice implications of a junk food tax.

http://lat.ms/16lPwkH

2    2. Is this the stomach-turning truth about what the Neanderthals ate.

“The crucial point about the stomach contents of grazing animals is that they are filled with fragments of the plants that those herbivores had consumed shortly before they were stalked and killed. When those contents are then chewed and eaten, the tiny pieces of grass and herbs are transferred to their hunter's teeth and get embedded there. Then, when their devourers are themselves killed, or die of natural causes, shortly afterwards, those plant fragments are preserved in their teeth for later analysis by modern palaeontologists.”

Can’t wait to see how this gets translated into a new diet :).

http://bit.ly/HbJjgg

3    3. Paleo for sane people

Meanwhile, here is an article on the paleo diet written by a young journo mate of mine. I love it that one of the pro paelo’s thinks we’ve only been eating grains for 10000 years and so our tums ain’t adapted to eating them.

http://food.ninemsn.com.au/healthyrecipes/newsandfeatures/8741098/paleo-for-sane-people

4. The art of cooking (images from Nathan Myhrvold's The Photography of Modernist Cuisine)

The exploding egg is pretty wonderful, but it’s the cutaways of cooking equipment that really got me gasping.

http://vnty.fr/18EZ4pM

5    5.  Food eco-labelling – green credentials or green mail

“If it’s to realistically meet consumers' requirement to shop more sustainably, any carbon footprint labelling should be based on a full lifecycle assessment of carbon emissions from paddock to plate. It needs to include production, procession and everything in between, not just the food miles incurred during transportation. In life cycle assessment, all major greenhouse gases - not just carbon dioxide - should be included.”

Because it’s complicated, as is calculating the water footprint, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make ever better attempts to get it right. I do think having more than 50 organisations in Oz that are eco-certifying products is absurd. 

http://bit.ly/1bUf8Ud

6.       (a) Fructose health claims ignores evidence of harm

“The European Union’s approach to food regulation, then, is very reductionist. The EFSA has taken one short-term impact of a food component (the glycemic index) to justify a health claim for fructose, and ignored all the science that indicates its adverse impacts on long-term health in relation to over-consumption, weight gain, diabetes, heart disease and liver disease. This is yet another victory for the powerful processed food and beverage lobbies over advocates for public health.”

Ahttp://bit.ly/1dp7vJf

(b)   Catalyst: Heart of the Matter Part 1

“It took decades to really entrench this myth. It's probably going to take a few more decades to get us out of this myth. But to vilify saturated fats I think is one of the worst things the medical profession has done. We created this new disease called hypercholesterolaemia. And if we created this new disease, we got to create drugs to neutralise it. Are there corporations and billions of dollars and money behind this? Absolutely.”

http://ab.co/1fYGXj9

(c) It’s not even debatable, saturated fat is bad for you
“Earlier this week, the BMJ published an article claiming advice that saturated fat intake should be minimised to reduce heart disease is flawed. While this may sound tempting, it’s just not the case. The author of the BMJ article notes that despite four decades of dietary advice against saturated fats, obesity, which he equates with cardiovascular risk, has been increasing. In fact, the rates of cardiovascular disease have fallen in countries where efforts have been made to reduce saturated fat intake, but have risen in developing countries where consumption has increased... It’s curious that there seems to be a sudden campaign to exonerate saturated fat.”

http://bit.ly/1c1vEC6

I put these three articles together because they frustrate the hell out of me as a person who is trying to make simple changes to my diet to cope with Type 2 diabetes and a family history of cardiovascular illnesses.  I feel like big science and the food industry are whacking me back and forth across the net in a particularly nasty grudge match and the score is never gonna be to my advantage. 

7.       Local gal makes good

Chris Manfield’s Tasting India has just scooped it at the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) book awards in New York City - the first award for Best Culinary Travel book and the second award - the overall winner - Best Cookbook of the Year.

Congrats Chris – well deserved, I love the book.