This week's compost

1. Coles guilty over false freshly baked bread claims

Roll over Coles (well someone had to make the pun)
‘Coles has been declared guilty by the Federal Court of misleading shoppers with claims its bread and other baked good were “freshly baked” when that was not the case. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission launched proceedings against Coles in June last year, accusing the supermarket giant of misleading consumers into thinking bread was made on the day at the store when, in some cases, the bread had been partially baked months earlier in overseas factories.’

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/coles-guilty-over-false-freshly-baked-bread-claims-20140618-3addf.html#ixzz34yT6KJvR

2. Australian honey does us proud.

Our bees are the buzz, peeps :)

'In Australia we have much less chance of having contaminants such as chemicals and antibiotics in our honey because our bees, at the present moment, have fewer diseases and parasites. The rest of the world is dealing with bee pests such as Varroa destructor which beekeepers elsewhere use chemicals to treat. Not so in Australia.'

http://bit.ly/1nl3fMh

3. All Jamie’s plush toys recalled by Woolworths – can choke and stab

Not half as well as farmers angry at being slugged a crate fee. And Oliver, or his pr mob, get the most asinine response award for this one: ‘In a letter to Ausveg, Oliver said he was powerless to stop the fee, as he was an "employee" of Woolworths. He said he had no sway over the supermarket's commercial decisions.’ He has a really weird idea of what an employee is I reckon.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/all-jamies-garden-plush-toys-recalled-by-woolworths-8211-can-choke-and-stab-20140620-zsgom.html#ixzz35G1qOurQ

4. Hey hipsters, hands off my flat white

‘'On Sunday, the Observer asked, “Could it be that the flat-white-drinking, flat-cap-wearing hipster will soon cease to exist?” And in the Telegraph, confessing that you drink a flat white will score you three out of a possible four points in its Are you a hipster?'’

A flat white? No wonder England don’t swing no more!

http://bit.ly/1lp0VG7

5. What the crap? Neanderthals had a taste for vegetables.

Yeah but were any of them vegan?

'a study of ancient faeces (yes, 50,000-year-old poo) published today in the journal PLOS ONE, suggests that Neanderthals had more of a taste for fruit and vegetables than first thought.'

http://bit.ly/1lRyIrb

6. How to Invent a Local Food Culture

‘Ask someone to list dishes that come from a specific place in Britain and it's likely that Melton Mowbray pork pies will come fairly near the top of the pile. Cornish pasties will be up there too, Cullen Skink, and perhaps Liverpool Scouse, but soon enough the ideas trail away. We're a population that grazes dishes from across the world and, for the most part, we feel no more connected to a local dish than we do to a curry. When travelling abroad, we're quite taken with the regional dishes that appear again and again, but closer to home, local food culture is still a fairly new idea, mostly driven by the trend-led efforts of creative chefs and encouraged by food hobbyists.’

There is all the difference of course between a local dish and a dish that is created to sum up a locale. But it’s a fun article.

http://bit.ly/1jT7fBk

This week's compost

1.      The Men Who Made Us Fat

Where is the international court of justice to which to take the food industry for killing people through supersizing foods high in sugar, fat and salt ?
This is ep 2 of The Men Who Made Us Fat and it makes enraging viewing as it looks at the naked grab for dollars and the power wielded by Big Food.

http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/men-who-made-us-fat/ZX9890A002S00#playing

Ep 3 looks at regulation versus voluntary codes and of particular interest in the Australian context is the discussion about using ‘traffic light’ labelling.

http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/men-who-made-us-fat/ZX9890A003S00#playing

2.      Sydney Film Festival

I got an announcement as per attached from the Sydney Film Festival. You may imagine my response. I FBed them back saying it was a wank to put on a gourmet meal by an Aussie male to a tie-in to a film that celebrates the domestic work of women in India suggesting that it was also a slap in the face not to have asked some of the Indian chefs in town to do the meal. Margie Harris fired of an FB to them supporting an ‘unknown author’ post on FB J . Really, I know I know it’s me getting on my high horse again, but I was just dumbfounded by the grab for $$$ without any sensitivity for how it might be received in the South Asian communities in Sydney.

Apparently the film is very good and I do intend to see it...and will go have a meal at a local Indian dhabar after.

 http://tix.sff.org.au/session_sff.asp?s=215

3.      Starbucks f**ks up

Starbucks have reportedly accumulated losses of at least $143 million since they opened here 14 years ago. As a mate of mine said ‘Inglorious Jeans next’.

http://www.sbs.com.au/thefeed/blog/2014/06/02/why-starbucks-just-cant-crack-australian-market

4.      The Politics of Food (Season 2): Sex, Diet & Disaster

Delfina Foundation (DF) is inviting artists, curators, writers, film-makers and other cultural practitioners interested in exploring key issues related to the politics of food to apply for the second season of this themed based residency, which is scheduled to run from March to June 2015.

https://www.delfinafoundation.com/programmes/residency-programme/open-calls/the-politics-of-food-season-2/

This week's compost

1.      The secret of the Mediterranean diet? There is no secret.

‘NHS Choices actively encourages us to "make our diets more Mediterranean" by, among other things, "eating more bread and pasta" (studiously ignoring the growing body of evidence that implicates refined carbohydrates in obesity) and telling us, somewhat inarticulately, to eat "more fruit and salad, including tomatoes and vegetables". But this reheated, rehashed "Mediterranean" diet increasingly looks like a lazy student's essay cobbled together from out-of-date textbooks.’

How often does one have to say it before it dies a natural death...oh, wait, it can’t because it’s Mediterranean L

http://bit.ly/1lT8YIm

2.      Unfiltered beer: would you drink a cloudy pint?

‘‘Far from clear, these beers are opaque on a spectrum from hazy to weak, milky tea. Such is the growth in unfiltered craft beers that this style has been dubbed (mainly by its detractors) as "London murky".’

Having recently had my first meeting with orange wine (NOT Orange wine) and quite enjoyed it cheers thanks a lot, and having pulled some shockingly cloudy beers in my time as a RAS, I have no qualms whatsoever if the taste is on a par with some of the boutique beers around Sydney these days

http://bit.ly/SvigSm

3.      Going to the US ?

Check out Food: Transforming the American Table, 1950-2000 at the Smithsonian. The exhibit highlights how American eating and shopping habits have changed during those five decades, and the museum compiled this retrospective to show the progression and evolution of the changes leading up to what shows up at the American table.

There is online version of the exhibition too to while away an hour or two... http://americanhistory.si.edu/food

How fab if an Australian Uni did something similar.

4.      The Men Who Made Us Fat

A three-parter of which the first episode went in hard on sugar and the food and soft drink  industry.  Made me reach for a highly sugared carbonated drink instantly.

No but really do programs like these get to those who need to see them – well probably not when they are programmed at 9.30 on Thursday night on ABC.

http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/men-who-made-us-fat/ZX9890A001S00#playing

This week' compost

It’s been as barren as a backyard patch in Sydney in winter food interest wise, but here are a few morsels.

1.      FREE stuff

The University of Chicago has a free monthly e-book.

This month it is “Accounting for Taste: The Triumph of French Cuisine” by Priscilla Ferguson.

For your free download, go here and follow the instructions.

http://press.uchicago.edu/books/freeEbook.html

2.      The end of food

‘But that is Soylent’s downside, too. You begin to realize how much of your day revolves around food. Meals provide punctuation to our lives: we’re constantly recovering from them, anticipating them, riding the emotional ups and downs of a good or a bad sandwich. With a bottle of Soylent on your desk, time stretches before you, featureless and a little sad. On Saturday, I woke up and sipped a glass of Soylent. What to do? Breakfast wasn’t an issue. Neither was lunch. I had work to do, but I didn’t want to do it, so I went out for coffee. On the way there, I passed my neighbourhood bagel place, where I saw someone ordering my usual breakfast: a bagel with butter. I watched with envy. I wasn’t hungry, and I knew that I was better off than the bagel eater: the Soylent was cheaper, and it had provided me with fewer empty calories and much better nutrition. Buttered bagels aren’t even that great; I shouldn’t be eating them. But Soylent makes you realize how many daily indulgences we allow ourselves in the name of sustenance.’

I am fascinated and scared by this article. Fascinated by the continuing pursuit of ways to intake nutrient without growing it, hunting it, gathering it, cooking it. I am a scifi child and that world has always had a gee whizz attraction for me. I am scared by the psychology of Reinhart and his fanbase and network of co DIY Soylent makers; they come across to me as frighteningly alienated and soul-less and as cult as the god-botherers Reinhart derides.

http://nyr.kr/1ne3P2a

3.      And now the bad news: red wine is not good for health after all

‘So, with a more robust measure of resveratrol on hand, how had the health of this group of Italians fared when they were followed up nine years later? The answer was as you would expect; rates of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mortality had no link with amounts of resveratrol metabolites in participants' urine. Even blood markers of inflammation, which lie at the heart of metabolic disease risk, had no link with resveratrol levels.’

Spoilsports!

http://bit.ly/1onbICu

4.      Activated almonds? Yes well eating them may make you a pretentious git

‘So while Evans might be concerned that people think he's a wanker, he shouldn't worry too much. For all our idealised tropes about egalitarianism and not letting anyone get up themselves, it's more about perception than reality. Wankers can be and do anything they dream of, Pete – prime minister, radio host, stripper pole wheeler. Just err more on the side of yob, if you can manage it, and keep your "activated almonds" out of kicking distance, if you know what's good for you.’

Okay, I know, Pete Evans is a soft target and this is not really an article about food – but in a bleak Budget week this gave me a laff.

Of apron strings, seasonality and preserves

I've spent the last month pickling and jamming and that's led me to recognising how time and labour consuming it was for women to have to deal with forward provisioning post harvests, indeed post 'the season' for fruits and vegetables, in the absence of fridges and freezers.What I mean is...

I have fruit trees, herbs and grow some vegetables in my backyard and forage from neighbouring properties when there is produce going unregarded. I also shop at a growers' market and often engage in 'rescuing' produce that's put on the discount shelf at the greengrocer for being too old or bruised or a tad over-ripe or whatever.

This leads to me facing gluts of produce well beyond anything I can eat within the period the produce is at its best or least worst. This is the situation that faced or faces anyone growing fruit and vegetables still dependent on the seasonal cycles. Its the joy and curse of seasonality.

So, I like others have to do something to not waste the abundance when it comes. I don't have the imperative of having to provide for a winter of no produce, however. One of the solutions we humans came up with was to preserve the produce via pickling or jamming and it has usually been women to whom that responsibility has fallen. And it is bloody hard and time consuming work!

You spend an hour juicing thirty limes; then finely slicing their skins; then mix them with their juice and sugar; then stand for another hour over a pot as the mix boils away threatening to spume up and drench your fire and stove and you at the least inattention from you; testing testing testing for the setting point; meanwhile sterilising jars; then filling and sealing them; and finally labeling them.

Or you slice chokos under running water so your hands don't react with the sticky juice that can form a black film on a careless hand; then grind spices and in the days before electric spice grinders this would have been immensely tiring of the arms and back as you bend over and pound away; stand over a boiling pot stirring and stirring so nothing sticks and burns all the while being careful not to mash the fruit in the process and that the flour heavy sauce doesn't cake; and again you do the jar sterilising, filling, sealing, labeling.

If you are making a guava jelly there is the tedium of straining the steaming pulp out of its cooking liquid so it becomes clear and free of the merest hint of a speck of flesh. Then if you are determined to not waste the pulp and go on to make guava cheese you get to stand over - yes, you guessed it - a steaming pot, as the pulp and sugar you have added condense down into a larval paste that erupts scaldingly till it is set and lifts away from the sides of the pot.

Then of course you have to clean the pots and pans, the utensils, the stove, the benches...

I get satisfaction for all of this from the oohs and aahs of friends to whom I give the finished product, the cache of home made. I suspect I would look on it differently if I wasn't doing it by choice but out of necessity, as routine, as something expected of me in my position within a household.

This week's compost

1.      Health check: Do bigger portion sizes make you eat more?

‘If we’re served a larger portion, we consume more – as my colleagues and I show in our review of 88 existing studies that manipulated portion size and measured consumption. We found that doubling a portion leads to an average 35% increase in consumption. In addition to being substantial, the effect is robust, even pernicious. Larger portions lead to greater consumption even across conditions of bad food, where the portion size is not visible, and among people who should know better.’
The hidden question in this article is why anyone would want to drink 920mls of Starbucks coffee.

http://bit.ly/P1oPd1

2.      How sound affects the taste of our food

'The sound is what sensory science nuts call modulating taste, and the past few years have seen a boom in research in this area. Sound is the final frontier in food presentation. Restaurants agonise over menus, crockery, furniture and lighting, yet often any old CD will be stuck on for background music with nary a thought. However, now that we're starting to understand that everyone has synaesthetic tendencies when it comes to taste, sound is set to play a bigger part in our eating experience. Ben & Jerry's, for example, is considering a sonic range of ice-cream flavours, with QR codes on the tubs that will allow eaters to access complementary sounds via their phones.'
Which Sydney restaurant is going to be first off the mark with iPads and headphones and a hyperlinked menu ...
http://on.wsj.com/1qXiDzp

3.      Master the egg

‘Like that Rosetta stone, the egg, far more ancient, unlocks the secret code of the kitchen. Learn the language of the egg—understand completely this amazing and beautiful oblong orb—and you can enter new realms of cooking... An egg is an end in itself; it's a multipurpose ingredient; it's an all-purpose garnish; it's an invaluable tool. The egg teaches your hands finesse and delicacy. It helps your arms develop strength and stamina. It instructs in the way proteins behave in heat and in the powerful ways we can change food mechanically. It's a lever for getting food to behave in great ways. Learn to take the egg to its many differing ends, and you've enlarged your culinary repertoire by a factor of 10.’
I can’t resist it....I have to say I think the author is over-egging the egg.

http://bit.ly/1lumjr4

4.      Genetics link found in search for sweet strawberries

‘The first BMC Genomics paper, by the IFAPA in Malaga, Spain, studied 20 breeding lines of strawberries, mostly originating from California, and the second paper, from the University of Florida, took an aromatic French strawberry variety. Both showed that FaFAD1 was not present in fruits that did not produce gamma-decalactone.’
And it took how long to find this out? Bring back Mendel.

http://bit.ly/1i4i1ra