Category: slow food

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Which comes first, the chicken or the worker?

So here’s the issue. I love eating chicken, but I can’t say I love chickens – they’re scary little beady-eyed peckers. Yes, I’m a city girl if ever there was one, but I wish them no harm, after all they produce that most sacred of foods: the egg. I’d best not start on the egg or I won’t stop.

Vegans, look away now! I love eating poultry in preference to the meat of larger animals, but I still want to know that, however short the lives of animals I eat, they do not suffer unnecessarily. Live sheep exports are particularly abhorrent. I buy hideously expensive organic eggs, because I want to know that my potential chicken in a shell is the product of a parent who was well-fed and cared for: free-range. Besides they’re huge and frequently double yolked:

Okay I broke one!

I won’t go near Steggles and am ashamed of the days, (many years ago) when I bought a pack of their discount pieces. I stupidly wondered why these pieces were so misshapen. Many years have passed since then, now I do know that they were deformed due to their cramped conditions. Free-range certification is a nightmare and consumers are rightly confused about the real living conditions of the chooks. Buying certified organic means you can be assured that the facility is monitored to ensure they do have reasonable access to the great outdoors.

Here in WA buying free-range chicken means buying Mt Barker, by and large. They don’t look so flash. Then one glorious day I saw this in my supermarket fridge:

It looked like a proper plump chook. It cooked a treat, none of that slimy stuff you find on supermarket chooks. I thought I’d hit the jackpot. The massive 1.964 chook pictured cost just $11.64. I wondered how this was possible and then I bought it anyway.

So there I was happily roasting these fab chooks – 3 days of good eating per chook (hey, I’m a Jewish mother – roast chicken means there will be soup) Now fast-forward to May 4 and the Four Corners  expose on the exploitation of workers right here in glorious Oz.

The program concerned food companies that force unreasonable schedules and pay unfair rates and who should get a mention, amongst others, but Lilydale . I was angry. I was horrified. I was confused. Here I am buying these chickens because they treat the animals reasonably, but not so the poor buggers employed to process them.

Cheap food and the quest to keep it cheap, is wreaking havoc on our farm sector. I would happily pay an extra $3 per kilo for these chickens. Perhaps your everyday chicken lover might not, but shouldn’t the selling point of a free-range chicken be its provenance not its price?

If this reads like latte-luvvy thinking, that I’m an urban elitist let me be clear. I’m a casually employed academic on a low income. Food is expensive but most of don’t even spend 20% of our income on our food, including take-away, while our grandparents spent more like 30%. My students complain about the high price of food whilst frantically checking for messages on brand new I-phones.

We hesitate to spend $15 on a free-range chicken, which can actually feed a family of four (and soup the next day). Meanwhile a Red Rooster “dinner” for four will cost $20. For this you will get an inferior chicken, copious chicken salt, soggy chips by the time you get them home and a great deal of grease. We readily fork out $20 to see a movie, never mind the popcorn. Our priorities are so skewed. I say us because last week I bought another Lilydale chicken.

So here’s my problem, which comes first the chicken or the worker?

I picked the chicken didn’t I?

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A Very Australian Story

If you missed last week’s Australian Story,

http://www.abc.net.au/austory/ then catch up on i-view before The Seeds of Wrath, concludes with part 2 tomorrow night. Catch part 1 on I-view regardless of your view of the issue.

Most of us are familiar with the story of Steve Marsh losing his organic certification because of his neighbour’s GM canola crop blowing onto his land. This poignant and dramatic event has seen the end of old friendships and split the town of Kojonup.

Marsh is appealing the loss of his court case:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-19/gm-canola-farmer-may-have-to-pay-court-costs-after-loss/5757218

Part 1 heard Marsh state something conservatives refuse to hear: ‘there’s money in them thar organics’. Marsh received a higher price for his organic grains yet we still hear organic farming referred to as though it is some hippy indulgence.

Northern Europe is clamouring for organic produce and products, we have a pristine environment, yet my local organic shop is full of imported products. We have high unemployment and relatively little locally produced value added organic foods available. No prizes for guessing my view on GM trials in WA – watch Australian story and decide for yourself.

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Of veggies: fresh and pickled

My enthusiasm for all things outdoors has not abated. But it’s been so hot in Perth that just keeping the garden alive is a challenge. I recently had my garden mulched – a new idea for me, though obvious given the sandiness of Perth’s soil. Yes, you got it, I employed a young person.

Everything is looking happier, even these unauthorised arrivals:

They simply appeared after I tossed some spoiled tomatoes in there.

These capsicums were given to me by my departing neighbours – they’ve probably grown too tall having been in pots, I’m expecting the capsicums to fall off after replanting, but after 2 days they look like they may survive.DSC04775

But the Lebanese cucumbers have given me cause for celebration.

Will my corn be so lucky or did I plant too late?

Maybe I should start growing dill as my childhood neighbour used to. An elderly Hungarian woman, she made pickled cucumbers that we kids literally fought over.

If you are not of Eastern European Jewish extraction  (Ashkenazi) you may think I exaggerate. But pickled cucumbers are to my lot what olives are to Italians. A necessity. They brighten the most mundane of sandwiches (cheese!). And their place on my table is well assured now that I have a commercial option.

I recently found these on the shelves of Princi’s my local Italian deli.

And the bread? The Wine Store in East Freo. Quinoa and Linseed. I’m hooked on this bread.

Sometimes when I’ve ventured into one of the major 2 supermarkets (I try to avoid this) I’ve found Eskal pickled cucumbers. Eskal are good if rather hot, but these “ Pri-Chen” are the closest thing to Mrs Schwartz’s cucumbers. Good commercial pickled cucumbers are Israeli. Please don’t speak to me of Polski Ogorki. – they are edible, no more. Never sweetened pickles !

Why are we so obsessed by pickled cucumbers? As John Cooper points out, my forebears existed largely on a diet of black bread, bitter and sour due to its lactic acid content. The pickles helped to make the black bread digestible.

Not sure that I will try to improve on these pickles – but I will certainly be eating cucumbers.

Stay tuned…!

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Feeding People

This week our Food For Thought lectures dealt with food choice and sustainability. It’s all about the competing messages from slow food exponents and fast food purveyors. It’s easy to tell from some student’s body language that we don’t tell them what they want to hear, as though we will tell them it’s good to eat a highly processed, high fat, high salt, high sugar diet.

If Slow Food and fast food are in competition, it’s a David vs Goliath struggle. Slow food began in Italy in 1986 to resist the opening of a MacDonald’s outlet near the iconic Spanish Steps in Rome. Slow Food want to help preserve traditional farming and cookery practices and to keep people alive to the wonder and joy of fresh food. (tomato pic)

I’d like to think I’m what Michael Pollan calls a “conscientious omnivore”. That is someone who eats a broad range of foods, including meat, but who tries to do so in an ethical fashion. So we know that red meat is not “sustainable” for a number of reasons including the methane emissions of cows, the amount of grain needed to feed those cows, land clearances and on it goes. Industrial farming, feedlots and caged chickens aren’t seen to be sustainable or ethical, so sustainability and ethics are inextricably linked.

In my second lecture I look at so-called alternative methods – including biodynamics. I offer Cullen winery as an example – to show them that organic, and indeed biodynamic farming (think moon charts and soil preparation) is not as left of centre as they may think. And so this morning I find an article in the West Australian that Cullen Diana Madeleine 2011 cabernet has been judged the WA wine of the year.

Some students glaze over as soon as we discuss these concepts – or indeed the idea that we all need to think about what we eat, what we waste and how we can better feed ourselves and the world.

Most of our students enjoy the material we present and try to improve their own eating. In truth we can all make changes that will bring us better health and improve the world’s situation. Not wasting food is top priority. Sure that rotting lettuce in the back of the fridge can’t be packed up and sent to Sudan, but many students refuse to accept that their behaviour may have consequences at all. We argue that if the developed world wasted less food there would theoretically be more food available – to donate, to sell, to distribute. If you don’t believe food waste is a problem, watch Supervalue: A look at food miles and food waste.

We can and do have an impact on global food production every time we go to the till. This month saw Jamie Oliver becoming the new face of Woolworth’s: they get the Jamie razzle-dazzle, he gets to see more sustainable and humane food supplies from a major food supplier.

Are Woolies doing this because of their ethical concerns? Of course not. They have found an excellent way to build on their “Fresh Food People” branding by becoming the sustainable food people, at least in their advertising. They are responding to public sentiment. The case of free-range eggs and indeed chickens is an excellent example. When I first began buying free range eggs about 10 years ago, they were twice the price of cage eggs. Now the difference is far less because the demand has increased. There’s money in those happy chooks, just as there is in organic produce.

It’s important that we realise that we do have choices and our food dollars have power. There are a number of ways that you, yes you, can be a more conscientious omnivore.

Avoid or cut down on processed food, redolent with salt, fat, sugar or fructose in the form of corn syrup. Refined grains like white flour and white sugar give you a quick energy hit followed by a big drop. They also make you fat.

Generally eat locally sourced produce in preference to imported – less fuel is used to get it to you, you support your local farmers and in the case of fruit and vegetables it should be fresher. That means eating seasonally and nature provides well for us in this regard. After all, why do we get abundant oranges, mandarins and lemons in winter…?

Cook from scratch whenever you can: Michael Pollan says almost anything you cook for your self will be more nutritious than fast food, packaged and processed convenience foods. I say that the exception might be Elvis-style deep fried peanut butter and jam sandwiches.

Grow something to eat – anything! One of the principles of permaculture gardening is that you should always obtain a yield.  Community gardens are appearing all over as are school kitchen gardens. I may be the world’s worst gardener, but a major breakthrough for me was realising you had to water regularly. I have a veggie garden thanks to my green thumbed ex. Insects continue to thwart me, as does lack of time and energy, but the mandarin tree I transplanted when we moved is thriving. The miserable mulberry tree that my mother potted from a sprout from the original years ago has followed us to the new house. Replanted it’s now almost thriving, but my proudest effort is the blueberry – now in its third year it is producing whole handfuls of sweet berries at a time with my first crop being a single handful. If you have a small garden you can grow in pots as our students do for their “home garden” assignment. Or you can just grow some fresh herbs on your window sill. If you have a lemon tree why not put a big box full on the verge with a help yourself sign as some kind folks in my street have done? Take these ideas a little further and anything can happen. Do take  the time to listen to the remarkable Pam Warhurst: How we can eat our landscapes

No-one needs to be a martyr to the cause of culinary correctness. But we can and should eat better, we can all contribute to feeding the world.

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Wasting Away

I’ve lost 18 kilos since March; no wonder I’m less averse to climbing stairs. Clearly it’s a good thing but it has provided me with two conundra. The first is how to answer that question: “Aren’t you amazing, how did you do that”? In all honesty I don’t know how, but it leads to another question: if I’m now amazing, what was I before? Lazy? Indulgent and out of control? That is the message I’ve received for years.

However it’s the weight loss itself I’d like to address here. It is something of a mystery. I have lost weight slowly and without the aid of technologies such as gym membership, designer jogging shoes, weight loss programs, a dietician or even a diet. For all I know I may be seriously ill.

I’ve begun to dread that question, but it has made me think about it. There are the usual suspects: stress, overwork etcetera but there are other factors. Most notable amongst these is the fact that I spent most of those months teaching a course in “Food Studies”, an interdisciplinary course that teaches first year Uni students where our food comes from.

So here’s my theory: immersing myself in thinking what went into various foods, how they were grown and by whom, I have simply absorbed these lessons. These days, by the time I read what is in a product and where it comes from, I am increasingly less likely to buy it.

If it is imported I hesitate to buy, if it is a processed product I am unlikely to buy it (except for tea bags and the occasional tim-tam). I buy meat from my local butcher and only eat free-range chicken and eggs (preferably organic). These are more expensive, so I buy less, thus adhering to Michael Pollan’s dictum: Eat food. Not too much, mostly plants. And it appears to be working.

Having grown up a yo-yo dieter who took her first weight loss drugs at thirteen, and survived on a water diet for eight days aged eighteen, I found myself a type-2 diabetic at forty-five. No surprises there or in my determination NEVER to diet again.

And in truth I did not diet, I discovered that small and slow do work. Not every obese person can teach Food Studies, but we can all take small steps. If guidelines now recommend 1 hour of exercise per day but you can only find time for 20 – take those 20 minutes. I have stopped taking the lift. If you can afford to, buy smaller dinner plates. Don’t tell yourself I can never eat chips again, just fewer and not so often.

The other trick to weight loss appears to be to lose some. Once you begin to lose weight and get those comments it gets easier. Forget the Biggest Loser fantasy – slow and steady does win the race.

 

Dr Felicity Newman is a member of the Centre for Everyday Life at Murdoch University

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Slow Shopping

I recently sat on a panel dedicated to the discussion of food sovereignty – a fancy title for a discussion of the ways we Australians might have more say in deciding what we eat, where our food comes from and how it is produced. Yes, it was a slow food event.

What stuck in this member of the chattering class’s mind was a comment from a senior National Party MP on the panel. Though he was a charming and sincere gentleman, we certainly parted ways on a couple of issues. My suggestion that we take responsibility for those less fortunate, that is, those who don’t have enough to eat, being dismissed with the comment that “We’ll always have the haves and have not’s”. Should we accept malnutrition because it has had such a long and distinguished tradition?

Then there’s the role of women. The gentleman referred to a phenomenon I must confess I hadn’t heard of, he talked of the “Wednesday” shop, which he compared with the weekend shop. It went something like this:

“Well it’s been well documented the way in which women do a hasty shop on Wednesdays and then do their ‘proper’ shopping on the weekends”.

He then went on to explain the bleeding obvious – that harassed Mum’s on their way home from work will tend to buy rather more prepared foods than on the weekend, when they are more likely to shop and cook from scratch. Should we overlook his clear understanding that shopping and cooking is the women’s domain – no matter if she also works fulltime? Perhaps we’ll deal with that one later.

I’m more interested in his acknowledgement of the distinction between the fast shopping that takes place on weekdays and the slow shopping we women do on the weekends. While I’m the first to acknowledge that I’m more willing to do the food shopping than my male partner, and better at it, I’m less thrilled with the notion of shopping as leisure.

Shopping for clothes, shoes and accessories, at least for myself, is something I consider to be a leisure activity because I do it during the time which I consider to be leisure time. I’m sure you women know what I mean here, the weekend, that time when we are supposed to enjoy not being at work. This leisure time we spend driving our children everywhere, cleaning our houses, cooking, shopping and doing the laundry.

So what should I do with the remaining hours of the weekend? Would I rather go shopping or sit in the sun reading that weekend paper that takes a week to get through?

It’s quite a simple task, rescuing a few slow moments from my weekend. Slow shopping? Maybe this happens on holidays, but doesn’t that leave an awful lot of slow activity for those two-week breaks? So when did holidays suddenly become so fast?

 

Dr Felicity Newman is a member of the Centre for Everyday Life at Murdoch University

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Eating the coat of arms

Travelling out of my latte-luvvy comfort zone for a Saturday night BBQ was never going to simple, though we love the old friend wishing to re ignite the friendship by inviting us to meet his fiancée.

Their flagpole was visible before we saw the house, in fact it could be seen for miles. As our friend opened the door I managed not to express my joy that he was marrying Quentin Bryce, after all, who else hangs out a flag as big as WA?

Am I snob? A food snob for sure, I thought, as I watched her put out an assortment of processed, high salt, high fat, low-fibre snacks from their individual (read unsustainable) packages. I saw these snacks as symbolic of the evening ahead. Where were the olives?

Multiculturalism has not made great inroads in this locale. The bride-to-be, evidently thinking a spot of refugee bashing would go down a treat with her two migrant guests, provided a diatribe about all these refugees getting everything including new cars apparently, while we (read white) Australians suffer.

I will not repeat her comments about Indigenous Australians. At some point I managed to steer the conversation towards food and innocently inquired whether they ate kangaroo. Well you would think I’d suggested she cook her puppy dog. How dare anyone eat the coat of arms?

I have always blamed Skippy for the paltry amount of roo we consume in this country but she absolutely insisted on the coat of arms defence and was strident that no one else eats theirs, why should we?

I did point out that there are good reasons for this: the bald eagle (US) wouldn’t taste so good and I’d hate to guess when a lion or a unicorn, were last seen in the UK. The French apparently also have a lion and an eagle. Indeed lions, dragons, large birds and assorted strange mythical creatures abound in the heraldic world.

As usual Australia is blessed. We have our own assorted very strange creatures but they really do exist, here. We’re just really lucky ours are so plentiful, sustainable and delicious.

I would have put all this behind me until I found myself enjoying the culinary magic of Mark (the black) Olive – our own Indigenous celebrity chef, who was, unsurprisingly doing great things with roo and emu. It was when the Black Olive suggested we don’t like the idea of eating our coat arms I recalled my new friend. How shocked would she be to have anything in common with an Indigenous Australian?

Only the Olive was suggesting that we get over it, enjoy our good fortune and slap another emu fillet on the barbie.

Want to express your Australian identity? Might I suggest that eating animals, which are native to this land, is a better way than hanging a flag, a quarter of which sports the Union Jack?

 

Dr Felicity Newman is a member of the Centre for Everyday Life at Murdoch University

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Unsung Dads

Having previously written about the daily struggles of Mums it’s seems only fair to address deserving dads; unsung everyday heroes who have not been rendered impotent, violent or otherwise enraged by the gains of feminism.

Travelling usually indicates luck itself and while travelling last year, I felt so very lucky. But good luck is often followed by bad. Excessive security checks and my own stupidity ensured I missed my flight from Gatwick, a word I hope never to hear again. All I remember is that endless queue and then running from one wrong gate to the next. Finally arriving in Sicily I was lucky. But sunny Sicilia and its divine food can wait for another time.

I had to return via Gatewick and get myself to Heathrow and then home sweet home. It was a Friday and the bus driver, faced with terrible traffic snarls had decided to take an alternate route. This would have alarmed me if not for the very big wait for the flight home.

So I was able to sit back and enjoy the view. Yes, there was a view because he left the motorway. It was school holidays in the UK, the sun was actually shining and I was on a slow bus to Heathrow.

The driver had his young son sitting right behind him and I was behind them. As he drove he pointed out sites of interest to his son, things like “your Granny worked in the Great House there”, or “Great-Granddad worked in the factory there before the War”. We even passed Hampton Court Palace where another ancestor had been a gardener.

I’m not sure who enjoyed this most, his son or I? It was such a wonderful, random unfolding of England’s social history, an informed commentary, told with such understated pride. This man will probably never write his family story, certainly never be asked, “ Who do you think you are”; yet he knew where he came from and so will his son.

Home again, in the dreaded supermarket, when my shopping reverie is shattered by a middle-aged guy asking me where he can find curry powder. My eyes narrow seeking more information and he tells me he wants to make curried egg sandwiches for his kids. They’re sick of cheese and tomato. So we need something mild, a powder not a paste and apply with caution, don’t forget the dash of mayo.

He’s asked the right person, again I wonder why I’m so often asked for advice in supermarkets. I didn’t ask the Dad whether he ever gave them lunch money, or indeed whether this was his week with the kids or whether he was their sole carer or how he was able to do the school pickup. I got the impression he was sole carer and doing it tough. It’s only a sandwich, but minor acts of love have lifetime consequences.

 

Dr Felicity Newman is a member of the Centre for Everyday life at Murdoch University

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Slow and Local

Last weekend I was fortunate to find myself in a somewhat more upmarket shopping precinct than I usually frequent. Finding our destination closed, I steered my friend into a nearby, legendary food provedore.

Barely had we found the extra-virgin olive oil, then we were offered a complimentary cup of coffee. That the extra ten minutes spent in the store would, of course, give me more time to look on the shelves and more temptation to buy.

Perusing the shelves I was struck by how far this food had travelled. Sure, a massive blackboard proudly proclaimed just one local ingredient: “Manjimup truffles $2,500 per kg”. Well I guess we’d all write that on our blackboard if we had the chance.

The shelves displayed beautifully packaged pastes and potions from Christine Manfield but everything else seemed to be from very far away, as in organic “ketchup” from Spain, organic biscuits from the UK, bottled pears from Italy and so it went.

So for days now I’ve been pondering this slow dilemma: can we justify our desire for high quality food, especially organic, when it is shipped from afar? Organic food may be better for one’s health, it certainly makes consumers feel better about themselves, but what about the carbon foot print?

The obvious response is “Oh but it isn’t available here” and that is often the case. “Boutique” products cannot be mass-produced. However, if as it appears, there is a market for such foods, why isn’t more of it produced here in Australia?

Having struggled for accreditation, with the additional workload and costs and a marketplace demanding cheap food, organic farmers are finally in a position where their products are in demand. However, being smaller producers they may not have the resources needed to add value to their produce.

So who will give small, sustainable farmers support? Clearly not our authorities. Australia’s Risk Assessment Appeals Panel thinks we should be importing apples from China, and now New Zealand too. Here in WA we’ve seen the go ahead given for GM canola trials, though as yet we still can’t prevent GM crops contaminating non-GM crops.

On the other hand we could consider the words of Joel Salatin, who features so prominently in Food Inc. Salatin’s farm aims to provide clean food and educate consumers and food producers. Visitors are invited to:

Experience the satisfaction of knowing your food and your farmer, building community.  We are your clean meat connection.

When asked what he will do when demand exceeds supply, Salatin is unequivocal – he cannot do what he does on a large scale. He can only provide for his immediate area while encouraging and assisting farmers elsewhere to give it a go.

Salatin will be running workshops in Australia later this year, November for the ACT. A good chance to hear a universal message – slow down, smell the roses and eat local.

 

Dr Felicity Newman is a member of the Centre for Everyday Life at Murdoch University

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We Are All Jewish Mothers

Last week I gave a talk for a group of senior Jewish women on the topic of Jewish food and Jewish mothers. I like to think we can consider the Jewish mother as a symbolic mother, not because Jewish mothers are any better, or any worse, than any other group of mothers. It’s a question of perception – Jewish mothers have had more publicity, not all of it good.

People often ask me why Jews take their faith from their mother’s not their fathers. I used to think it was suspicion of women’s fidelity then I discovered it had more to do with the way Jewish women provide their children with the cultural and spiritual tools to be Jewish, in other words, their identity.

Surely this can also be extended to women in general? For example when it comes to speaking a second language children will learn their mother’s language but not the father’s – unless both parents have the same language of course.

The ladies wanted to hear me eulogising the uber-nurturing Jewish mother. They wanted talk of chicken soup and dedication. Certainly this is the image we know to be the “yiddishe mother”. However what I wanted to talk to them about the way that image changed over time.

The Jewish mother emerged at the end of the 19th century. In the Jewish villages of Europe men’s lives revolved around the Synagogue and study while women took care of all the worldly details, small matters like money, education and feeding the family. If we examine other “traditional” cultures we come to understand that this behaviour is common.

The Jewish women of Eastern Europe became the bridge between Jewish and host communities and these everyday skills meant that they adapted to life in the New World better than men whose religious education was no longer valued.

And somewhere between Minsk and Manhatten (or Melbourne) she went from being an angelic, long suffering mother always offering food of course, always leaving the lamp lit in case her wayward son might return, to some sort of obsessive force–feeding banshee. The Yiddish films of the early 20th century show them as dear old ladies obsessively loved by their bad boy sons.

By the time we get to the 60s and 70s writers like Phillip Roth and filmmakers like Woody Allen in particular, provided hideous portraits loosely based on their own mothers. What went wrong?

Were these women the victims of their own success? American Jewish women were well educated but expected to remain at home once married, providing the source of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique. The result was feminism and perhaps her sons resented the shift in focus.

Universal indeed – today we women go freely into the workforce, but when it comes to chicken soup and compassion, not much has changed, we’re always on call. Yes, we are all Jewish mothers.

 

Dr Felicity Newman is a member of the Centre for Everyday life at Murdoch University