Why local is the answer

I have a slight crush on Patrick Holden, former Director of the Soil Association. I saw him speak a few years ago and whenever I read anything he's written or watch a video of him I find myself nodding along with him.

I like that he presents the issues around food security but doesn't have all the answers and humbly recognises that it is a work in progress.

She's So Lucky

I know I'm lucky. I live in a big city in a wonderful area with bakeries, delis, butchers, fishmongers, a coffee roaster, boutique wine. On Saturdays one of the best markets in all of London opens its arms at the top of my street. On Sundays a small but solid farmers market appears. There is a famous flower market around the corner.

If I can't find something in my neighborhood I have only to head out into this giant city and if I look hard enough I will find it. London has everything, if you know where to look. London also keeps secrets, which makes the looking a bit more adventurous sometimes.

At the end of the day, I am SO lucky to be able to eat the food I do. To have the variety and choice, not just in terms of product, but producer and quality and ethos. There are few places on the planet that have what I have. I'm not writing this to sound haughty, I'm just writing this so that I know that I have explained to my two readers that I am aware of the privileged circumstances under which I write.

Some Light Reading

A few articles and bits that have caught my attention of late and that I think are worth passing on...

• My Beef isn't with Beef On why being a vegetarian won't fix the meat problem
• Cooking with Dexter: Chicken Nugget Blues I love this column but this one in particular made me laugh - especially the three year old exclaiming “Yucky food from a factory!”
• Poverty Matters: How can we feed the world and still save the planet? Interesting look at role of investment and market failure. We really need a much better understanding of this. By we I mean all of us. Not just the people playing with the markets. 

Slavery in Food Production

Knowing how our running shoes are made doesn't seem to stop us wearing them, so I doubt whether this article will make us stop eating fish. I'm not sure what to write about this. It's bad. Good food isn't just about it being delicious, or healthy. Or sustainably. How can it be any of chose things when the people bringing it to your table are so horribly treated?

Food Waste

I just re-stumbled on this link about food waste from last year. You should look at it. And then get angry.

High Fructose Corn Syrup - Still Evil

Just as mainstream people are starting to recognise that high fructose corn syrup is in virtually everything (rice crispies!) and that it's not good for you (causes cancer in rats!) the powers that make it want to change the name. The producers feel that high fructose corn syrup is too difficult for consumer brains and want to change the name to the simpler (and less evil sounding) corn sugar.

Article here. Evil all around. It tastes funny too.

Food Riots

Do you remember the food riots from 2008 when food prices soared around the world? You may. Chances are if you're reading this they didn't affect you.

There's an excellent article on the recent riots in Mozambique over cost of living increases, not just food, that should make people start to pay attention. In most developed countries we spend a shockingly small amount of our income on food (for all sorts of reasons) but if you are poor, you are more likely to spend a disproportionate amount of your income on food. And if prices go up dramatically - what do you do?

On Meat

I'm a flexatarian with four kilos of pig in my fridge. (See the photo of one I prepared earlier - that one was even bigger!)

(As much as I hate cutesy terms and non descriptors I can identify with flexatarian. I'm not a vegetarian. I enjoy meat and I want to continue eating it. I'm not a pescatarian, a term which annoys me. So someone who doesn't eat very much meat and who regularly chooses veggie over meaty- yeah, I can work with that. )

Focus - FOUR kilos of pig. A pig shoulder which is currently nestled in the fridge with a rub (rosemary, fennel, garlic, chili, preserved lemon) waiting for the morning when I will pop it into the oven for six or so hours.

How does a flexitarian justify four kilos of pig? Isn't a flexi just a lazy, or uncommitted, vegetarian? Isn't FOUR kilos rather excessive?

Let me climb on my soap box and tell you want I think about meat...

I like bacon. I think there are few homier meals than a roast chicken. Steak makes me salivate. Food is a celebration and for us Anglo Saxons a big chunk of meat is traditionally the centerpiece. Food equals love. So I can't imagine becoming a full vegetarian and giving up these bits of comfort and love and tradition. But learning about meat, all about it, from health issues to ethical to environmental to consumer issues, makes it very difficult for me to eat it the way I used to and the way I cook and the way I eat has shifted substantially in the last few years.

We eat much less meat than we used to. It features as the centerpiece of our meals maybe once a week and gets used as flavour and side bits two or three (two rashers of bacon in pasta, a sausage in soup). The meat that we do eat comes from either the butcher in Broadway Market or the Ginger Pig and is brought up and butchered in a way that I feel good about. I feel good knowing that the meat that I buy satisfies every tickbox I have against the long list of "Meat is Bad".

I recognise that it is expensive. I recognise that I'm really lucky that I have these options. But it is a choice and a commitment that I am happy to make. (And since this is my blog it is my soap box and I can sing the praises of happy meat to my hearts content.)

As for the FOUR kilos of pig in the fridge. It's a lesser known cut, so less expensive, will be succulent and last us for many many meals- or at least one great meal with friends.

Join me on my soap box next time for "Why the tuna in your sandwich is like eating elephant".

Fake Chocolate

The powers that be are conspiring against you. Can you feel it? Some unnerving, evil sensation that creeps up your spine. You try to ignore it, but it won't leave you? I know what it is...

Industrial confectioners- the people who bring you the chocolate bars you grab on a break or pick as a treat while you're grocery shopping - are petitioning the FDA to allow them to use LESS COCOA BUTTER in their products- and still call them chocolate.

Log on to the NY Times to read the article.

There is alredy an enormous difference between corner store chocolate, the stuff that gets marketed as 'premium' (think Godiva- it's not as good as they want you to think it is!) and real artsinal, happy chocolate.

Do yourself a favour- go buy some really good chocolate, savour it. Then go buy a regular bar... Not as good, is it? Now, imagine if it were worse.

I can't stand the thought...