A Month Ago: celebrating Australia Day with a Fair Feed Breakfast

Thinking back of a lovely day in the park with a true South Aussie barbie brekkie...

Every year on 26 January Australian friends and family get together to celebrate being Australian, living their good lives in the land Down Under, and 'celebrate what's great about Australia'.*  It is a day to get together in parks and on beaches, to organise pick-nicks and barbies, or to attend one of the many events that are being organised in local communities. The Drover and I attended such a local community event, organised by Slow Food Adelaide & Barossa, where we did not only celebrate what is good about Australia, but also what is good about eating local food.

The Adelaide Central Market - a South Australian food hub

In the middle of the Central Business District (CBD) of Adelaide there is an amazing place to visit. It is surrounded by China Town and restaurants serving food from all corners of the world. It is THE place to be for the best fruit of the season, the freshest fish and meat, the greatest range of veggies, the most delicious cheeses, freshly baked breads and cakes and every other special ingredient that you could possibly need for your dinner party or daily home-cooked meal. I am talking about the Adelaide Central Market, a 'South Australian icon with 140 years of experience and more than 80 stalls under one roof' (Adelaide Central Market).

The Drover told me about this great market when he was with me in the Netherlands, shortly after we met in the autumn of 2010. He had just been traveling through Europe for quite a few months and was almost ready to go back home to Australia. One of the things that he was looking forward to back home, was the possibility to go and do his shopping at the Central Market again where he would be able to find all the best quality food products in one place. Having heard many good stories about this covered market, I went to check it out soon after I arrived in Adelaide last year...

In season: peperoncino

A view thoughts on eating products from the right season and some recipes to preserve peperoncino...

Lately when I visit markets in the area, or when I enter a supermarket, I find big bunches of various types of peperoncino everywhere. Finally! During the last months we always had to use dried chillies when cooking, while the fresh ones were not in season yet and therefore not available. Actually I guess this is a good thing about Italy. Even in the bigger supermarkets there still seem to be seasons, something we completely lost in the average Dutch supermarket. Whenever you feel like eating strawberries, lettuce or green beans, you can find them, while this is actually summer produce. When it is not possible to get the products from the Dutch soil, you will just find products imported from all different places in the world, causing an enormous ecological footprint. Or products come out of one of the many greenhouses we have at home, which has quite an ecological impact as well. In Italy this seems to be a bit different, although I would not be surprised if this is also changing slowly.

Of course it is a very difficult debate to decide what choices are best to make when it comes to buying food. We are maybe a bit spoiled these days, that it is possible to make seasons 'disappear' by importing products in the 'wrong' season from different countries. You could argue that this might also be a good thing when you look at the social factors, because by importing green beans from African countries in the Dutch winter you support the local economy in those countries. But if you would purely look at environmental factors, what would be the best choice to make? Eating locally, eating organic, either local or from far, eating food from greenhouses or from the direct soil? I find it all quite difficult and although I have a great interest in this topics for a few years already, it remains a complex field of study.