Going Green in Australia

A lovely warm cup of organic green tea, with Australian native ingredient lemon myrtle, keeps me warm tonight. I sit outside in the garden with a refreshing bit of wind cooling down the air that has been hot and steamy today. It actually still is about 18 degrees, but after the 30 degrees earlier today it feels cool... refreshing... very pleasant!

I has been a long time since I actually sat down behind my laptop to write down some thoughts about life in Australia or new discoveries about food and eco-gastronomy in the big land Down Under. This is not to say that food and sustainability is no longer part of my life. Quite the opposite really! Every day the Drover and I try to make the best choices in our food consumption and especially the Drover dedicates quite a few hours of the week to our beautiful organic veggie garden. Spring is in full swing and potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini, green beans, and much much more is growing like crazy.

I can't wait for the day that I can eat the first fresh tomato out of our own garden, combined with some Australian made buffalo mozzarella and basil leaves from our veggie patch, for a delicious insalata caprese. I get very excited every day I see the potato plants grow and think back of the first time I grew potatoes in my Mum's garden and the satisfaction I felt when I harvested the first lot of piepers... There certainly is nothing more satisfying than growing your own food and while cooking just walking into the garden for some fresh salad leaves, herbs, lovely veg and maybe even an apricot or two!

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...

Latte Crudo - part 1

"Muhuu" was the sound that we heard when the milk was being poured in the glass bottle, "muhuu". But this milk was not warm like it would be when you milk a cow. No, this milk was ice and ice cold. It does make you feel a little bit closer to the cow and the source of that fresh milk, when you get you latte crudo (raw milk) from a vending machine in the middle of a little town and it even says "muhuu' to you.

Raw milk from a vending machine, you will think? Yes, in Italy this is possible. They might not like it up there in Brussels, but in Italy you can find 1445 raw milk vending machines in 92 different provinces. Seventy of these machines only have organic raw milk for sale. All of them contain milk that is coming from local farms, so the milk does not have to be transported over long distances and therefore is better for the environment. Buying your milk from a vending machine has more environmental advantages though, since the milk is not being bottled and you can just buy one glass (or plastic) bottle once, and keep on using it. And of course, you support your local farmer by buying milk this way, while there are no middlemen involved; the milk goes directly from the farmer to the consumer and the farmer gets the full price.

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.

Food and culture. Food and identity. Food and sustainability. Food and love.

In the spring of 2011 I moved from my hometown Gouda in the Netherlands to a beautiful hilltop town in the Langhe area of Piemonte, Northern Italy. Surrounded by vineyards and hazelnut orchards I was going to study Food Culture and Communications and I would become an expert in eco-gastronomy. Unfortunately things did not turn out to be what I had expected, and for various reasons I decided to stop my study programme. Making this decision was not easy, but luckily I was not alone in my hilltop town. The Drover, my boyfriend, private chef, baker and limoncello maker, came all the way from Australia to experience the Italian food adventure with me. He showed me that studying and learning is not something that you can only do in schools and universities: self-education could be the most interesting path to follow.

“How do you know all this?” is a question I have asked the Drover very often, when he was telling me another story or when he was sharing another bit of his knowledge with me.