The ingredient page

The Plans have been back; not just the minions this time but the Master Plan and an offsider.

I didn't have to wait long to find out what was in store for me this time.

It seems the general consensus among the Plans is that I need to tidy up the Ausfood days.  I listen without commenting but I am thinking plenty.  I am thinking I have completed a total of three days and already they are not happy. -   they have ideas and they have sent along the Big Gun and another of the Plans.

I cannot say in all truth that I was happy with their comments. The Master Plan was at his diplomatic best but the underlying message is to have one template set up for the Ausfood day post and to not publish something that looks like the dog's breakfast.  My words, not theirs.

I'll feel better about being having my faults pointed out when a bit more time passes.  Perhaps.

And as for the offsider - this quiet, unassuming Plan is the Ingredient Plan  who wants me to set up a page whose title will come as no surprise.  It is to be the Ingredient Page where I will verify all the ingredients in case any of you out there doubted my veracity.

I am to put this into practice forthwith and they will be back to check up next month. Just as they took their leave the Master Plan paused and turned.

"There is one more thing Ms Blog Administrator, when I come back next month I will bring along the Recipe Plan to have a chat with you."

"I'll certainly be looking forward to your return." I said through clenched teeth.

And now I will go straight to the pages and head up the ingredient page. I can tell you now it will be blank and it will stay that way until I regain my equanimity and can settle down to some serious thinking and planning.

Setting up an ingredient page is not as simple as it might sound.

Another team member accepts the invitation.

I've pounced on another potential team member and they have accepted the invitation to join the Great Ausfood Search.

That makes the grand total of two team members.

They will now each choose an appropriate Australian food as their nom-de-plume, find a fitting image and the next step will be putting together their respective 'kitchen cupboard' stories.

I hope the Team Plan approves of all this and won't be lurking in the vicinity of the backburner, waiting to give even more advice and suggestions and doling out the criticism.

I could use a break from all that stuff.

Ausfood : February Day Two

The bare bones plus a small bonus and few words to finish off the day.

Breakfast

Juice : Nudie 5 1/2 oranges

Muesli
Oat bran                                                                                   milk - Physical reduced fat
Bran cereal                                                                              yoghurt  -  Shaw’s Buffalo Milk
Rolled oats                                                   with                    blueberries
Sunflower seeds
Sultanas

followed by

Tea – Nerada plus milk – Physical
______________________________________________________________



Snacks – Peanuts in shell.

_________________________________________________________________

Main meal

Chicken
Lemon juice
Olive oil
Salad
Red onion
Mini Roma Tomatoes
Lettuce
Corn (off the cob)

Salad Dressing  - Olive oil  & lemon juice

followed by

 Nerada teabags  &  milk - Physical reduced fat

 Foot note.

My days are not as well structured as the days of many other people and thereby hangs the tale of what might appear to be a meagre food intake for a whole day; whether this meal format changes at all remains to be seen.

A word of caution here - don't hold your breath waiting for the meal format changes......

February Ausfood - Day One

The bare bones.......

Breakfast

Juice :
Nudie 5 1/2 oranges

Muesli:
Oat Bran                                                                                   Milk - Physical reduced fat

Rolled Oats                                                         with              Yoghurt - Shaw's Buffalo Milk

Sunflower seeds                                                                        Tasmanian honey
Sultanas                                                                                     Blueberries

followed by

Nerada tea & milk -  Physical reduced fat

_____________________________________________________________________________

Main Meal

Cold Chicken strips
Tomato
Cucumber
Lettuce
Red wine vinegar & olive oil

followed by

Nerada tea & Pura Light start milk

_________________________________________________________________________________


Other Meal

2 eggs - hard-boiled
Lettuce
Brown Onion
Red Wine vinegar & olive oil

followed by

Nerada tea & Pura Light start milk

 _________________________________________________________________________________

Last minute find

I doubt very much that finding a packet of Australian grown sunflower seeds in the supermarket would move too many people to a state of excitement.

So I can lay claim to being both surprised and delighted to find, after very careful searching for the umpteenth time, a packet of sunflower seeds with those all-important words Product of Australia printed on the packaging, in one of my local IGA supermarkets.

This will give a much needed boost to my breakfast cereal come the next Ausfood day, which is just around the corner.

As well as the sunflower seeds, sometime called kernels – and probably a more accurate description – I had another find in a Red Supermarket. I found Australian grown peanuts in their shells, packaged under the store label, and I promptly bought a packet.

These will serve me well as snacks throughout the day and although it may be seen as a time consuming and messy approach to snack food, the end result is 100% peanuts and no other ingredient to blur the issue.

Two new finds on one week. Good result eh?

Milk...................

Three ingredients make up my cup of tea.

Tea. Water. Milk.

I’ll get water out of the way immediately; as you might well guess, the water comes out of the tap and is supplied from nearby reservoirs. The word imported does not apply to any mention of the water in this blog.

Good. I’ve got that matter out of the way.

Now let’s move on to one of the other two ingredients. Milk.

Milk appears in supermarkets and other shops in many guises but today in the world of Ausfood the band is narrowed to the variety produced by cows; whole milk and reduced fat milk. The fat may be reduced slightly or it may be reduced altogether, though strictly speaking the words there should be removed altogether. Or fat free.






In the Green Supermarket, my first research area, I find four major brands of milk; Pura, Pauls, a2 and the store brand. Within those four brands there is a multiplicity of varieties – Tone No Fat, Light Start, Smarter White, Rev, and lactose free, just to name a few.





The list could go on but I am interested only in milk which is a product of Australia and to which nothing has been added. No vitamins, for example. Where do the vitamins come from? In drums or are they freeze dried and arrive as air cargo on freight planes from distant parts of the world?

 I am only interested in the ingredient milk, whose components may be milk and milk solids.

I find the Green Supermarket sets the standard for the other three supermarkets in my research area; the only changes being the brand names for the store brands, according to whichever supermarket I am researching. I do notice that an overwhelming amount of milk on the shelves in the Red Supermarket is the store brand. It is invariably cheaper and is the dominant presence on the shelves. In addition the Red Supermarket has Great Ocean Road milk, produced at Warrnambool; this brand is also cheaper than the regular brands.

At the IGA supermarkets the milk shelves follow the same general pattern as the duopoly but with the usual variations in the store affiliated milk products.

Happily, as might be expected, all milk bears the stamp Product of Australia.

..................... with your tea?

Researching the tea shelves was an exercise in learning that a tea may be produced in one country but it can be packed somewhere else entirely. And not all tea comes from China, though Mr Twining’s special selection teas seem to favour China.

There are quite a few varieties of black teas stocked on the shelves of my four local supermarkets, most of which would be recognised by any respectable tea drinker. In no particular order I found Bushells, Dilmah, Tetley, Lipton, Madura, Taylor’s of Harrogate and Billy Tea.

Tea-bags are most popular but for those die-hards tea drinkers who maintain loose leaf is best, most brands carry a loose leaf range. The tea may be a blend and it may be grown in India or Sri Lanka and it may be packed in Indonesia or the United Arab Emirates.

And an Australian grown black tea? Only one 100% Australian grown tea. Nerada. I  found this variety in January when I wrote this post and this current closer look at the shelves stocking tea in the supermarkets hasn’t revealed anything new. Those readers who might be interested in the history of Nerada Australian tea can find out more here.

Madura also grows tea here in Australia but it is packaged and sold as a blend of local and imported teas. Close, but no cigar.

As for Billy Tea and its Campfire Brew and the claim it has been traditionally Australian since 1885? Close examination of the label shows it is an imported tea with very clever labelling which might lead people to think it is an Australian tea. Not so.

Ah well, one Australian produced tea is better than none at all.

Another source of information

As I browse through the Epicure section of the Age this morning, while enjoying a coffee at my local coffee hang-out, I make two Ausfood discoveries.

I find two Victorian products which might well qualify for the Ausfood Challenge.

The first is Long Lane Capers, who are located near Mansfield in country Victoria. Capers are not high on the list of essential ingredients to be found in my kitchen cupboard but as time passes I may find them a useful addition. As spices produced in this country appear to be virtually non-existent, I may need to resort to capers now and then to add a bit of zing to a recipe.

I look at their web page and find a recipe for Caponata. I have never heard of this dish so I will be searching for more information. The caponata recipe looks to tick all the Ausfood boxes so I will file it away for future reference.

Next on the discovery list is Just Go Nuts, who have pistachios. They don’t appear to have a web page so I scroll through all the Google offerings to see what I can find. As well as pistachios and in-season avocados, they also have blood oranges. I will have to get along to a farmers market where they sell their wares and find out more. I also find their produce is available on-line through Farmers Direct – but that old problem rears its head – I can’t read the label before I buy the product.

I'm rather partial to pistachios and would be very happy to find a local supply.

And finally a more fanciful idea – that of a coffee farm. An at-home coffee farm, either in the back yard or on the deck, patio or balcony.   The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival is on soon and The Urban Coffee Farm and Brew Bar will have coffee trees for sale at $25 per tree. The idea is amusing and they would maybe make an interesting deck or patio plant but as for waiting for the first harvest. I wouldn’t be holding my breath.

I will, however, be looking at each week’s edition of Epicure to learn the latest on what produce is available and where it is available.

Kicking off the team invites

I’ve taken the plunge today and after a preliminary live chat have sent an email inviting my first team member to join the blog.

 I will ask people I know, who have expressed a definite interest in supporting Australian farmers; who are creative and who might be prepared to do some research and write one or two posts a month.

 I’m looking to gather up a handful of these people who will add another point of view to that of Yours Truly, missbr - the blog administrator - and who might venture into the land of cooking, recipes and food ideas using Australian produce.

They will choose an appropriately Australian blog-name and image, open their kitchen cupboard to the world, introduce themselves and talk about their chosen food /image and where they shop. After that they will be on their own; the choice of what they want to discuss/reveal/opine will be their choice.

This first prospective team member has had little experience with blogging so it will be interesting to see how this venture will unfold; contact will be by email and though I have received a reply accepting the invite  to the team (hurrah!!) I can see I might have my work cut out getting replies from this team member. 

I suspect my enthusiasm for the cause might outweigh that of other people......

Interview with a kitchen cupboard

Good afternoon Kitchen Cupboard. I understand you’re the In Search of Ausfood Team Leaders’ right hand man and I’d like to ask you a few questions. 

Before you go any further I’m the right hand kitchen cupboard not a right hand man. Any right thinking person could see I was a cupboard and not a man. If this is the best you can do for your opening gambit I dread to think what direction your next questions might take.

Sorry. I won’t make that mistake again. Now, how did you come to be chosen as the Kitchen Cupboard for this food blog?

If you open my door and have a look inside you’ll see why; both my shelves are crammed with tins, cartons and packets of food. Be careful when you open the door, things are likely to tumble out.

Yes, I see. Things are rather crowded in there and some of them look to have been around as long as you have. Are you the only food cupboard? 

No. The cupboard on my left is also a food cupboard. It doesn’t store as much food as I do though. It also provides storage for food related items such as glasses, bowls and storage containers. And as you can see that cupboard sits over the gas cook-top and that’s not a good place to store food. I’m by far the better cupboard for food.

What are your thoughts on supporting Australian Farmers?

I’m all for supporting Australian farmers. Australian farmers have kitchen cupboards too. And they like to be able to put food in their kitchen cupboards to feed themselves and their families. It’s up to the rest of us to do something about that. Being a kitchen cupboard I can’t actually go down to the supermarket and push a trolley along the aisle but I’m happy to wait here and welcome any Australian products to whatever space they can find on my shelves until they head off to hit the dinner plate.

How do you feel about joining the blog? 

Hah! I didn’t have any say in it. Around here you’re simply told what to do. Anyhow, I’ll go along with whatever it takes to help out when it comes to Australian farmers. I hear a bit about this blog but I don’t ever get to see it. The computer never comes into the kitchen; it spends all its time on the dining room table when it’s doing any work. Otherwise it just sits around in its case bludging.

I imagine you’re looking forward to new things coming your way in the next few months?

I am. I hear things sometimes from the Plans who gather now and then on the backburner. As you can see the backburner is quite near and I often hear them chattering away. Mostly they’re complaining about the Team Leader not doing enough or never turning up to talk to them. Some of them are rough types. I just listen. You learn a lot when you just listen. There’s a lot of talk about a challenge and a team. This team idea sound good to me, I’d like to hear from another kitchen cupboard out there.

So you might be a good source of inside information?

I might be. Why don’t you call by in another few weeks? No more of this right hand man business though; I ‘m a decent hardworking kitchen cupboard. Show some respect.

Sure. Thanks for your time. I’ll be in touch. 

OK. I’ll be here, I’m not going anywhere.

More confrontation

Self congratulation on evading another episode with the Plans came unstuck very quickly.

There I was sitting in a relaxed and carefree manner in the backburner chair when I heard an angry buzzing which grew louder and louder and closer.

They were back.

The Team Plan and another plan, one that I had not seen before.

The buzzing was coming from the Team Plan who was obviously in charge of today’s telling off.

“You think you’re very clever setting up the Challenge Plan don’t you? Think you’re pretty smart and now you think can sit around in that chair doing nothing?”

I was taken aback at this outburst and wasn’t really thinking anything at all. It didn’t matter because Team Plan was in full flight.

“Now listen to me. I’ve said this before and now I’m telling you for the last time. This is the plan for a team. You need other ideas and input. One person is only able to give one view. Yours. What makes you think you know everything? Too limiting that’s what it is. Get some other people on board. You’ve got a selection from the survey. You’re asking people you know. You must know whether they would be interested and what they can add to this blog.”

The words are tumbling out in a torrent and I wait for a small pause. I might be waiting a long time.

I interrupt the flow.

“Yes. Yes. I hear what you are saying. I can think of a couple of candidates right now. I’ll talk to them.”

Team Plan is staggered at my immediate response and actually stops ranting.

I seize the moment to ask what the other Plan wants.

The other Plan wants an Ingredient list.

An Ingredient list.

Please.  Spare me the details .

Facing up to the Challenge

I’m aiming to stay head of the game here and not allow myself to be subjected to another haranguing from the dreaded Plans.

Here is the outline for my Ausfood Challenge. I must stress the word outline – I don’t want to paint myself into any tight corner that I might wish to wriggle out of at a later date.

The idle thought which crossed my mind as I was setting up this blog went along these lines:
What would happen if one third of the adult population of this country elected to eat only Australian produced food for one third of each year?

Would this make any difference to Australian farmers regarding their income?

All very fanciful, you might be thinking as you read along here. However fanciful it might be, I decided I might put it to the test and see what was involved. Already at this early stage I am aware that it might not be that easy, there has to be a will to make this happen and where people cannot see an immediate outcome which benefits the person participating (think money here), there will be little or no interest.

I decided, quite rightly - after all, I’m the one making the rules here - that I should ease into this month by month through this year and then face the real challenge next year.

Now, for some boring but simple mathematical calculations.
One third of a year equates roughly with 120 days; this divides neatly, over a twelve month period, into ten days per month. These ten days will be random and as time passes I may find grouping the days into threes, twos or single days may work best.

I will apply the Australian only food rule to all ingredients used in the preparation of all meals, snacks and drinks consumed on the Ausfood days.  There will be no eating and drinking out at cafes etc. because it is impossible to verify the ingredients; eating at the tables of friends will be allowed if I am able to verify the ingredients. I foresee some problems here; close questioning about the verification of ingredients making up a dish and snooping through pantries and kitchen bins may not endear me to many people and may lead to invitations to make my own meals or to stay away until the following year.

It will now be abundantly clear why I have allowed myself such a long lead time; a certain amount of fine-tuning will be taking place throughout this remainder of this year.

I hope, when December 2013 rolls around, to be eating Ausfood for ten days each month and not eating my words.

Flabbergasted by Flummery

Flummery.

That fluffy white dessert of my boarding school days; comfort food and almost forgotten until I opened page 16 of Bloody Delicious! and read the recipe for pineapple flummery.

Perfectly suited to these hot days of summer and with simple ingredients, it should easily make the Ausfood list. It’s a long time since I have considered making flummery and this recipe uses the core and skin of a pineapple for flavour. What a good idea, extracting every bit of goodness from that part of the fruit that might otherwise be discarded.

I am inspired by this recipe and can’t wait to try it. I need a pineapple, sugar, water, lemon and plain flour - so far so good.

What else? Ah, gelatine. A trip to the supermarket this afternoon will find that ingredient which is missing from my kitchen cupboard.

Wrong!!

I am not able to find one gelatine product made in Australia in any of my local supermarkets.

There are two well known brands packed in Australia from imported ingredients, one familiar brand, Davis,  manufactured in New Zealand; three other brands are products of France and Germany, but nothing is made here in Australia.

 Not quite what I am looking for.

What happens to all the hides, bones, tissue and gut left after animals are slaughtered in this country?  I hope you weren't  too disturbed when you read the last sentence, but these are the facts ladies and gentleman.

I will look into this matter further.

Sea-lettuce in the kitchen

I am reading the first of the menus in Stephanie’s Menus for food lovers.

Steamed Oysters with sea-lettuce.

It’s not the word steamed oysters that stops me when turning the page; it’s the word sea-lettuce. Until I read this page I had no idea sea-lettuce existed, let alone the idea of cooking and serving it at the table.

I read on and I arrive at the key paragraph:

The next ingredient you must locate is sea-lettuce. This is a clear green seaweed, which grows in small clustered clumps. It is found in clean water by divers who collect sea-urchin, periwinkles and other shellfish. You can sometimes collect it yourself from rock pools. The name, sea-lettuce, describes it perfectly. It is lettuce-green and delicate in texture, quite unlike kelp or many other seaweeds. It is perfectly edible and has more of a texture than a pronounced flavour. It is crisp, with the fresh bracing aroma that will make you remember the smell of your favourite ocean beach in the winter. This entree was once described by an ecstatic customer as being like eating oysters at the bottom of the sea.

Now, while collecting this seaweed may not exactly be supporting Australian farmers, you cannot dispute the fact it is an Australian product; perhaps in the same category as salt, another product of the sea.There are alternatives; you can use dried seaweed (not likely to be Australian) or you can use normal lettuce leaves. Frankly, neither of these hold the same appeal for me as sea-lettuce.

I read on and find sea-lettuce is prepared and served by washing it carefully to remove all traces of sand. In this recipe the it will become the base on which the oysters rest while being steamed in a basket.

I consider the idea of oysters and the problems of opening them as instructed in the recipe and wonder whether it might be possible to use something else in the shellfish category.

However, to paraphrase Mrs Beeton, first collect your sea-lettuce.

Sea-lettuce on the seashore

I search on the Internet for any information I can find about sea-lettuce.

I need something to guide me as I wander along the shoreline by the rock pools looking for this ingredient for tonight's meal. I should make it quite clear at this point all this wandering is happening in my mind.

I am not impressed by the first few images I find, which are large amorphous green blobs; nothing helpful there.  At this site I learn some important facts; I need to be there at low tide and in the winter time when it grows more prolifically.  Winter time - not exactly the time I have in mind to be wandering along the shoreline.

I persevere with my my search and eventually find an image which is way better than all others to this point.

Now I have a better idea of what I might find as I walk along the winter shoreline rugged up against a southerly blast and trying to keep my footing on wet rocks.  It all sounds so much fun, I can hardly wait for winter.....

All those negative thoughts aside, I found this website informative and the post added considerably to my knowledge of ulva lactuca, which until today was less than zero.

Who knows, I may well be putting this on the menu next year? 

Breaking the book buying rules - again!!

I have a new addition to my cookbook stash – so much for all those lectures I have delivered to myself about not buying any more books!!.

Nordliving, a local shop full of wonderful Scandinavian goods, has changed hands and at the weekend, the previous owner had a ‘garage sale’ in the shop. There were many boxes of books and there was one that took my fancy; a recipe book.

An Australian recipe book, written by an Australian for Australians and therefore eminently suited to Ausfood blog purposes. It is Stephanie’s Menus for Food Lover’s, written by none other than the redoubtable Stephanie Alexander. A birthday gift, it is a copy of the 1986 edition, in pristine condition and with the birthday card still affixed to the inside cover. Sofia didn’t want to remove the card as it might have damaged the book, so now I share, by default, a micro-moment in the lives of two other people. I like this idea; it adds another dimension to the book.

You might be thinking a cookery book, with recipes for dinner menus for six, is a little ambitious for a food blog in the hands of a basic cook using basic ingredients. You might be right in your thinking. It’s fanciful on my part to think I would ever turn out any of the menus that appear in this book.

However it is not just about fine food; it is also about organisation in your kitchen– a page that seems to fall open every time I open the book – plus lots of good advice about making use of every part every single ingredient that might come through the kitchen door.

And then I read the very first menu; it fired up and fed my imagination, setting up a train of thought for another post.

The Survey Progresses

The survey moves along at a snail’s pace. I pounce on any unsuspecting friend or acquaintance I consider might be amenable to a short verbal questionnaire about Australian food. I haven’t had any refusals so far and everyone questioned has made it beyond the first two qualifying questions.

I have framed the survey around supermarket shopping, label reading and alternative sources for procuring Australian produce. The questions are straightforward and even with the score or so of people approached to this point , everyone has made some comment or given an opinion about their reasons for buying what they buy in the food line.

It’s been an interesting experience and I come away from most question and answer sessions with more food for thought about the buying habits of people and their attitude towards Australian produce. Not everybody is able to take advantage of farmers markets and other markets and not everybody has the time and the inclination to read labels.

Without exception, people questioned are in favour of supporting Australian farmers in theory, if not in practice. Label reading is time consuming and often price is a criterion when an item is picked off the shelf; farmer’s markets are a popular idea but are sometimes seen as not being conveniently close or they won’t have all the items that might be available in the fruit and vegetable section of the supermarkets.

In the following post I have set out the new, revised set of questions , if anyone is interested enough to want to participate by email, leave a comment and I will consider setting up a system

The Survey

Here is the format that my small survey takes:

I'd just like to ask you a few questions about shopping and Australian produced food if I may?

Q1:   Do you do the supermarket shopping?

Q2:   In store or on line?

Q3:   Are you in favour of supporting Australian farmers and the produce they grow?

Q4:   Do you read the labels on the food you buy in the supermarket?

Q5:   Are you reading them for
         (a)   country of product origin?
         (b)   sugar/fat content?
         (b)  other dietary considerations?

Q6:   What's most important at the supermarket for you?
         (a)   price?
         (b)   convenience?
         (c)   range of products available?

Q7:   Do you buy your food elsewhere. e.g. farmer's markets, big fresh produce markets or local butchers or         greengrocers?

Q8:   Do you ever consider food miles, energy consumed or water required to produce the food you eat?

Q9:    Would you consider that within a 24 hour time frame you would be able to make all your meals and snacks from Australian produced food?  (Remember this means no eating out - unless you know a cafe that serves only Australian food and drink; if there is such a place please tell me about it!!)

Thank you for taking the time to participate in my survey.
        

Ingredient Traceability

In my role as trainee label reader, every day brings something new to my attention in the wonderful world of label reading.

Today I am standing in the supermarket, very carefully reading the label on a jar of Dick Smith’s OzEnuts, turning it slowly in order to find the words Product of Australia.

When I find these words they are set inside a box entitled Dick Smith’s 5 Way Test. This is a ‘ticking the box’ box; it ticks highest quality. It ticks Australian grown, made and owned and it ticks Aussie made = lower food miles. The fifth tick is against jobs and profits stay in Australia; all of these ticks take important points into consideration regarding Australian food production, manufacturing and distribution.

However it is the second last item getting a tick that grabs my attention.

Ingredient traceability.

What exactly does this mean? Does it mean that all the ingredients listed on the label, and there are five of them, can be traced back to their origin? Or does it mean that only the major ingredient – the freshly roasted Australian peanuts – can be traced back to their origin?

I will investigate this further. I might have to pay a visit to the Dick Smith Foods website.

Back inside the muesli jar

I’ve returned to the muesli jar to take the lid off and investigate the final ingredients making up my breakfast muesli.

These ingredients are:

sunflower seeds

pepitas

dried apricots

chopped almonds

natural sultanas

The sunflower seeds and the pepitas are the major ingredients in the muesli after the cereals. Checking out the local supermarkets it came as no surprise to find that both these ingredients are imported and mostly from China.

The outcome of this finding might see the breakfast muesli go the way of the dodo during the Ausfood Challenge.

If I remove the rice cereal, pepitas and sunflower seeds I will be left with rolled oats, oat bran and bran cereal ; neither an inviting nor inspiring choice for starting off the day’s menu. I will have to extend my search and do it quickly before the two February Ausfood days roll around.

Dried apricots fall into the same too-hard basket as the sunflower seeds and pepitas. Dried apricots produced in this country seem to be a thing of the past. Turkish imports of dried apricots have been around for some time now but the death knell for Australian production seemed to occur at the time an Australian company, well known and with a long standing reputation for producing home-grown dried fruit was taken over by foreign ownership.

I am pleased to say Australian almonds and sultanas are readily available; read all about it in the following post.

Australian almonds always available

Australian almonds are always available.

However you need to take care when picking the packet off the shelf as things are not always as they seem.  There are almonds from other countries and it is possible to find as I did, that one particular brand night have, say almond meal, in one supermarket as an Australian product and in another supermarket as an Australian and imported product.

Australian almonds come in many different forms; some suited to snacking and others suited to the requirements of busy cooks.

Here's what I found in my search:

Natural almonds
Flaked almonds
Slivered Almonds
Blanched almonds
Natural sliced almonds
Almond meal

In my local quartet of supermarkets I found two main brands, together with the supermarkets' house brand.

My choice for my breakfast muesli will be natural almonds.

Australian sultanas are available but not in nearly the same quantity as almonds. They come in two types: Australian Grown and Australian Grown Natural. I'm intrigued by the labelling. Is there some unnatural way of growing sultanas?  In the local supermarket foursome, sultanas are pretty well limited to one brand and maybe a house brand.

They are also available at my local deli, which is where I usually buy them and where they are clearly labelled Australian sultanas.

The value of nutmeg

In history class today we learned nutmeg was once the most highly valued spice; more valuable than gold, as it says here. I followed this up by searching around for more history on nutmeg.

In the 15th Century nutmeg was much sought after and once the Portuguese nailed it for sailing around the Cape of Good Hope to the Spice Islands they had the market cornered. This form of transportation saw the end of the traditional overland spice routes.

The Portuguese achievement was short-lived as the Dutch and the British were keen to get in for their take. What followed was a difficult time for the unfortunate people of Banda, home to the nutmeg tree. The Dutch, in their pursuit of controlling the production of nutmeg in the East Indies, put down any local resistance, usually at great cost to the islands inhabitants.

During the 14th Century in England half a kilo of nutmeg cost the same as a cow or three sheep and the British were very keen to obtain nutmeg and share in the wealth. When the English tried to horn in on the spice trade in the East Indies the Dutch beheaded those merchantmen they caught trespassing on what the Dutch saw as their territory.

Nutmeg is never, ever going to be on the Ausfood list; so what has this to do with Ausfood? It’s a very tenuous link indeed but here it is. Time passed and more explorers and adventurers, some better navigators than others, sailed the Europe - East Indies route.

In the very early 17th century William Janszoon, in the Banda Islands at the time, was ordered to explore the coast of New Guinea. According to Wikipedia at this time Janszoon landed on what we now know as the Cape York Peninsula. Everything went well at first; the Keeweer people allowed them to land but were not interested in the food and tobacco the Dutch offered.

The Keeweer people preferred their own bush tucker. At that time the indigenous people were able to get all the food they needed from the land; nothing was imported and everything , as we now think of it, was Australian.

The original Ausfood.

They're back and they're not happy

I knew it was a big mistake to mention the word backburner in this post.

Only two of them are back. The two who may well turn out to be the bane of my life. That’s certainly the impression I got today when I sat down in the backburner chair and my thoughts turned towards the blog.

The Challenge Plan was in full cry today. If these Plans have beds, then the Challenge Plan got out of the proverbial wrong side today. The situation wasn’t helped by that little creep Team Plan hanging around throwing in unasked for suggestions, some of them downright rude. In fact the whole performance was something I ‘d prefer not to repeat.

The Challenge Plan was divided about to where to direct most of his wrath; at me for being so slack about setting up the required Challenge Plan or at the Team Plan for his constant inane interruptions. In a moment of towering rage Team plan was shoved into the background and was told in no uncertain fashion to shut up and keep out of things. This worked in a fashion, but not all that successfully; for the remainder of the time the Team Plan stood muttering in the background like a backing singer taking up a constant repetitive refrain.

Up to that point the discussion was a litany of totally unprintable words and as a result there will be no dialogue in this post today for fear your screen may melt down as you read. We did however come to an arrangement about the Challenge, mainly because the thought uppermost in my mind was peace at any price and more realistically because I do need to have some idea about how to tackle the serious business of actually eating Australian food in an organised manner and on an organised basis.

As you see here the format has already been suggested, I will now go away and work away at this idea. According to the Challenge Plan I have until the middle of February to get this organised or I will be hearing more.

Hearing more in today’s atmosphere is something I want to avoid at all costs.

The Condiments - Part One: Salt

Salt and pepper.  In everything.

Today I'm looking at one of the condiments.

Salt; found in mostly every kitchen cupboard and on the table at meal times. According to Wikipedia, salt has not always been used just as a condiment;  there are biblical references, it has played a part in creating and destroying empires, salt was taxed by the French over many centuries and in American history it was a major factor in the outcome of wars.

Closer to home, here in Victoria, the history of salt production began in 1888 when Richard Cheetham - a manufacturing chemist from the UK - began construction on a saltfield near Geelong; six years later the first salt was produced. The Cheetham Salt Co Pty Ltd was set up in 1903 and the company expansion included new works at Laverton and in South Australia. Ongoing business expansion and joint ventures, both here and in New Zealand continued until the latter half of 2012 when this article in Deal Journal Australia covered the sale of the Cheetham salt business to Hong Kong company CK Life Science International. This purchase was  driven by the increasing demand in Asian markets for soy sauce, of which salt is one of the major ingredients.

And so to the local supermarkets and a close look at salt available for home use. If you think salt is just salt, you will have to think again. Here is are some of the choices you will find:

                                       Table salt 
                                       Cooking salt
                                       Iodised table salt
                                       Iodised cooking salt
                                       Sea salt flakes
                                       Iodised sea salt flakes
                                       Iodised sea salt
                                       Natural rock salt.

Is your head spinning yet?

In my quartet of local of supermarkets I found five different suppliers; an Australian company which has both local and imported salt, the supermarkets with their own house brands and a salt which is packed in South Africa from local and  imported ingredients.The latter is the cheapest in its line.

And then there is SAXA. In the mid 1960s Salpak, a joint venture between Cerebos and Cheetham Salt saw the beginning of SAXA and Cerebos salt manufacturing in Australia. Many of the different types of salt listed above are on the shelf under the SAXA brand. Each SAXA package or container was clearly marked with the logo "from the seas of Australia" which makes it eligible for the Ausfood list.

My choice of salt for the Ausfood cupboard is Kooka, another Australian salt from the seas of Australia. As well, there are other more specialised types of Australian salt but here I am dealing with the common or sea shore variety found on almost all supermarket shelves and available to everyone.

 Now the salt shaker/grinder/cellar has been filled, we will move on the other half of the condiment pair, the pepper shaker/grinder/pot.

The Condiments - Part Two: Pepper

 Part two of the condiment story is short and to the point.

Basic black pepper comes to my local supermarket shelves courtesy a handful of companies and is available in ground, cracked, packaged peppercorns and peppercorns in their very own grinder.

All of them are imported.

It troubles me to think I might have to forgo pepper if I am to take up the Ausfood Challenge.  I will give this matter some serious thought and maybe run a few words through a search engine and see if I come up with a home-grown product.

I am not very hopeful about my prospects of finding Australian pepper of the black peppercorn variety.

Not happy, Jan.

The 400 series

Curious about the 400 series of numbers appearing on the Gundowring ice-cream label list of additives, I made further investigations.

And at this website I found the following:

412 Natural stabiliser

Guar gum Derived from the Seeds of Cyamoposis tetragonolobus of Indian origin; fed to cattle in the US; can cause nausea, flatulence and cramps, may reduced cholesterol levels. See 410.

415 Xanthin gum

Derived from the fermentation of corn sugar with a bacterium. Improves 'flow'.

410 Locust bean (Carob gum)

Derived from Carob or Locust bean tree Ceratonia siliqua. As a thickener, vegetable gum, artificial sweetener base, modifying agent or stabiliser, it is used in lollies, cordials, essences, some flour products, dressings, fruit juice drinks; frequently used as a caffeine-free chocolate substitute; may lower cholesterol levels.

407 Carrageenan 'Irish Moss'

Fibre extracted from seaweed, used as a setting agent. It has recently been linked with cancer because it may become contaminated when ethylene oxide is added to an inferior product, this results in ethylene chlorohydrins forming, a highly carcinogenic compound; linked to toxic hazards, including ulcers and cancer; the most serious concerns relate to degraded carrageenan, which is not a permitted additive; however, native carrageenan, which is used, may become degraded in the gut.

The above fall under the headings of Vegetable Gums, Emulsifiers and stabilisers. According to this source of information, emulsifiers help prevent separation of oil and water mixtures and stabilisers maintain the uniform dispersal of substances in food.

In other words, no nasty lumps in the finished product.

An ideal always aimed for in the home kitchen, where the rectification of problems are not achieved with the help of additives, but by falling back on tried and true methods of putting wrongs right in the bowl or saucepan as the cook prepares the dish or meal.