Setting the rules

When you undertake a task and you are the person in charge of, as well as the person as undertaking the task, it is always easy to set the rules. You set them to suit yourself and who is going to notice anyway if you don’t toe the line.

The business of toeing the line is one of the reasons I decided to set up the In Search of Ausfood blog. There is only a very, very slim chance that anyone will take me to task as that requires readers and as readers, at this point, are virtually non-existent this is something I’m not unduly concerned about right now.

Right now my main concern is the decision around the guidelines I will follow next year when the really serious business of eating Australian gets underway. To this end I've made the following decision; stringent measures will be set in place.

It will be 100% Australian or nothing.

There I've put it out there for everyone to see.

Already I hold the opinion that by the end of this year I will be well and truly fed up with looking at the trickier items that are marked product of Australia but may have, for example, palm oil in the ingredient list. Australian palm oil producers? Where?

Anything I eat will have to be clearly defined on the label whether it is a grocery shelf line or meat or vegetables and fruit. If there is no signage in the shop (or on the website) then I don’t buy the product. The statement often made to me about “all our meat or all our fruit and vegetables are Australian” when there is no clear evidence, won’t wash for me in 2014.

It should make for easier shopping if I have a list of stores where I can rely on Australian labelled food products. And as for the limitations imposed by my guidelines, I shall just have to live with them. It may mean repetition or it may mean I will have to be more creative in my approach to recipes and menus.

As far as I am concerned all of the above can only be a good thing.

Random thoughts

It seems clear to me, even at this early stage in the search, there will be some items of food which will be crossed off the Ausfood list, as they are not likely to be produced in this country.

Curry, cranberry and chocolate for starters.

Chocolate is a disappointment.  I am quite partial to the taste of chocolate, whether it is in cakes, desserts or in the block. There are a few variations on the theme when it comes to chocolate and I will look at these as a separate issue in a later post.

Curry relies on imported spices, so spicing up dishes looks to be out of the question on Ausfood days.

Cranberries are not grown in Australia in commercial quantities and cranberry products in Australia are usually imported from the North American continent. These are the top 5 cranberry producing countries in the world according to this website – as you can see, no countries south of the equator make it into the top five.

There are however a few candidates for Ausfood days which seem to occur with monotonous regularity as I leaf through recipe books and my loose leaf piling system.

They are chicken and lemon and usually in combination. This time of the year salads are a favourite and as a fresh food product, the only limitation on salad is availability and creativity.

And let’s not overlook eggs in their many variations; all good, especially on the breakfast menu.

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.

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?

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.

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.