Adventures in Food

This article (Acrobat PDF opens if you click the title of this post) explores the problem that arises if we all reduce our food miles. The author argues that poor people who are trying to sell the produce we will no longer buy because its air-freighted, will pay a high price for our good intentions. A prominent environment and development consultant from Kenya has commented: "My congratulations to the author of the article! At least some one else is able to put in clear writing what I struggle to say in so many places. Simplistic solutions such as food miles will hurt the environment more and lull us into the false belief that we are part of the solution when are actually still part of the problem and making it worse." Here is one extract: "A number of studies analysing the total carbon footprint of agrarian products, particularly those sold in the UK, have conclusively shown that the full life-cycle climate change impact of food supply in industrialised countries canno...

Well not strictly fish, although you could say the whelks and the scallops come into it but they aren't really fish. (We havent yet succeeded in locating local fish, which is probably one the biggest changes in our diet as we used to subsist on mackerel - cheap and healthy though probably endangered or something. But I digress.) i said before that the price of food doesnt really impact on one;s budget but i did notice last time in Waitrose that we are paying more than double the price for milk from Prince Charle's estate than it costs for some equally beautifully packaged and unhomogenised milk with lots of cream on top that comes from just outside our range. The cheaper milk also comes in bigger cartons so it produces slightly less waste. Even though this is a matter of 40 pence, I think it indicates how there can be quite dramatic differences in food prices for very similar items. I suppose people are paying the extra for the status symbol of having Duchy milk. There we are b...

We are now nearly three months in to the experiment and there is still an open question over whether to continue and in what form. I would like to reflect on the experience so far. I have noticed recently that the novelty and initial excitement has worn off and at times it has become a real drag. Its not a matter of craving things, which passed quite quickly and the new eating habits have been easy for me to adapt to and beneficial eg. herbal tea and low sugar. However it is the amount of work involved that makes it difficult. For example, we have to go to a market every saturday and they all shut at one or two, thank god Richmond Farmer's market is open till three or we would have starved a few times. Some saturdays you really dont feel like going to the market so it makes saturdays into more of a workday because there is a routine and a deadline. Also actually shopping is hard because it is all scattered. You go to Waitrose for milk and flour and oil; the market for some greens a...

I just read this about food miles campaigns hurting African suppliers . The truth is there is no way to determine all the consequences of all that we do, I don';t mean we shouldnt think about it but perhaps it works best if we just do what we feel like. The thing about eating is that no matter what way you cut it, we are taking something. Something has to die, usually, except in the case of salt which isn't really food. And although plants arent said to feel pain they are still dying for our plates. And also the space they take up is space that could be used by some wild creatures instead but we use the space for our own purposes. The point is, by existing, we are bound to deplete other being's resources. We kind of just have to have faith that there is a general balance maintained, and I suppose you can also try not to be really deliberately selfish and greedy. But beyond that, I really dont think that you can base your actions on whether someone or something else might lo...

This has been a very productive week, in which we made our first butter (from the cream off the top of the milk - amazing how little cream you need to get enough butter for pancake making - thanks to Suzanne for your helpful demonstration of how to vigorously beat the cream until it turns to butter), I got to use the wooden butter pat makers I bought in Stroud four years ago when I had romantic notions about my domestic destiny (now being fulfilled!!)... Rob made bread for the first time ever, and luckily he called to check that yes, it is better to remove the cling film from the risen bread before baking it, so the results were amazing ( I can honestly say its the best bread I've ever eaten, at least that I can remember eating, I don't even normally like bread) and I got to eat home made bread with home made butter and home made blackberry jam for the first time ever, eating bread at all was wonderful treat after weeks of pancakes , porridge and potato I also found English win...

O.k, so there are a few of you out there with slightly more discerning tastes than mine - sensitive souls who can indeed differentiate the subtle flavours of water into categories of good and bad, hard and soft, wet and not-so-wet and so on. I am willing to be educated on this subject by anyone patient enough to teach me. After all, this is a diet of discovery and I am humble enough to suppose the possibility of enlightenment. But the more important point I was attempting to make, though it was seemingly lost in all my spitting, is that, although it is fine to have these pleasantly packaged foreign brands on our shelves, Perrier in particular seems to have become a national institution, a mainstream favourite, and that emphasises beautifully mine and Sarah's argument that people in this country are not emoting with what is being grown and produced in their own corners of the world. Clear, crisp, unadulterated mineral water cascades over the rocks of each and every range of hills in...

Water, water, everywhere, and it's all a lot of poncey crap from Italy and France, beautifully packaged and carefully marketed, that wends its way into the receptacles of Londoners who use it as prop to help them make believe their city is chic like Paris when it is nothing of the sort, it is just the grubby old capital of a country that obtains its water from across the sea. The point I am trying to make, through this un-dignified rant, is that water is indeed everywhere and it all tastes the bloody same. Perrier, for instance, though I could have easily picked out Badoit, Barisart or Pellegrino, arrives on the shelves of our abundant supermarkets in sexy looking, stylish bottles that are pleasing to the human eye. There is little wrong with this, beauty has its place. The home should be filled with gorgeous things. But it's the human tongue that counts here and mine says the only dissimilar thing its buds can gauge between the continental waters and our very own mountain spri...

Another restaurant adventure yesterday (excuse: business lunch) drew out some very interesting conversation but sadly, once again, no local ingredients. This time it was the local pizza restaurant where they didnt really know anything about the ingredients. And this time the waitress definitely wasn't shy, and definitely seemed offended by the enquiry into the origin of the food being served. "What's on the menu, that's what we sell, eat that - like it or lump it" was the gist of the response. Once I had explained that I would eat the food, I just wanted to see if anything came from England, I was told it was 'all imported from Italy'. Admittedly she apologised gently after she realised i wasnt being fussy about my food or about the restaurant. The conversation turned out to be much more enjoyable and fertile than the communications with the waitress. Bob let us know that the Economist had analysed the green-ness of farmer's markets and concluded that ...

Well the day has finally come to begin the diet and we are not as prepared as it would be nice to be. eg we have a random assortment of allowable items in the house and we haven't decided all the rules yet. But we are making a start, and even if its a bit shaky its already proving interesting. It started with a new years day trip to a chinese restaurant in Richmond with a friend who was staying. We quickly had to come up with the first rule, which is for eating out: ************************************************************************* Rule One - Eating Out We aren't foregoing eating out altogether because it is an important social activity. We will avoid it where it wont affect social relations, and we will use it as an opportunity for finding out about food and raising discussion with co-eaters. The rule is we have to ask where the ingredients come from and choose the most local item available on the menu. *******************************************************************...

Found Vinegar! http://www.parkfruitfarm.co.uk Lets Pickle!

Quince Cheese I made quince cheese earlier in the year. It is now maturing in the cupboard. It may not be allowed on the diet as I made it using sugar collected in cafes and not sourced locally. But by next autumn I hope we will have a sugar supply, so I will want to come back for the recipe. Here is a recipe for Quince Cheese Quince cheese is nicest if you leave for about three months in the cellar before eating. So it will be ready in time for Christmas. I think Waitrose have a good recipe and there are several in our old recipe books too.

A Question of Spice A recent email conversation with Tristram raised some interesting points about spices: From: Tristram Stuart Sent: 24 October 2006 14:55 To: Sarah Dixon Dear Sarah, Hooray for 100 mile diets! That sounds really interesting. I sometimes wonder if one could make a fair case in favour of importing high value, low volume items such as spices. I haven’t looked at the figures for wealth generation at point of origin, or tried to balance them against emissions from the international trade; but at least I think there’s a stronger case for buying those things than say, imported low value high volume items such as courgettes or rice. I guess crops such as coffee/tea/chocolate would probably be borderline on this scale. Pickles; very nice. I’m always a bit torn when I use sugar (and gas) in huge quantities as a preserving agent (as I did last night for quince cheese); chutneys and pickles using vinegar is probably more eco-friendly; and best of all is bottling which doesn’t n...

Konstam's Restaurant This is about the London restaurant that aims to source all its food from within the M25. Very mixed reviews on the london reviews website. We are planning to start the diet officially with a meal there.

And while exploring the British Sugar site I found this little-known fact : British Sugar is the UK's largest grower of classic round salad tomatoes. The glasshouse at Cornerways Nursery covers an area of 5 hectares and produces over 34 million tomatoes each year between April and November. Apparently 83% of UK tomatoes are imported. Is that sustainable?

I just got these great links from Dad: In an idle moment this evening I found British Sugar's website - Bury St Edmunds seems to be the nearest location for your sugar - I found this on the web: http://www.britishsugar.co.uk /RVE4056ad1977cd45c98eac02fd79 2bdf35,,.aspx And you can get salt from Essex - http://www.maldonsalt.co.uk /contactus/ Isn't google great! Thanks Dad x s

Ever since I agreed to do this 100-mile diet, people I know have wanted to discuss it. Many want to challenge the environmental or social/ethical credentials of it - assuming we are doing it for those reasons in the first place - or they want to tell us where to get fresh fish, or salt. So if you have something to say about it - please put it here! Use the 'comments' link. That way you can see if your question has already been answered, argue with someone about the niceties of importing spices from poor countries, or share a link so that anyone who wants to get English salt can do so easily. x s