The History of Food

I gave up on The Omnivore's Dilemma part way through the foraging section. The earlier stuff was brilliant though. Some of the aspects of the book I will remember for a long time I think. I found his analysis of a problem with our food intake being not which animal we eat, but what that animal has itself been eating (i.e. corn, or what it has evolved to eat), compelling. I'm grateful we have access to the occasional truly free range rooster to kill and eat from my friend Raelene. Hunting is a popular pastime on the West Coast and I've also put the word out among friends that I'd be interested in buying any game they catch and don't wish to eat themselves.

The food thinking I've been doing since reading The Omnivore's Dilemma prompted me to get The History of Food out of the library again. I'd had this book out before but not read much. The History of Food is by Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat and I read the version translated into English by Anthea Bell. It was first published in 1987. It's scope is huge and I am only dipping into chapters or parts thereof at the moment.

There is a section on the symbolism of bread and cakes. There are comments on the links to The Lord's Prayer, to the phrase 'earning our bread', and to the Eucharistic host. I have learned that the place-name 'Bethlehem' means 'house of bread'. And lots more. I recommend this book. The word 'companion' literally means to share bread together. Latin com = together and panis = bread.

Then the significance of rituals, or stories, of traditions and of their meaningful links to the seasons, brings me to Easter. Shouldn't we be having a harvest festival instead in the southern hemisphere? As a child, I used to think that Easter was about ushering in winter, with the sadness and Lenten fasting. Now I see that as a northern hemisphere festival with history more ancient than Christianity, Easter is really about sayting goodbye to winter with the resurrection of Jesus. My daughter Brighid, born late January, might, I thought, have arrived early February during the festival of Imbolc. I only learnt about Imbolc, a festival which welcomes Spring, when we were researching names for our second child. I hope we will have a festival to welcome Spring in our community later this year.

Evetually, despite it no longer being Summer, I noticed that the garden is dry and watered it today. I also killed many caterpillars.

craft action

Did you hear that? Craft action. Sandra. As I write I am in the middle of dyeing a shirt of Favourite Handyman's and a dress of Brighid's. The shirt was pocketless which was mmost inconvenient apparently so the shirt wasn't being worn. So the lovely ladies at our local Bernina shop found some white material and sewed a pocket on and the dye will hopefully make it all the same colour. Brighid's dress is a lovely hand me down from my sister-in-law which was a faded pink and this dye should give it some brightness (albeit either blue or lilac). I got the dye from the GreenBeans. I've had the pleasure of getting to know the lovely and very funny Sarah of Green Beans online but until now I've had no call to buy from her shop. I thought her shop was just for properly clever crafty girls like Nova and Sharon.

As today is both Saturday and raining, I've spent it mostly mucking around making things and marvelling at how I can make things amidst so much mess. I can. I have a lot of practice behind me. I made hummus, which I make 1-2 times each week. Tastier and probably more healthy than peanut butter for sandwiches. I put lots of parsley in it to sneak some more green leaved goodness into each of us here in Messy House, Smalltown. Plus I've made two batches of pasta sauce with the 10kg of tomatoes I bought at our local tomato growers yesterday. Put some of our own garlic, zucchini, celery and herbs in as well. Used bought onions for the first lot but not for the second as I forgot due to yacking to a friend who turned up at the same time. Tastes good nevertheless. I haven't bagged the second batch but the first one yielded four meals' worth for the freezer.

And the other exciting (to me) development is that my sourdough starter is foaming. If I owned a drum I would have done a drumroll when I found the foam. After a day or so on the bench top, I decided to put it in the hot water cupboard. Although we have one of those hot water cylinder blankets, it doesn't fit the whole way round and so the cupboard is still warmer than elsewhere in the house. That did the trick. I want to do the next step tonight but I can't try it yet as my multi-tasking quota is full at the moment. When I've finished dyeing and blogging and also have bagged up the second batch of pasta sauce.

And before I forget, I also drove out to our local dump/tip/refuse station and asked if I could have an old gas bottle to make a letterbox with. Yes I could. Favourite Handyman will do the turning into a letterbox part, but I was pleased with my contribution of sourcing the materials. It's currently bright pink.

That Omnivore's Dilemma book is seriously good. I want to rant about lettuces at length some time but for now I'll just say grow your own. He has got me thinking about so many things. Still rolling in that phrase "food drenched in fossil fuel".

library day.

Today was library day and bokashi day. I'm focused on librariness at the moment. I got two books on making garden buildings like chicken houses and greenhouses. They are for Favourite Handyman though I am interested in giving some guidance on which structures I want most. For inspiration, look no further than the beauty which Tania's husband has built.

I also got the Murupara (no.89) issue of New Zealand Geographic. Cos it's often interesting and yet also costs $15.00.

I decided to have a (reading about) art day simply because it is a long time since I have done and the art shelves looked good. Very quickly I spotted a book on an artist whose work I have liked for squillions of my minutes on this earth: Gretchen Albrecht. So I shall have something more to think about than the aesthetic pleasure I experience when looking at her paintings once I've read the book. It's called Illuminations.

Then I found a book called Thrift to Fantasy: Home Textile Crafts of the 1930s - 1950s. (The link is to a review from The Listener 2005 archives.) It is by Rosemary McLeod, a person who has written many nasty pieces of journalism in her time in my opinion. I have less knowledge of her more recent journalism because years ago I decided not to read her columns any more. Apparently this book has nothing to do with her loathing of the welfare system and I'm looking forward to reading it.

All this will be after I've finished The Omnivore's Dilemma. OD just gets better as I read further. I'm persuaded more powerfully than before of the merits of valuing local food over organic food. The phrase "drenched in fossil fuel" is one which will likely stay with me a while. Michael Pollan has a blog which I've found interesting.

While on the topic, the arguments about carbon zero and food miles which I observe bandied about in relation to NZ exporting food to the UK are ridiculous in my view. It doesn't matter to me if NZ food growing techniques use less fossil fuel than UK practices with the same product, sensible food chains don't involve importing food you can grow locally. End of story to me, even if the economic ramifications for NZ are unpleasant.

The Omnivore's Dilemma

I am finding Michael Pollan's booking riveting. What can't America do to corn? I'm only a third of the way through but I've learnt a lot. I really appreciate our NZ beef now. Raised on grass as they are most suited to. In recent months I've stopped in the cereal aisle multiple times and not bought anything (beyond porridge oats which I try to get at the organic food coop in the next town) cos the ingredients list is so unpalatable. Pollan's book has reinforced my thoughts and reaction on commercial cereals 200%. I used to make my own muesli but the last three times I've burnt it. Can't try that again soon cos BREAD is my new challenge.

Omnivore's Dilemma

Here is a book I'm coveting and below is the beautiful cover. I'm putting it on a list for library interloaning (small town = small library) together with The Long Emergency and Barbara Kingsolver's latest book.


The website link has a pdf of the intro and first chapter which I read in the Guardian Weekly earlier this year. Other ethical foodie writers who I respect a lot are Joanna Blythman and Felicity Lawrence.



So how is my own omnivore's dilemma playing out? Patchily, I'll fess from the start. When life sucks, I sometimes head to KFC which is evil on every front according to my usual criteria. Globalised, poor wages, hormone/bad diet/bad treatment - fed chicken, unnecessary packaging, fatty etc.



But actually life doesn't suck for me every day and I do think carefully about what gets purchased and eaten in our house. Which starts with not getting everything from the supermarket. I'm still working on getting some more wild meat into our diet. Hunting is a popular sport in our small town and as far as I can work out, reducing the population of wild deer and wild pigs in our forests is good for the native flora and fauna. Neither Favourite Handyman nor myself are keen on getting out there gunning but we know it is a matter of time before we meet keen hunters who can't be bothered eating their catch. One of my savvy aunties also gave me a good tip: to go along to pig hunting competitions (the final prizegiving bit) with some cash in my pocket.



Favourite Handyman has killed a chook though. Here is the story as it happened just before I started blogging.

The rooster arrived in a cat cage on our doorstep (how low carbon footprint is that - Raeleen dropped him off on her way to the kids' hockey game!) at 10am and by midday he was dead, plucked, gutted and hanging in the shed until this morning, when I stuffed him with thyme, rosemary, garlic and lemon and put him in the slow cooker for the day. Dinner tonight tasted
superb. Really really good.


Favourite Handyman used a machete. He found it difficult to bring the knife down and I thought he would never do it again. Then we hung him from the tree to bleed for 30 minutes and then plucked him together. I got the gutting job which I didn't enjoy. I think there is a knack which will make it much easier when/if I acquire it. Kent is up for doing it again and I think next year's outdoor project will be a henhouse to raise birds for eating. I like the idea that when we are about to go on holiday, we can kill and eat the birds and then not get any again for a while. I've been getting into permaculture gardening ideas in a big way which is an incentive to get chooks.


We've had vegetarian phases here and this process of killing and eating an animal ourselves has been an interesting one. It makes me face what I am eating in a way that buying a plastic wrapped piece of meat at the supermarket does not. There is a fishing family at Fionn's kindy and I've started buying fish from them and now with this chicken idea together with the two sources I have for organic beef and lamb in our region, it looks like we can confine our meat eating to local produce.


Our biggest move away from supermarket dependency has been growing our own veg, but I'm not talking about that much atm as it hasn't stopped raining in more days than I can recall and so I can't garden.