Food

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species diversity and food

2013/06/06 Danielle 0

This morning as I was cutting up a persimmon, one of my workmates came over and, apologising for asking a stupid sounding question, asked what it was that I was cutting up. I don’t think it’s a stupid question at all – if you don’t know what something is, trying to find out is admirable. But it made me think about why someone wouldn’t recognise a persimmon (not just not know what it was called or where it came from, but have literally never seen one before). I know about persimmons because I spent a year in South Korea teaching […]

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lucky tomatoes

2013/05/21 Danielle 0

There are a multitude of tomato varieties, ranging from black and purple through every shade of red, pink, orange and yellow to the ones which are green when ripe. Most of them taste better than the standard supermarket tomato varieties available in Australia. Diggers Seeds holds annual taste tests of a selection of varieties, and the supermarket variety they scored for comparison got only 42.46% approval, while the heritage varieties ranged from 60% to 77%. Not all good tomato varieties are heirloom or heritage varieties, though. There are still plant breeders out there working on annual vegetables like the tomato, […]

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flopsy, mopsy & cottontail

2013/04/29 Danielle 0

I’ve spent the last few weeks researching rabbits. I have my reasons. First reason is that K indicated an interest in spinning, and I thought I’d look into how viable it would be to have a little cottage industry setup selling yarn, and possibly raw fleece. (Answer: limited to zero for making any actual money/profit) Your basic wool animal is a sheep, but I dislike sheep. I’ve never met a bright one, or one that didn’t stink, although I’ve been assured by people who like sheep that they don’t inherently stink. After sheep, there are goats (cashmere goats, which produce […]

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probiotics

2012/12/19 Danielle 3

Just over a week ago, I went to a workshop on fermented foods at Perth City Farm, run by the awesome Bonnie Wykman (of PeaceTree Permaculture). The workshop was a great overview of fermented and cultured foods, from yoghurt and kefir through to sourdough, ginger beer, and mead, as well as the history and some of the health benefits of eating active (probiotic, i.e. containing live microorganisms) cultured foods. Bonnie also gave us all samples of her sourdough starter, kefir culture, and water kefir culture. And then a friend of mine gave me some of her kefir grains as well, […]