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Swiss caviar, saffron, tea … (videos on local Swiss food)
SF, swissinfo
Swiss caviar
Switzerland now has its own source of caviar. The first Swiss-bred sturgeon are now swimming around in the Bernese mountains, in tanks fed by warm water from an underground spring. The water is discharged in Frutigen from the longest tunnel in the Alps – the Lötschberg. The spring water will also be used to heat greenhouses growing tropical fruit: all part of the Tropenhaus project, now in its final construction phase.
(no date)
More lighthearted videos about local food at swissinfo:
Indigenous grapes (Italian-speaking winemaker uses old press, points out that most winemakers in the worldd grow only 10 winegrape varieties, whereas there are at least 3000 varieties in Europe alone.)
Lucky snails (snails as food)
Food lessons from the Great Depression
Mary MacVean, Los Angeles Times
Today, learning how to cook on a budget is becoming important to more families. In the 1930s, making do was a kitchen art, honed by necessity. Sour grass soup, anyone?
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… At a time when Americans face frightening and disorienting economic uncertainty, the Great Depression provides valuable lessons. For many people, putting a meal on the table without turning to processed or takeout foods is no longer something just for a weekend dinner party but a skill they must learn. People who remember what it was like to eat during the Depression talk about thrift, growing their own, sharing with neighbors and learning to cope with what they had.
… It was a time when leftovers were planned. A roast chicken — for Jewish Shabbat or Sunday dinner — lasted for days, as chicken with rice, chicken and dumplings, pot pie, stew or soup or salad. Women used the wrappers on margarine to butter baking pans. People ate what they could grow or kill or find.
Be honest, now: Can anybody in your house skin a rabbit?
Know what to do with milkweed pods? (Boil them and top with grated cheese.) Get your kids to eat sour grass soup? Those recipes, from “Dining During the Depression,” a collection of recipes edited by Karen Thibodeau, are unlikely to find their way into kitchens today, despite the state of the economy.
But in the 1930s, making do was a kitchen art, honed by necessity.
“In the times when the economy is really bad, it becomes an even more important question of how you’re going to put food on the table for your family,” says Kelly Alexander, co-author of “Hometown Appetites,” a biography of the pioneering newspaper food columnist Clementine Paddleford.
“If you want to save money, you’re going to have to learn to cook,” Alexander says.
She says she recently saw a pot pie recipe that called for precooked pieces of chicken, a premade crust and vegetables from a salad bar — essentially directions for assembling, not cooking. So by appealing to people who are too busy to cook or unwilling to learn, a modern version of a dish invented to make leftovers appealing becomes a collection of expensive ingredients.
(10 December 2008)
The last paragraph describes a great many gourmet dishes. Originally, cooks used ingenuity to transform what they had on hand into delicious (or at least palatable) dishes. -BA
Group seeks to augment local food supply
Mike A’Dair, Willits News
Mendocino Food Futures, the first phase of the project directed by Cyndee Logan of Willits Action Group and Patty Bruder of North Coast Opportunities, is taking steps to establish a food storage system to help Willits survive a national economic and transportation system meltdown.
MFF, funded by a $350,000 grant from the California Endowment, is “trying to create a more resilient food supply,” said group member Jason Bradford.
“Currently,” Bradford explained, “we have daily trucking of food that comes into town, often from long distances. Without trucks running, though, we would quickly run into a significant food shortage. That’s because there is no food available in town, except what’s on the shelves of the grocery stores and perhaps what’s on peoples’ shelves.
“Not counting what may be in peoples’ pantries and closets, we have a food supply of less than a week,” he said, “food that’s now stored in grocery stores and supermarkets.”
MFF proposes to buffer that one-week local food supply by about a month. But getting to that level of food security will most likely cost a quarter of a million dollars and involve several years of work. In the meantime, the group has decided to start small. Beginning in mid-January, MFF will purchase and install several one-ton food storage units on the property of the former Little Lake Industries on East Commercial Street. The property is currently being leased by Sparetime Supply, which is donating use of the property for the food storage project.
“We’re going to purchase four one-ton totes,” said Cyndee Logan. “We’re getting triticale, brown rice, white rice and pinto beans. We’re also going to be buying a commercial grain grinder so people can grind their own grain. The grinder is going to be located at the Sparetime site.”
But the MFF wants more, to grow from a small group of people with access to a small amount of locally stored food staples, to a larger commercial venture, Logan said.
To do so, MFF plans to create and circulate a new local currency, Mendo Food Futures Credits, or MFF-bucks as some have nicknamed it. The currency will be bought by area residents and used to purchase the MFF food staples at prices guaranteed for one year. With profits derived from sales of food staples, MFF can grow bigger, purchase larger storage units and more supplies of food staples.
… Bradford expanded on the group’s ultimate objective. “We want to achieve storage of at least a month’s supply of food for all the population that lives in the zip code. That’s 14,000 people. To do that would require about a quarter of a million dollars–$120,000 to construct three 80-ton silos, and another $120,000 for dried staples of rice and beans.
“We picked the 80-ton figure because grains and beans are often transported in 25-ton hoppers either by train or by semi-trailer truck. Three of those 25-ton hoppers would fill an 80-ton silo.
Ultimately, we would want three silos, one of wheat, one of rice and one of beans.”
Having adequate local storage would encourage local agriculture, the group believes. “There are no storage facilities for farmers,” Bradford said. “Farmers can’t reasonably be expected to grow food they can’t off-load into storage facilities.”
(30 December 2008)
