The White Hat Food Guide

Newsletter - 7th August 2008

Contents

Introduction
SOLE food
Fennel
Government grocery enquiry
What is lamb?
Mediterranean Wholesalers
Farmers’ markets
Food Miles
Television
Eating Out – Darwin Markets
Some coming events
The White Hat Food Quiz

Introduction

It has been quite some time since we sent out a food newsletter having been preoccupied with other ventures but the recent government grocery enquiry stung us into action and with any luck we won’t ignore our foodies for so long again in the future.

SOLE Food

Every so often a new way of looking at what we eat comes along. Early converts to the cause are often teenagers because they generally don’t do the buying and the cooking and it shows how much more caring they are than their parents of the world and its general wellbeing and allows them to publish that judgement for all time on their Facebook page. Fortunately many of these ‘movements’ are more than simplistic mantras and can provide a useful framework for decision making about what to buy and what to eat.

Currently, SOLE Food (not to be confused with soul food) has a growing following. SOLE stands for Sustainable Organic Local Ethical

While we at White Hat are not SOLE purists the principles certainly inform many of our decisions about food. We thought therefore that in the next few newsletters (which will come more frequently than the previous ones) we would examine the LOCAL aspect of SOLE food in the section below labelled Food Miles.

Fennel

Fennel is at its peak and at its cheapest at this time of year (at least in the Southern states). You should be able to pick up a good quality medium fennel for about $1.50 Of course you can also pick them for free growing beside many a railway track, but these have usually been sprayed with all manner of nasty stuff so I wouldn’t recommend it. So, what to do with fennel? Here are three suggestions.

[This section of the newsletter can now be found at Fennel.]

Government grocery enquiry

The Federal Government has released the enquiry it commissioned into grocery pricing and business practices, and here at White Hat we must admit we are disappointed with the result. We haven’t read all 700 pages so we may stand to be corrected but here are some issues we had hoped would have received more attention:

• Pricing. There is little point comparing prices between competing supermarkets. The real issue is the price hike over other outlets. Meat prices at supermarkets are consistently higher than at regular markets such as the Victoria Market or Preston Market – often by a factor of 50% to 100%. The same applies for many fruit and vegetables. I can buy canned tomatoes and tomato pasta sauces from my local drygoods store in the city, then at a nearby large supermarket see the identical products at exactly double the price. I can buy pulses, beans and nuts from the bulk bins in my local Middle Eastern store or pay between 5 and 10 times the amount for the packaged item at a major supermarket. Comparing supermarket prices provides little or no help to the consumer. The public would be much better served by comparisons of supermarket prices with non-supermarket prices. Mandatory unit pricing on the shelves may be useful for comparing competing products (although the money would possibly be better spent on maths education so people can do that naturally) but a more useful label would also compare the unit price with the government audited unit price if purchased from a non-supermarket source.
• Limitation of choice. In the past couple of years, many lines seem to have disappeared from supermarket shelves. Where it might have been common to see, say, 6 or 7 types of chutney on the shelves you may now have a choice of 2 or 3 plus the ‘home brand’. You can check the credentials of individual manufacturers but home brands which can easily change their anonymous outsourced manufacturer are more difficult keep track of. In the meantime smaller manufacturers seeking access to the mass market may end up by paying for shelf space in a supermarket.
• Trading practices. It would appear that in shopping malls certain traders near supermarkets who would normally sell bread or milk are prevented from doing so. Mother is forced to take her children into the supermarket (with the bread and milk probably placed towards the rear) then queue with the kids at the checkout where the sweets are placed at child level.
• Packaging. Many products stocked by supermarkets use excessive and environmentally unfriendly packaging. The supermarket duopoly with their buying power are capable of specifying in which form they will accept many of their products. Ethical and sustainable packaging does not seem to feature high on their priorities.
• Advertising. While I am sure the advertising campaigns of supermarkets are legal, they must surely be verging on the misleading when it comes to fresh food. You can go to your local market or fishmonger and look the fish in the eye to see how fresh it is, look the fishmonger in the eye to see how fresh he is – “No, Mr Fishmonger I am not free on Thursday night. Just tell me where and when that fish was caught” - and he usually can. Go to a supermarket who have major advertising about supplying fresh food and you are likely to be confronted with rows of signs stating “thawed for your convenience”. If you go to Little Saigon in Footscray you will often be buying greens that have been picked at 3am on the same day. If you go to a supermarket with major advertising for fresh food and you are unlikely to find anyone on the floor who can tell you when the vegetables were picked and how long they have been in cold storage. Go to your local market and you will often be buying fruit or vegetables that have to be sold within a day or two because they have been grown for flavour and nutrition. Go to a supermarket with major advertising about fresh food people and there is a strong chance that many of the lines have been chosen on shelf life so that they can stay in the shop for longer. We could go on, but as we said before, we are sure the advertising must be legal. Whether it is fair on the suburban mum trying to do the right things by her kids is another question.

The Federal Government have announced they are going to make changes to their grocery watchdog website. We will be interested to see whether they address any of the issues we have mentioned above.

What is lamb?

[This section of the newsletter can now be found at The White Hat Guide to Lamb and Goat.]

Mediterranean Wholesalers

At White Hat our food shopping schedule looks something like this:

• Markets - in our case in Melbourne markets such as the Vic Market or other inner suburban markets – several times a week
• Farmers’ markets – several times per month
• Dry goods and ethnic food stores – a couple of times a month
• Supermarkets – about twice a month

We thought we might introduce you to a few of our regular haunts in Melbourne if you are not already familiar with them.

The Mediterranean Wholesalers is in Sydney Road. (It is next door to Franco Cozzo’s so Melburnians will know the correct pronunciation of the suburb.) It has a large and often cheap range of Italian foods from canned goods, tomato products, cheeses, pasta sauces, olive oils, two complete aisles of pastas, a deli section where you can obtain a variety of freshly sliced smallgoods, freshly baked breads and freshly made pastas (but you need to be there by mid-morning for a good choice of fresh pastas) as well as various Italian cakes and wines. You can also buy a coffee from the barista but it is not something that a Starbucks patron would recognise. Here you won’t find people buying tomatoes by the can – they are buying them by the slab. You can feed a family for a month (provided they like Italian food) for remarkably few dollars. We always pay a visit to the Mediterranean Wholesalers before heading off to a holiday house or on a camping holiday.

There is a smaller (mainly) Italian wholesaler in A’Beckett Street near the Vic Market and a good Italian supermarket in the main street of Fairfield. I am sure there are many more around Australia. You can find details on some Melbourne ones at The White Hat Guide to Italian Food Stores in Melbourne.

Farmers' Markets

Farmers’ markets are often held up as a key to reducing food miles and playing an important part in the SOLE food movement. However sometimes closer attention may be required. Farmers’ markets advertising “produce from across the state” may not be doing much for the ‘local’ concept. On the other hand, the food at the wonderful St Andrews Market may be mainly locally grown but you may have cause to wonder at the overall greenhouse gas savings when you look at the 400 4WDs parked along the road whose owners have driven the many miles from Melbourne to do the right thing by buying their cane basket full of local vegetables.

Having said that, farmers’ markets have been in Australia since the early days of white settlement and continue to provide an important point of contact between the producer and the consumer. In the mid 20th century most Australians had friends or relatives who were farmers and a social visit often involved several bags of spuds in the boot, or a side of lamb, or several dozen eggs, or the exchange of similar produce. As Australia became more urbanised the direct contact with the producer got sidelined a bit in recent decades but is now making a slow and welcome comeback.

For those in Victoria, there are new farmers’ market due to open in Wheelers Hill in August and Caulfield and Caroline Springs in October. You can find a comprehensive list at The White Hat Guide to Victorian Farmers' Markets, and a convenient summary of markets for the month at The White Hat Market Guide for August.

For those in other states you can find a small and incomplete list of markets in your area at The White Hat Guide to Markets in Australia. We plan to expand these listings to make them more comprehensive in the next couple of months.

Food Miles

Recently there has been some focus on food miles – the number of miles travelled by the food to the consumer. The issue has received some prominence with large sales of an American book called ‘The 100 Mile Diet’. In Melbourne there is a restaurant in the Melbourne Central complex called ‘The 100 Mile Café’ which sources its ingredients within a hundred mile radius. The LOCAL component of SOLE food refers to the same issues as food miles.

[This section of the newsletter can now be found at The White Hat Guide to Food Miles.]

Meanwhile we always feel very virtuous when we have visited the Mediterranean Wholesalers that we mentioned above. We have bought healthy food at very good prices. But wait a minute – much of it is imported from Italy involving a swag of food miles. Maybe next time I should buy the more expensive Australian canned tomatoes from the supermarket. That’s where an easily remembered acronym like SOLE can be helpful to keep you alert to some of the issues. In the meantime I will go away and wrestle with my dilemma of where to buy my next tinned tomatoes.

Television

Currently, there is the usual plethora of cooking programs on TV, but if you are interested in how your food is produced, appreciate some detail in your television programs and welcome something aimed at grown-ups, we can recommend ABC’s Landline program on a Sunday (rather than the truncated one shown later in the week). There is usually a story on some aspect of food production and there is a good chance you will go away knowing some important things you didn’t know before rather than just some random trivia.

For those wishing to pursue a vegie garden in your backyard we can recommend the quirky Vasili’s Garden on SBS. You might be surprised what ordinary people grow out the back.

Eating Out

Darwin Markets

Darwin has three main seasons. If you visit during ‘the dry’ you will find the Territorians slightly troppo (which of course mean ‘tropical’). During ‘the wet’ they become quite troppo. But during ‘the build-up’ (around November) they are completely troppo. Whenever we visit Darwin I always start with a freshly made dish from one of the markets – green pawpaw salad is a White Hat favourite. When it comes time to leave Darwin I still haven’t visited a restaurant because there are so many market dishes I still want to try.

However if you visit during the dry, I would urge you to visit the Mindil Beach Market. Sitting on Mindil Beach watching the sun set over a bowl of Asian style soup freshly made with local ingredients is truly one of the great meal experiences of Australia. Details at The White Hat Guide to Markets in the Northern Territory.

Some coming events

This coming weekend there is a chocolate festival at Abbotsford Convent. Proponents of SOLE food will need to go in disguise because there is no significant production of cocoa beans within 100 miles of Melbourne and the ethical background to the production of chocolate can be dubious. If you are interested to know why you can go to http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/default.htm and listen to the ‘Anti slavery campaigner calls for stronger action’ section under Thursday 7th August.

Coming up is a Specialist Cheese Show at the Crown Casino Complex in Melbourne. Details at Crown Casino. There are several food events coming up on the Gold Coast.

We are currently updating our listing of food and wine events across Australia and will give you more information about that in our next newsletter.

The White Hat Food Quiz

Lamb & mutton.

1. What food in Australia was commonly referred to as ‘underground mutton’?
2. What food in Australia is referred to as ‘Kimberley mutton’?
3. What is a mutton bird and what does it taste like?
4. Why should you always cook mutton bird at someone else’s place?
5. The meat from sheep who have fed on a hardy native plant is growing in popularity. What is the name of this meat?
6. In the 1970s a popular music group concerned about unsustainable farming practices conjured up an apocalyptic vision of a world where no sheep capable of breeding remained. What was the name of that song?

No prizes – just glory and a warm inner glow.

Victoria

New South Wales

Gourmet Walking Tour Of Sydney Choose from: Greek walking tour of Marrickville Walking tour of Little Italy in Haberfield Portuguese walking tour of Petersham Turkish tour of Auburn

South Australia

Western Australia