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Buzzwords and cliché's.
Ok, we've been guilty of it ourselves but I think reading about another person/
company/ chef/ grower/ supplier who is 'passionate' about food will be one
to many. Can I suggest a moratorium on the word 'passionate' without
crippling the entire 'foodies' thing? Hmmm, maybe not.
 Somehow
when there's a slickness or marketing spin to it, the use of the word
just doesn't ring true. I was prompted by the overuse on this website,
Oil & Vinegar where
they ask "what's your passion", are "passionate about taste", and want you
to "share your passion". The site was mentioned as an
example of a good niche marketing trend by another site I like, called
Trendwatching.com.
They've coined their own expression "nouveau niche" to point out how the
movement towards 'niches' is the result of consumers becoming more
'individualized', they say .. "Even the few mass objects of desire that
still manage to unite large groups of consumers -- iPods, Nokia handsets, or
the Mini Cooper -- are likely to be customized and personalized the moment
they leave the warehouse, website or store." Have a look at their
latest newsletter online.
The food marketplace hasn't seen much of that 'catering for a niche' other
than in the marketing of fast food brands. In Australia we've seen stores trying to offer the widest selections of ingredients
from everywhere. The Oil and Vinegar
franchised
stores (they're azeitevinagre.com in Spain, an unlikely place to sell
foreign oil and vinegar and USA made biscuits I thought) look like slick, well
designed outlets that I probably would have visited if there was one
nearby... until I saw this in their news section.
 'A great opportunity for our oil industry' I thought, when suddenly my
simplicity and 'no
worries' philosophy got offended, my spell check alert rang and those
colours, smells and sounds are me being
passionate about killing off the overuse of 'passionate' as a marketing
cliché.
Fred Harden 18 March 05
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 Today
class, I'd like to discuss Show Food. That's not
Slow Food, but the
food served at shows, events and regional fairs.
While there's certainly been some change in what's offered, (at our Canberra
Show there are a couple of the ethnic food stall tents that are run by the
same people seen around the local craft markets), alternative food is a
minor attraction to the masses.
At my local
Bungendore Show (that link has photographs), the CWA always run the food
canteen, a steak and sausage sizzle where you can always get 'a good cuppa
tea and a jam scone'. At the Canberra show there's a big stall run by the
local Rotarians. They do it with a bit more hoopla and constant loudspeaker
announcements, "Feeling hungry? What about a bargain 50c off these steak
sandwiches with lots of onions before they burn any more! With sauce of your
choice". Their customers look just like the volunteer workers, who are
turning the onions into neat piles on the hot plate. But their customers
around here wear hats so that places them firmly from the outskirts of town.
Or wannabees. If they don't have a friend serving, or feel a community
commitment, many people just smile as they pass.
No, the big food sales are from the caravans that sit along the side show
alleys and the fairground rides. They are dispensing a 'becoming
traditional' food, that has changed only slightly over the years. The
overseas graphic influences (American) are sometimes less obvious, but
there's a strong adoption of the Union flags and red and white stripes. It's
from these vendors that we've been given Donuts, Southern Fried Chicken, the
Waffles and Dagwood Dogs. My memory of when many of these were introduced,
puts them in our postwar infatuation with all things American. I can
remember making the first Australian Kentucky Chicken TV ads as a junior
agency TV producer in the late 70's. We didn't even remotely see how
successful it was going to be, especially in a world where the Greek fish
and chip shop that also sold roast chicken was king. (Please don't blame me
for my part in the downfall of real food, it was a cultural thing and would
have happened anyway.)
The hot chips, fairy floss and toffee apples seemed to have always been
there and are probably as much British as American. Drinks have moved from
glass bottles to cans and plastic bottles, but it's pretty much the same
sugary lemon, orange and lemonade (but now with lots of Coke). As evidence
of holding to a tradition, you can still buy a paper cup of some green or
red coloured drink from a glass dispenser with a rotating paddle. Donuts
(doughnuts) were always cinnamon and sugar dusted, now they're also
available jam filled and iced. You can buy red and green toffee apples and
pre-packaged fairy floss in three colours that still dissolves in your
mouth, even if it doesn't have the warm burnt sugar smell of the fresh made
version.
It's all quite nostalgic and there's some case to be made for show food on
that level. There are minor quibbles. I'd happily buy a 'battered saveloy on
a stick' but calling it a 'Dagwood Dog' jars somewhat, when only baby
boomers can remember who 'Dagwood' was. And why can't we do great 'pomme
frites' or a 'croque monsieur' like the French street vendors? Or walk
around with a paper wrapped fresh slice of Italian wood fired pizza? Or any
one of a dozen ethnic street foods that have been assimilated and wouldn't
'scare the kiddies'? I can't make any case for the quality or the healthy
nature of our show food at all, but that's probably not the point. This is
comfort food so closely linked to the experience of the sideshow colour and
noise and the Laughing Clowns, that it will probably never change.
Fred Harden 1 March 05 (this was originally an entry
in my Country Diary Feb'02)
 You
learn that you don't get good tasty grapes until February even though
they're in the shops before Christmas. Explain then why I had to go and buy
these which were clearly not ripe, absolutely tasteless and tough?
Just because they looked so pretty. These are Flame seedless a variety that
we export more than eat locally. The travel well and stay firm, one of the
tradeoffs for a not very exciting taste.
The website that won best food based web category at the Food Media Awards (see
our photos) was Fresh For Kids. They have a grape page that gives
you all the details. They also need some help to stop Google indexing the
page that appears within their jazzy Flash interface, instead of like
this with the pretty
interface Google offers
a page like this. (It
just needs a tiny javascript on each page guys). It's a good site for adults
too to see what Sydney and Brisbane Markets have fresh.
Fred Harden 12 Feb 05
 I
was pleased, when driving back from Sydney, to hear Fiona Chambers on the
ABC Background Briefing program. It was called
'The Importance of Beatrice: Endangered Livestock" and was on
disappearing livestock breeds. The ABC are in their deja-vu mode for Summer,
repeating programs incessantly and this one was originally done in October
last year. I'd missed it then but since that time, I've heard a lot about
Fernleigh Farms, the business that Fiona and husband Nicolas run in
Bullarto, in Victoria's Goldfields region.
I picked up a business card at their stall at the Daylesford Sunday Market
(I told that
market
story here) and checked out their website when I was next online. Hmmm,
I thought as I viewed just a directory of file folders, "two huge Powerpoint
presentations... they need some help!". So I spent an hour or two and made
them up a cleaner HTML version which they've put online (but still with a
few glitches) Have a look at
www.fernleighfarms.com (maybe a bit later when I can help fix it).
That's Fiona and a Wessex Saddleback pig in the photo, Saddlebacks are an
old breed that they've restored to commercial use when it was nearly lost in
Australia.
That's the backstage gossip, Fiona's example was just
part of the program (the full transcript and audio are online) it's
interesting if you're a foodie. It looks at the loss of domestic livestock
species which, while not disappearing at the rate of biological species and
Amazon rainforest, are a cause for concern as they reduce the genetic pool
we can breed new varieties from. There are a few quotes that bring that
home...
"...our commercial white turkey that’s mass-produced
on factory farms, it’s been selected for such a meaty breast, that it’s no
longer able to breed on its own, and this breed of turkey accounts for 99%
of all turkeys in the United States today, but it would become extinct in
one generation if it wasn’t for human assistance in the form of artificial
insemination. And I think that example gives you some idea of the narrow
genetic base and the absolute vulnerability of these commercial breeds
that are extremely productive." Hope Shand
Bio-Meltdown
and why she thinks rare breeds are important to save..
"...the FAO has identified the sheep off the Orkney
Islands in Northern Scotland and these are a breed of sheep that survive
exclusively on a diet of seaweed. There’s a breed of cattle called Yakut,
in Northern Siberia, that can withstand extreme fluctuations of
temperature, with very little management. There’s the Okulska sheep that
are from Southern Poland that are exceptionally prolific and sometimes
produce litters of five or six lambs. These are just a few examples of the
breeds that are under threat of extinction, and the breeds that have very
valuable traits that may prove extremely important in the future of animal
breeding." Hope Shand
I learnt a lot about Wessex Saddleback pigs while doing
Nicholas and Fiona's pages, and about the alarming Halothane Gene (look it
up) from the ABC program. I'm glad there are people like the Chambers.
Fred Harden 28 Jan 05
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A
TV channel for Prawns? No, Gambero Rosso - (Red Prawn) is an Italian based food and
wine magazine that you just might see on the news stands here, (try Borders if
you're nearby) and in Rome they even have their own TV channel.
The
You'll
have to forgive us if occasionally some 'geek' is hiding under the 'foodie'
napkin here on the website. We'll keep it to a minimum (or something like that). My justification here is to
show how the food/wine influence is becoming pervasive. Covering much the
same geographical area as the recent Fox movie