How do you know it's fresh?
How can we claim this is a fresh and crunchy blog when we don't update it? Gee, we've been busy. The next issue is due out early October and Jan and I've been writing hard. We have done a few new bits that we never got time to put up. I'll sneak an hour and update this soon.
Fred Harden. 2 Aug 05

Lunch. A Co-production.
There's a speech I like on the USA Slow Food website by Carlo Petrini (Slow Food's boss man). It's one of his usual speeches mixed with personal anecdotes and 'telling' jokes so it's an entertaining and serious read. He makes a nice point about co-producers. We as eaters have a responsibility to the growers to ensure they can keep growing and they in return need to look after what they sell us to eat.

"One of the world's great intellectuals, Wendell Berry, said "Eating is an agricultural act." And this is part of this new idea of a co-producer. This citizen must feed himself and also the farmer. Because if someone eats badly there will be bad agriculture. But if the farmer knows how to eat well, he can help determine a new agriculture. I think that a lot of you are producers in this room. So if as Wendell Berry says the first agricultural act is to eat, I say to you producers, to cultivate food is a gastronomic act. When you grow food you have to be gastronomes too. Have pride in what grows from the earth with the help of your hands. We need a cultural revolution to bring this about. And it has to begin with the value of food, because if it doesn't, we'll never succeed at this".

Fred Harden. 29 July 05

Snow job
While we did a small piece on snow food in the first issue, I can point you to Gourmet Traveller's August issue for an extensive coverage of overseas ski resorts Italy's Cortina D'Amprezzo, and USA's Aspen (with good pics by Will Meppem, used way to small). 

What really stood out, (and it's why I always buy Gourmet Traveller in the hope that there will be more articles like this) was Pat Nourse's story on Japan's Niseko resort. Anson Smart did the pictures (also used way to small except for two great double page spreads). A (credited) junket, Pat obviously had no trouble being enthusiastic about these small villages around Mount Niseko Annupuri already discovered by a number of Australians - given the Canberra Raiders beer mats in the bars. Read it, it's fun and makes you want to go there.
Fred Harden. 27 July 05
 

The local news
If you want a glimpse of King Island life buy a copy of the weekly King Island Courier, printed by Royce and Anne Conley. Royce edits the lively ten page tabloid-sized paper that comes out every Wednesday. The Courier is part of a long tradition of newspapers on the island that stretch back to 1905. Each week Royce prints the sports results, the social notes, a lively indoor bowls column and a front page article in true small-paper style designed to start pub conversations. Stories range from who won the King Island higher education scholarship, to racier stuff like a threatened kelp war on the quiet beaches or an angry mum complaining about the high price of Island electricity.

It’s a hard job each week to be topical and interesting and he’s thinking of selling what is a well-supported, ongoing business. So if you’re a journo looking for a sea-change give Royce a call or an email.
Fred Harden. 15 July 05

Thank you Sally Hammond
It occurred to me that we've never publicly given credit (although I often mention it in conversation) to Sally Hammond for the inspiration to start our Regional Food Australia magazine. When we bought the first edition of her book in 1999 it was a real buzz. And, as we were just heading for a visit to Wagga (Wagga), we checked the region’s entries. On the road we called in to find not just one place had closed or changed, but three of them. Just six months after publishing we expected the information would have been current. What a dilemma for a valuable book.

We started to think about this magazine. Something that would give you enough accurate information about a region (that’s up to date) and would help you plan a visit. The value would be in the stories and images and as the information became dated, we figured a website was the place where the data could be refreshed cheaply and often. We never planned to be just quarterly, having a monthly in mind. We'll see how that goes I guess.

I’d also like to now point you to Sally and Gordon Hammond’s new website. It’s been a long time coming and it has had new bits added every time I've visited over the last three weeks. It's shaping up to be a useful resource, not as user friendly as the book (entries are listed as AFG book and New Entries) but when you invest the time and money into a printed directory, it probably seems too precious to put that online for free. There's a community forum that could bring some interest to the site, and is a good way to involve the base of readers. The site looks like it's Gordon's computer skills coming through rather than that of a designer, but its heart is in the right place. Have a look (and go out and buy the book before it hits it's use-by-date).
Fred Harden. 1 July 05
 

If you dish it out...
you have to take it. You could say since no one has seen our magazine yet, criticising someone else's is an act of ah, nerve, is probably the word I'm chasing. But I don't have to make excuses. Yet.

I always have an opinion and here's what I think of dish, a magazine that I knew about but hadn't ever seen a copy of. There it was, on the counter (three copies) of the Bungendore newsagency. Bungendore is just outside the edge of the ACT, population 1500 ish with a fair number of professional people who don't want to live in Canberra. A slightly skewed magazine market for a country town I'd expect, so food and wine publications sell well against copies of The Land and The Chicken Fancier (I think I made that up, maybe it was Poultry Breeders Gazette).
 
dish. A New Zealand publication. This is the first issue (no4) that has been on news stand sale here. 146 pages. Recipes. Lots of ads.
There are some short pieces (single page text, page of images) primarily New Zealand but there's one about Serge Dansereau at the Bather's Pavilion with photographs suppled by Serge. There's one on Marrakech The rest are Recipes. They're laid out like a recipe card. Single photo of result, column of ingredients and method. Dull. The product articles (single page)  were on walnuts, on spuds -interesting enough because of NZ varieties we don't get here. Oh and one on rare pig breeds raised by an NZ couple where I learnt the term Euro meat.

The magazine's art director won Designer of the Year at the New Zealand MPA Design awards(PDF) but the design depends on good food photography sitting on a page. And lots of messy ads in between to confuse the visual flow.

The promo says "You’ll want to lick every page. Dish is most definitely “good enough to eat”! But I found this dish an unexciting entree, and I'm not sure I'm going to order the main course. I'll let Cuisine give me my NZ gossip, it's way prettier although it hasn't excited me as much since the sale to Fairfax. (Maybe it's because the old names on the masthead have all left for some reason).

Jones Publishing has a website but dish doesn't.
Fred Harden 11 June 05
 

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