We're adding our bookmarks here as we get a moment. As you'll see, this list is driven by our agenda of promoting regional food and just being plain opinionated about what we feel is good.

The comments are editorial and if they're critical it's because we feel that site is still worth a visit. If we really don't like it, it's left off the list.

If you think we've missed you, and you think we really should like you contact us anyway in case we've just ... plain missed you. Other readers suggestions are welcomed. Contact: editors@regionalfood.com 

Websites we use
Reference sites. news sites and resources

Industry - Organizations
Slow Food. Almost everything about the Slow Food movement supports the small producers of quality food. It's a pity that the local Slow Food Sydney Convivium website is so ordinary (aaargh! those rainbow coloured bars).

Visit the International web site www.slowfood.com instead. Informative, stylish and international in scope.

The Australian Farmer's Markets Association site for their state listings and contacts, and if you pay $50 you can get their first conference proceedings which offers tips on setting up your own farmer's market, but there's not much else there yet.

Jan Power's Brisbane Farmers Market (because she's Jan Power and an important player in the market movement.)

There are also website listing for Farmer's Markets on our Markets page.

British National Association of Farmers Markets is an active industry organisation who 'Certifies' markets. Their criteria for participation is clear. There are good links to regional market details and individual market websites.

The central fruit and vegetable market webs sites are for business, with little consumer value or information. Sydney Market created their award winning kids site Fresh for Kids which you'll still appreciate as an adult. Melbourne MMA Melbourne Market Authority have created a very useful site called MarketFresh.

The other official sites are Adelaide Produce Markets Limited, Brisbane Markets Limited, Perth Market Authority, Sydney Markets Limited. 

Australian Community Foods - not much content yet but heading in the right direction.

Bread
The Artisan - an excellent site on baking Italian bread, in English 

Food Reference
The Food Reference Website Mark Vogel's labour of culinary love. Subscribe to the email newsletter and get a taste of it, you'll be back.

The Culinary History Timeline is just that. Great links ordered by year.
 

Websites we like  
When we've got nothing better to do (ha!) we enjoy visiting these.
The magazines we like to read often have good online sample content.

Gastronomica is an academic journal that has escaped into the wild. A mix of quite esoteric academic pieces, with fascinating in-depth food history. Good writing is mixed with great academic research, reviews, there's even poetry - hey read this story in PDF form which will give you a good introduction. Then subscribe. The Origins of the Wedding Cake Spring 2005 issue




Star Chefs has developed into an important USA food industry site and has good interviews with influential regional food people like Alice Waters of Bekeley's Chez Panisse restaurant.

Kyle Phillips, an American living in Florence has a consistently interesting email newsletter and is the 'convenor' of about.com's Italian food section. If you fight your way past the ads, it's worth it.

Kyle also writes for Firenze.net the Florence events site.

Websites we've mentioned
These were links within an article or to suppliers sites we think are good.

Flavours Culinary Centre. 'Above the Fyshwick Markets' is how they describe their cooking school and Canberra culinary events centre. Well, that's where it is, and a great space for demonstrations and special food events. The web site is young but building, with Jan Gundlach's recipes and notes.

The Collector Pumpkin Festival is on again in May 2005 Details here.

Fernleigh Farms - Wessex Saddleback pigs and organic vegies

Biodiversity - endangered food species

The Rare Breeds Trust of Australia

Permaculture Melbourne's Heritage Fruit Group

 
 
 
 
 

Dragon Fruit- Pitaya.
Dragon fruit are actually a cactus fruit, and are also called Pitaya, Pitahaya or Strawberry Pear.

With a soft fleshy pulp inside that tastes scented and only slightly sweet it's a hard fruit to compare to another. The strawberry pear name is a lead, the flesh is slightly crisp like a pear and full of small crunchy black seeds like on a strawberry. It's not a strong flavour (there are better tasting varieties but these white fleshed ones are so dramatic in appearance they're the most seen variety).

Vietnam grow a lot and export here, and  they're well established in China but are almost certainly South American in origin. One of the Chinese legends about its name says that after a dragon has breathed fire, it ejects one of these fruit. Eating one gave you the strength of the dragon in battle. The do have have healthy fibre and Vitamin C.

We are growing Pitaya in Australia. A 'cluster' of growers in Tropical North Queensland, around Cairns, called Australian Tropical Foods produce red fleshed and white fleshed varieties.

There's a quirky webpage for the China High Quality Farm Produce Network with some mythology and lines like "When it is booming, it producs sweet fragrance and called as "lucky fruit".
The website of Pine Island Nursery in Miami has the best page of photographs of the plant and the varieties.
 

White centred Pitaya -Hylocereus undatus

 

 

 

    
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