Entries Tagged 'Events' ↓

Obama tattoos are old news already, so why was I surprised to see Obama Foodorama, “A Daily Diary of The Obama Foodscape, One Byte At A Time”? The intertubes really does have space for everything.

For starters, there’s the wonderful MFK Fisher’s Alphabet for Gourmets at Gourmet magazine, via Metafilter. Here’s part of “C is for cautious”

A complete lack of caution is perhaps one of the true signs of a real gourmet: he has no need for it, being filled as he is with a God-given and intelligently self-cultivated sense of gastronomical freedom. He not only knows from everything admirable he has read that he will not like Irish whisky with pineapple chilled in honey and vermouth, or a vintage Chambertin with poached lake perch; every taste bud on both his actual and his spiritual palates wilts in revulsion at such thought. He does not serve these or similar combinations, not because he has been told, but because he knows.

So if I decline something because it will upset my spiritual palate, you won’t be upset, will you?
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Menu for Hope is an international food blogger fundraiser begun by Pim of Chez Pim and organised in Australia by Ed Charles at Tomato.

Go here to buy $US10 tickets and list the codes of the raffles you fancy. The money raised – $90 000 last year – will support the UN World Food Program:

This year Menu for Hope 5 again raises funds for the WFP’s school lunch program in Lesotho, Africa. This is the second year we are supporting this program, which assist the WFP’s efforts to supply the program by buying directly from local farmers who practice conservation farming methods. With this program, we help feed the kids (which keep them in school) and support their parents and community farming. This sustainable approach to aid is something we believe in and strongly support.

You can enter any raffle (but check if they post internationally/require you to travel). The full list is here, and the Oceania list here. It closes Christmas Eve, so be quick.

Some standouts for me in the local selection:

• Code AP19 – dinner and wines for two at George Biron’s Sunnybrae
• Code AP16 – a weekend for two at Chez Fur on the Mornington Peninsula, via Purple Goddess
• Code AP18 – two tickets to a cooking class with Tony Tan, via Thermomixer
• and finally (and linklessly) , code AP06 – a behind-the-scenes day on a food shoot with Gourmet Traveller

As for us, we’re off up the highway with a trailer full of toys wrapped in plastic and a geriatric kelpie. Have a safe and festive holiday and we’ll see you on the other side of the new year.

What a wonderful opportunity for temporary insanity a child’s birthday party throws up for the modern parent. Eleven months of the year I could care less for the making, baking and lunchbox fussing that is supposed to come with child ownership, but a birthday party is SHOWTIME. It’s when you get all your crafty ya yas out because, dammit, people are watching. And if I could make one other parent think for just a second that I enjoy nothing more than making sugar paste effigies of Garfield and sewing up darling little costumes then it’s all been a worthwhile charade.

This year, Isaac (recently 6) decided upon a Transformers party. The theme, IMO, just gives you something to work with for cakes and invitations and is a good cue for presents when parents find themselves standing bewildered in the Kmart toy aisles. So a Transformers cake was planned, and it was at some very early stage of the cake planning that a mental picture of the sort of cake you can only realise with fondant was formed in my mind and nothing could be done to dislodge it.

I’ve been quietly obsessed with fondant cakes since forever. It’s food! But it looks like modelling clay! And you can make anything out of it! Then eat it! You could make a futuristic miniature city out of fondant then go stomping through it like Godzilla, randomly taking a bite out of people and buildings as the mood takes you. Despite visiting the Royal Melbourne Show for years just to see the decorated cakes and having unfettered access to all the relevant retail outlets, I had never actually taken the next step: I had never planned and created a fondant iced cake. It had just never occurred to me.

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I thought we’d done well last weekend when our friend Andrew (Achilles to his mum) came around bearing an extremely impressive pastitsio.

However I think we may have just had a world record breaking weekend of eating Stuff White People Like.

First there was a cup of fair trade Ethiopian coffee (#1) and shopping at the non profit (#12) ANU Food Co-op (#48) for organic tempeh and the like (#6), followed by a trip to Choku Bai Jo (even whiter than the Farmers Market, #5). Then it was lunch at my sister’s house, a very glamourous version of surf’n'turf, fat slabs of steak from the organic butcher at Belconnen Markets, a coleslaw with homemade lime and chilli mayonnaise and a salad of prawns, avocado and kipflers:

… followed by hollowed out strawberries filled with a Campari jelly and topped with mint and lemon zest – white person heaven. The recipe is from Moveable Feast, but minus the wasabi because they’d forgotten. If only I’d known I could have bought the fresh horseradish root in the veggie crisper.

But that was just the beginning.  The peak of our weekend’s White Person experience isn’t on the Stuff White People Like site, but I heard founder Christian Lander on Radio National (#44) one day saying about the best thing you could do for a white person was cook them something from your culture and tell them it wasn’t available in restaurants or anywhere else.

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My friend Jonesie tipped me off on an interesting looking free lunchtime talk at ANU next Tuesday, 5 August:

Enabling New Ways of Thinking about the World?: The Australian Food Writer as Activist

Food writing makes up a significant proportion of the books, articles, weblogs and other texts written, published, sold and read each year in Australia. While the food writing in cookbooks, magazines and other publications is often thought of as providing useful, but banal, practical skill-based information, recent scholarship has begun to suggest that food writing is a more creative, and interesting, form of cultural production.

As part of a biographically-based study of Australian food writers, this work-in-progress seminar focuses on the roles the contemporary food writer plays in an environment where food is the subject of considerable scholarly, policy and personal interest and anxiety. In such a context, a number of contemporary food writers engage with issues around food production and consumption. These issues include sustainable and ethical agriculture, biodiversity and genetic modification, food miles and fair trade, food safety and security, and obesity, diabetes and other health issues. In this activity, the Australian food writer is, moreover, not only a media commentator on these important contemporary concerns, but is, at times, a forward-thinking activist, advocating and campaigning for change.

Donna Lee Brien is the Associate Professor of Creative Industries, and Head, School of Arts and Creative Enterprise, Central Queensland University. She is the author of John Power 1881-1943 and co-author of the popular self-help books Girl’s Guide to Real Estate: How to Enjoy Investing in Property and Girl’s Guide to Work and Life: How to Create the Life you Want. Donna is widely published in the academic areas of writing pedagogy and praxis, and collaborative practice in the arts. She is the founding co-editor of dotlit: The Online Journal of Creative Writing and Assistant Editor of Imago: New Writing and Imago: Online. Donna is currently an Associate Editor of New Writing: the International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing (UK), and is on the Board of Readers for Writing Macao. She is the President of the Australian Association of Writing Programs and in 2006 was has awarded a Carrick Institute Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning.

If I can find someone to sit on the one year old I’ll be there. Full details and contact info here.