Showing posts with label edible biodiversity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label edible biodiversity. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Join FAIR FOOD WEEK + Judging a photo competition


Its been a hugely busy period of transition for the Homage to the Seed project. Finally moving into the new home and studio 3 weeks ago but still waiting for internet connection has meant online communications were tailed down to rare posts, tweets and such... but ... things have been brewing.



painting the new studio!


Like this FAIR FOOD WEEK competition below which I am one of the judges for and is open till Sunday 25th 9pm. You have to live in Australia to be eligible for prizes but its open to all around the globe to be part of the conversation which aims to increase interest and understudying of what a FAIR Food System is and how all of us are called to take a part in ensuring we preserve the kind of food future we wish to preserve for generations to come! 

HAVE YOU GOT ANY GREAT PHOTOS OF YOUR FOOD GARDEN OR KITCHEN CREATIONS?

(Please share this info if you can!)

The story so far... results of round one:


Finalists

My Food Story

PHOTO COMPETITION
Are you a finalist?
Thank you to the farmers, gardeners and cooks for taking the time out of your busy lives to enter. Your stories are beautiful! You shared sweet moments, heavenly food and a little piece of you. Sophie Munns, the preliminary judge, evaluated entries by the criteria of impact, creativity and story. Below are the finalists from Round One. Congratulations!
If you didn’t make it this time, never mind. Try, try, try again! Don’t forget every entry is in the running for Peoples’ Choice, so share your favourite entry and ask your friends to vote! Seecompetition details for more information.
FINALISTS FOR ROUND ONE
ppmak
Produce by ppmak
It’s not always about what you can grow to eat. Green manure is both tasty and essential for soil vitality! #myfoodstory
ppmak
Produce by ppmak
This thyme is my favourite plant in the garden. It’s been through neglect and drought. 8 years and still giving more than I give. I love running my hands through it and breath in that earthy smell. #myfoodstory
spooky
Dish by spooky_girl
My entry for #MyFoodStory. Homemade pasta for my lasagna. Definitely not for everyday, this #dish is an all day affair that is eaten in an instant!
bec
Dish by Bec
This lovely Roast Vege soup is made from roasted root vegetables, including a variety of lovely home grown pumpkins. We grow heaps of different pumpkins and squash each warm season, then store them on our back patio table over Winter. They store well, and slowly get used up in mash, soup, risotto, and with a good old roast dinner. While the oven is on for the roast, I add cubed pumpkin and root vegetables, to then make this soup!
bec
Produce by Bec
These are a selection of our home grown, dried beans, with gorgeous scarlet runner beans in front. The beans are left on the vine until they are fat and start to dry, then we pod them, dry the beans thoroughly, store them, and use them through Winter!
sandra
Produce by Sandra
Asparagus Pea Flower I love experimenting with unusual veggies- the sort you’ll never find in the supermarket. The bonus is when they’re beautiful as well, like these bicolour scarlet flowers that I get before the pods form.
ppmak
Produce by ppmak
A scraggly harvest of spring onions that will go in my lunch. They’re just waking up for spring! What are you growing in your garden? Do you have a food story? Play along with Flavour Crusader, just by adding #myfoodstory #dish or #produce to your post!
belinda
Produce by Belinda
In 2011 my tomatoes went nuts! I had an abundance of Mini Romas and Tomatoberries, although the possums got a few and the neighbours’ kids were welcome to share. Hunting for recipes to use them up, tomato and goat cheese tarts went down a treat for Christmas lunch, and delicious semi-dried tomatoes lasted well into Winter.
cynthia
Produce by Cynthia
Summers produce from our garden in Seymour.
Want to share your food story?
These were the finalists from Round One, from competition start until 9pm AEST Friday 16th, 2013. Check back soon for Round Two!
FOR COMPETITION TIPS & UPDATES
Follow FlavourCrusader (Facebook or Twitter) and Fair Food Week (Facebook or Twitter).
FOR DELICIOUSNESS AND MISCHIEF
Sign up to FlavourCrusader.

ABOUT FAIR FOOD WEEK: 

Fair Food Week — 19-25 August 2013

What is Fair Food Week?

PFP-coverCoordinated by Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA), to support the Peoples’ Food Plan, Australia’s first-ever Fair Food Week shines a light on our new story of food.
Over the week — 19-25 August 2013 — you will discover events across the country that will attract, intrigue and entertain you:
  • forums 
  • workshops
  •  speakers
  •  films
  •  farmers’ fairs
  •  food swaps
  •  community garden and farm tours
  •  and more, much more.
The week’s events will celebrate the work of Australia’s fair food pioneers – the women and men doing the vital work of creating a fairer food system for all of us.

What’s fairness got to do with food?

Lots. Let’s start with farmers not being paid well by major retail chains for the food they grow and raise for us. Then there’s excessive food imports that unfairly disadvantage not only Australian farmers and farm workers but our food processors as well. And about much of that imported food… do we really know how it was grown and processed… and what was put on it to make it grow or easier to process… whether farm and factory workers enjoyed healthy, good and fair working conditions?
And there’s one more thing about fairness, and that’s about fair access to good, tasty food for the thousands of Australians and their children living on low incomes.

So, what’s that got to do with me?

It’s your chance to do what it is that you do best when it comes to food wherever you sit in the paddock-to-plate-and-back-again journey. You’ll have our support to grab attention via print and social media, word of mouth advertising, promotion at markets, restaurants, cafes, and libraries.
All over the country during the Fair Food Week people will create and participate in story-telling, workshops and other events the possibilities of which are limited only by your imagination.
Most of all, during Fair Food Week, go out and enjoy food produced fairly — that’s fairly in the social, economic and environmental sense.

How can we help make it happen…

Fair Food Week is a good idea we want to see take off because it’s about food fairness for all of us.
So, it’s time to put on our thinking caps and plough into that random access memory of our brains, there to find creative, crazy, innovative and intriguing ideas for you and your friends to make something wonderful happen during Fair Food Week.
And… we would LOVE to hear back from you ASAP so that we can begin to shape this week into wonderful reality.
Contacts AFSA organisers in different cities and regions.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Plants For a Future


On Saturday, at the Hillbrook Sustainability Day when I presented Homage to the Seed project, I'd found some great quotes to post up on the wall discussing biodiversity of edible species, the story of food and agro-biodiversity.

I was reading Michael Pollan a couple of days before and had to include some of his quotes .... and the one by Renner below which he quoted.





            


Below is a piece from Julian Cribb with a highlighted section that for me is very pertinant. I posted on Cribb  here last year after hearing him speak at an Institute of Global Change forum in Brisbane on the Future of Food. One of the reasons I think Botanic Gardens, independant Seed Banks, Research Institutes that are Govt funded and such are so crucial is for identifying new and diverse edible/usable species. Its stands to reason that biologically diverse foodcrops are better for the environment, for our health and so on. They are also far more interesting and culturally enriching.


And so I was delighted to discover this site from the UK called Plants for the Future - this website is well worth a visit.





Plants for a Future

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Plants For A Future (PFAF) is an online not for profit resource for those interested in edible and useful plants of temperate regions. The project currently has a site in the South West of England where many of the plants are being grown on a trial basis, and maintains a small mail order catalogue. The organization's emphasis is on perennial plants.
The website contains an online database of over 7000 plants that can be grown in the UK, the data is created/collated by Ken Fern, and can be either used online free of charge, or downloaded for a small sum.
Fern has also published a book detailing many of the plants featured in the database.





These notes below are from their website... Ive included them here to promote the idea of variety and hopefully capture the imagination.
Plant Uses / Edible
There are over 20,000 species of edible plants in the world yet fewer than 20 species now provide 90% of our food. 
However, there are hundreds of less well known edible plants from all around the world which are both delicious and nutritious.


You can see our top rated edibles here

The articles below highlight some of the more unusual edible plants.
  1. Alternative Food Crops
  2. Alternative Fruits
  3. Alternative Root Crops
  4. Alternative Edible Leaves
  5. Edible Flowers
  6. Winter Salads
  7. Staple seed crops from perennials
  8. Vegetable Oils
  9. Fruit: Food of the Gods
  10. Green Gold - The Leaves of Life!
  11. Useful Weeds
  12. Annuals in the Perennial Garden
Database
Top Rated plants, 154 plants we consider the best for edibility.
Edible Part
  • Flowers  ( 685 )
  • Fruit  ( 1723 )
  • Inner bark  the bark that is found just beneath the tough outer bark of trees and shrubs.( 141 )
  • Leaves  ( 2449 )
  • Manna  this is a sweet substance that exudes naturally from certain plants, usually from the stems.( 40 )
  • Nectar  produced in such abundance by some flowers that it can be harvested fairly easily.( 30 )
  • Pollen  ( 18 )
  • Root  includes bulbs, corms, tubers, rhizomes etc.( 1181 )
  • Sap  usually of trees and usually but not always used as a drink.( 80 )
  • Seed  includes nuts, cereals, peas and beans.( 1326 )
  • Seedpod  things such as Okra, French and Runner beans.( 118 )
  • Stem  this often intergrades into leaves.( 344 )
Edible Uses
  • Chocolate  substitutes for chocolate, that is. ( 8 )
  • Coffee  the various substitutes that can be used instead of coffee. ( 225 )
  • Colouring  edible dyes ( 49 )
  • Condiment  the various plants that are used as flavourings, either as herbs, spices or condiments. ( 552 )
  • Curdling agent  used to curdle soya milk in making cheese. ( 17 )
  • Drink  not including plant saps, tea or coffee substitutes. ( 133 )
  • Egg  Substitutes for eggs. ( 5 )
  • Gelatine  substitutes that is. ( 3 )
  • Gum  can be chewed as a chewing gum or can often be used as a sweetener or thickening agent in foods. ( 214 )
  • Milk  made from plants, that is. ( 8 )
  • Oil  ( 524 )
  • Pectin  a substance that is used to thicken jams etc and as a culture medium in laboratories. ( 19 )
  • Rutin  often used as a food supplement. ( 18 )
  • Salt  plants that provide a substitute for salt. ( 17 )
  • Stabilizer  this is often a gum and could perhaps be included there. ( 1 )
  • Sweetener  includes sugar substitutes. ( 80 )
  • Tea  the various herb teas that can be used in place of tea, plus the genuine article. ( 625 )





The wonderful thing about the sustainability day I was part of was the extraordinary showcase of local and regional edible plants... and the availability of seeds saved by local initiatives. If I'd not been so busy at my own stand I'd have taken a lot of photos to included here.

So what's available in your part of the world that sustains the biodiversity of edible plants?



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