Thoughts From Becca

During the week I've been following a regional food challenge limiting myself to food within a 100 mile (160km) radius of my home. I started the tough way by cleaning out the fridge and starting with an empty larder. Well, it would not have been a challenge otherwise. Always mindful of using fresh seasonal produce, limitations on distance from farm to table have proved interesting. What an education I've received. Was I crazy to think I would walk into the Sydney CBD and find local produce, or even find food for which the origin was known. On the first day, I spent (more than) my lunchtime walking the city. Just one helpful fruit stall (Pitt Street near Martin Place) had produce (known to be) from this state. His display of apples was from Batlow and I purchased three. To be sure of my distance obligation, a friend did his technical thing and checked, and Batlow did not fall within range from Sydney. Regional for sure! But I'm a Taurus and determined. I did not want to ...

YOU CAN FOLLOW MY WEEK on the Live Local Challenge @ http://www.livelocalchallenge.blogspot.com/ Things have changed over time, and living in the city, we've really separated ourselves from being close to the earth, and to understanding our impact on it. This week, a new site http://www.livelocal.org.au/ is being launched with an aim of regrouping and rebuilding community. I'm going to do my bit and you can get behind it too by adding your ideas on the site. Of course with my food focus, a lot of my effort is food based. I've always tried to cook a lot of what I eat from scratch, to not use processed foods and to really support fresh seasonal produce. Once I started thinking about it, there was and is so much more that I can do. Starting this Wednesday I've accepted the live local challenge. As part of the challenge I've decided to take on a week of living only on regional produce (only grown within 100 miles of where I live). The preparation has been interesting, ...

It's been a bit easy for most of us growing up. We've come to know food in cities as packages on the supermarket shelves. We've lost touch with the earth under our feet. I thank my lucky stars that I spent some time on family farms seeing, feeling, touching, smelling the produce growing, and eating it fresh from the soil on the day it was picked. This is what taught me to appreciate freshness and flavour as well as gain an understanding of the seasons of food.  My first food memories are of a large walk in pantry on Aunty Dossie's farm. The shelves were lined with vacola (preserving) jars taking the excess of each season and stored for later use. I still remember the taste of icecream that came fresh from the cream of her cows. The icecream was lovingly beaten by hand every 20 minutes (no churn no icecream machine) throughout freezing to stop crystals forming. The chickens produce eggs that were gathered warm each day and used in the kitchen on the same day they were...