Thoughts From Becca

I've always had an interest in cooking in the way that is now called Slow Food. The movement to local is again gaining popularity. It never lost momentum with me. Flavour marriages are at a premium when you take the local produce from the same region and season; you can't go wrong! Classical food combinations are historically based on these regional and seasonal marriages. Although my reasons for cooking seasonal regional and fresh were always based on taste, there are lots of other reasons to use this base in understanding food, produce, cooking. For a start in our industrialised, and then technology based societies, (global) transport is easier and quicker so we've come to enjoy produce from other regions at any time of year. Long distance hauls have an impact, on not only flavour, but also have a huge cost to the environment. What is the impact to our world on transporting water in a bottle up to 15,000 kilometres (or sending pears to China from Australia?) Long stor...

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...