Pic: Brickfields quietly and tastily counters the marriage equality naysayers worried that that cake makers won’t be able to deny wedding cakes to LGBTIQ couples if the law is changed.
My eldest has flown the nest – I feel his absence in the leftovers
‘Restraint just isn’t a skill I ever really wanted to acquire. I don’t ever want to be the person who cooks only enough.’
Amen to that. I really like Rayner’s writing, where unlike his cooking he does just enough. And besides, the next few Diggings are sobering and angering so a little lightness won’t go astray.
Almost 90% of edible tomatoes thrown away based on appearance – research
‘Up to 87% of undamaged, edible tomatoes harvested from a commercial Queensland farm were rejected and wasted based on appearance, a study has found, highlighting the problem of food wastage.’
How have we let it come to this.
Kimbal Musk Wants to Feed America, Silicon Valley-Style
“I don’t want to hear another word about scaling,” Ms. Waters said. “He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. He’s very earnest about what he’s doing, but he doesn’t know enough about farming and about the soil. He wants to do the right thing, but he just hasn’t done his homework. Not everything has to be scalable.”
Well, actually if you want to everyone to have enough, good, fair food it does have to be scalable. Maybe this guy doesn’t know manure from bullshit but it’s not as if has hasn’t paid his dues from his biog. And if pumps money into scalable solutions, hell, if he just sets up another 500 school gardens, I am not going to join a bandwagon dumping on him just cause he is a millennial from Silicon Valley.
The true cost of a plate of food: $1 in New York, $320 in South Sudan
‘That $1.20 (90p) plate of rice and beans in New York, which is just 0.6% of the New Yorker’s average daily income, costs $8.27 in Guatemala, $27.77 in Nepal, and $72.65 in Haiti. In South Sudan, the worst-ranking country in the study, the meal costs $321.70, or 155% of a person’s daily wages.’
And this is why any solution absolutely has to be scalable.
The Macaron That Tastes Like Marina Abramovic
‘Ideally, Abramovic would silently stare at each person as they ate her macaron (with or without tears). Instead, she is there in video form at the Ladurée debut locations, inviting people to take the first bite—Sutnick would say inviting them to eat Abramovic herself. You might, like me, notice the implicit sexuality in this suggestion. Or you might think of the wafer representing the body of Christ. Or you might be Catholic and think, with guilt, of both combined.’
Or, after reading the foregoing Digging, you might think what appalling disregard for food scarcity and security issues. Can’t wait for them to make the Somali Macaron.
Bender’s Choice. Tasmanian salmon from farm to court
‘When I put this to Bender, she says a good fishing industry needs biosecurity, fish health and the environment, and that these three elements are interdependent and the necessary formula for avoiding boom and bust. Her decision to go to court was commercial in the sense that Bender sees managing the environment as a key part of her business, rather than a requirement to meet regulation or appease consumer sentiment. To this end, Bender argues for stronger support for science to inform decision-making. “If you don’t have a healthy environment, you don’t have a business,” she says. “You need to live by this – not just spin it.”
And yet, as Konkes points out elsewhere in this article, there are other conclusions that can be drawn from the science that lead to other solutions that Bender is not concerned about or indeed is dismissive of. This isn’t anything like the first time company has used environmental arguments to curry sympathy as it cries foul against a competitor or cregulator and won’t be the last. I am uncomfortable of casting Bender in a crusading role and, as Konkes does, I think, dissing those who continue to take, yes, to the courts as Bender is doing, without the need to turn a profit at the end of the day.
PS.I think it’s kinda off that the title of the article riffs on Sophie’s Choice which was, you know, a tad more morally weighty than fighting over who gets to farm the most salmon.
Smoked Water Now Exists and It Costs More Than Scotch
‘It’s made using a process similar to barrel-aging whiskey: For ten days, they circulate filtered tap water through loops that contain oak chips and oak dust. What comes out is an amber liquid with “the cleanest of aromas of burning wood.” A 3.5-ounce bottle costs almost $5.50; Vines gamely notes that a bottle of Glenlivet Founder’s Reserve Single Malt is more than a dollar cheaper for the same amount. The Lea-Wilsons say it’s the only water-with-smoke product on the market (they don’t count liquid smoke, for obvious reasons).’
I’ve made many a smokey risotto without this product.
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