However, there was a brief ray of welcome sunshine in the form of the adorable and inspirational Jolien Benjamin who is a fellow anthropology of food student.

She’s studying a module on space and place and I was delighted when she asked me to join in with helping her complete her non-text part of the course. She was looking at how people ate on the tube, the notion of snacking and food on the go, eating in public – all interesting stuff. On the day, less than a week before my essay deadlines, I did think ‘Is this a good idea? Spending half a day doing something fun and creative when I should be writing something informative about lots of dead white anthropologist men?’. I had a dither, weighed up my options and plumped with the creative option, figuring that the anthropologists could stick it for one more day.

It seems to me that I’ll look back on that and think ‘That was a day I made a good decision’. Honestly, I was on a high when we came back and when I saw the finished result I felt like I saw myself again – the seat of the pants, just be intuitive and responsive and it’ll all work out me who I’ve missed while I’ve head my head in a dusty tome. It felt good. Here’s the finished piece and watch this space – Jolien and I have plans for a take two.

Cook-a-rama!

SO the sun was out and there was a stiff breeze in the air when the intrepid recipe testers of the SOAS

Charring peppers for chakchouka

cookery book society met in Manor House for the first time.

Laden with huge amounts of shopping (7kg of potatoes!), the lovely Kat invited us all to her expansive kitchen for a cooking extravaganza, the like of which Manor House had never seen. Kat’s kitchen in Manor House, at any rate.

We were attempting to take on ten recipes, no less, including a Sri Lankan chicken recipe, two cakes and a vegan tofu pie.

Each recipe was religiously followed unless we found something that we didn’t collectively agree with in which case we tweaked a little, trying to keep notes on the increasingly greasy and floppy recipe papers.

As we went a long, the lovely volunteers from the photography society took beautifully staged shots for us, using the comedy array of ‘ethnic’ or interesting looking crockery and props we had swiped from home.

All of the recipes, save one, seemed to work well and, having bought some wine and beer to ease the somewhat demanding cooking schedule, the day was great and tasty fun, with much laughing and getting of garlic in eyes, beetroot on white t-shirts and the like. I’m looking forward to the next one!

Home made chips!Totally delicious coconut, mint and raspberry cakeChinese chicken - all gone1

Fran showing us how it's done

Washing up nightmareChilli, garlic and ginger for the stir fry

Cooking the German dumplings

Shopping!

Feeling the MLFW love

On Tuesday I was lucky enough to go to an amazing event down by the river called Making Local Food Our Future – the last conference in the winding down of the Making Local Food Work project. The whole day was inspiring and eye-opening – there must have been 500 hundred people there, all making moves to make local food viable and innovative.

It was so inspiring and uplifting that I cried three times. Once at the talk of the lovely Charlotte from the amazing community owned Fordhall Farm (1 farm, 8000 landlords!), who, alongside her brother, managed to rescue her family’s farm with the rousing help of the 8000 people they recruited to buy shares and the local community – you may have seen her in the Guardian. I then wept again on Ann Louise Batchelor, food writer, porridge-maker extraordinaire and volunteer for Reading True Food Co-op, describing the special shelving units they had designed in order to make their co-op shop mobile. Yes, I was crying about shelving, but I think it was more to do with generally being overwhelmed by the sheer dedication and innovation going into these projects that makes me almost think we’re in with a chance of making some positive changes. It may also have been partly to do with a big lunch because by far the most tears were as a result of the most amazing free lunch I have ever had the good fortune to experience.

Rare roast beef, warm butternut squash and beetroot salad, mixed wild garlic mushrooms, hand made sausage rolls, fettucine with cream and spinach.. Wee squares of cheese cake that were to die for, lemon biscuits and shot glasses full of Earl Grey panacotta… For free. There were tears, I can tell you. I had to hide in the bathroom until I’d calmed down. So far as I know I think Country Markets catered the event. God love them. If it was them.

Suffice to say I had a lovely day and felt inspired for hours afterwards. Now all I need to do is invent myself a project to do.

Sigh.

x x

A tasty bounty!

As I came home from college today, with the freezing wind stripping layers of skin off my cheeks, I stopped in the veg shop just before Newington Green and all was well with the world. It’s a fabulous shop – full of all manner vegetables, all colours and textures, beautifully arranged in a rainbow cascade of inspiration. It’s the kind of shop that makes you wish you knew how to do more exciting things with vegetables and make your head buzz with the endless possibilities: Moroccan vegetables tagines, Indian spiced curries, soups, side dishes and salads a riot of colour. Today, when I got home, I was tired and desperate for food, quickly, with minimum effort and maximum taste. Lengthy and loving preparation was not the order of the day. Happily, when I opened the fridge I found I had surprise halloumi, which answered all my prayers. I cut a few slices, threw it in a hope, dry pan with a few cherry tomatoes and fried it until it was brown and smelling as saltily delicious as I knew it would taste. Meanwhile, washed rocket, half a chopped yellow pepper, olive oil, pepper and balsamic vinegar got chucked in a bowl, the hot cheese and tomatoes followed and voila, one happy Amy. Even if my cheeks were still burning from the hot/cold horror combo.

All you need is salad

........

International Trade Regimes – Can international regulations meet the needs of the local?

In theory, increased trade should produce greater benefits in terms of resources to fight poverty but trade liberalisation seen at the end of the twentieth century has been very unequal and ‘hit the poor’.

International trade agreements are dominated by the richer countries (eg. 1993 Agreement on Agriculture ‘basically a pact between the US and the EU’), resulting in legislation that panders to their interests at the expense of LDCs. This results in trade agreements that aim to alleviate the problem of over-production and market saturation, priority being given to opening new markets, using technology to get greater returns and increased competitiveness for the food market. This overlooks the needs of developing countries who want their domestic agricultural sectors developed and protected from dumping and to be recognised and rewarded for indigenous knowledge. For example:

Trade liberalisation and international trade agreements such as patents require a strong state to protect its citizens from exploitation and uphold the rules; developing countries often lack this and richer countries tend to take advantage of this (see how neo-liberal policies are eroding the power of the state, more control being conceded to a transnational capitalist class who have no loyalty to any one state, only to profits)

Genetic modification: IPRS are expensive to both obtain and uphold, privileging those with the money to maintain them; most genetically modified products are modified to meet the needs of the processor or to make producers reliant on total systems of production (i.e seeds, fertilisers and herbicides) all from the same company; genetic modification reduces biodiversity, contaminates landraces used by subsistence farmers and constricts their opportunity to improve crops through seed swapping; GM not culturally/socially acceptable in Mexico, national identity aligned with corn itself

Subsidies: current regulations protect those countries rich enough to subsidise the dumped products, destroying the receiving domestic agricultural market, pushing people off the land and tying the country into dependence on imports (US freely admits that food aid is merely a development of its export market). The power of developing countries to protect themselves has been eroded with countervailing responses to dumping restrained and health standards etc prevented from being used to ‘descriminate against imports’. Moreover, regulations prevent developing countries raising their own levels of subsidy to meet that of developed countries despite. Inequality is innate and protected within the international trade regime.

Problems stem from false premises of neo-liberal policy ideology: that the market self-regulates; that trade liberalisation will ensure the most efficient allocation of resources; that more trade equals more economic growth; market based agricultural systems are powerful engines for economic growth; exports are essential to economic growth and development; in other words, that the commodification of the agricultural system, transforming food from a basic necessity to a vehicle for profit is the secret to economic development, the engine for development overall.

In truth ‘free trade’ has never really been realised internationally enough for it to ever ‘self regulate’. It has been used solely as a tool with which to lever open the markets of developing countries to better exploit them whilst the developed world continues to use market distorting measures such as subsidies to maintain its advantage. Growth does not equal development. More food traded does not necessarily mean more food grown or more food for the hungry, moreover economic growth does not necessarily benefit all – the trickle-down effect is largely mythical. Exports have predominantly allowed developed countries to export their environmental degradation, take advantage of cheaper labour, and dump surplus subsidised food whilst developing countries find exporting to divert food away from the hungry and consolidates farms, pushing smaller producers off the land. Essentially, everything is subservient to profit (the profit of the few): environment, civil society, culture and development policy.  But international food trade regimes overlook the fact that food performs a function above and beyond that of profit – in all of these international trade regimes food can be seen to exist in a void without cultural, social or environmental significance which is a vital and intrinsic value of food. Can international regulation ever meet local needs? International regulation serves only the internationally powerful.

SOLUTIONS? Change the IPR laws: amend them to facilitate sharing and innovation, exclude basic processes and biological materials,  etc (148-9 in handbook)

Stop dumping: greater transparency, extend safeguards, accurate cost of production measures (p. 130 h/book)

Overhaul the capitalist system (emphasis on profit)? La Via Campesina – putting the means of production back into the hands of the producers and wresting back power from the multi-nationals (role of the state vs. Transnational capitalist class) Via Campesina describes its main goal as ‘to realise food sovereignty and stop the destructive neoliberal processes’. ‘Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It develops a model of small scale sustainable production benefiting communities and their environment. It puts the aspirations, needs and livelihoods of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations.’

Momomomomos

As someone who used to suffer the most evil of pre-menstrual tension (the crying, the temper tantrums, the despair)  I have rules around cooking and being pre-menstrual. As a teenager, still getting to grips with the vagaries of being a woman, I was often unaware that, what appeared to be the imploding of my life, my hopes, dreams and self-respect, was in fact a hormonal merry-go-round. While still in college I was put on Microgynon – the first choice pill – reliable, well tested, not massively expensive. My mum came home one day to find me rocking in the corner of the kitchen, clutching a torn piece of bread in one hand and the butter knife in the other. Streaming with snot and tears I tried to explain that I was such a pointless person that I couldn’t even spread bread without TEARING THE BREAD WAAAAAARRR SNORT SNORT I JUST DON’T KNOW WHY I’M ALIIIIIIIIVE etc. I dropped the pills and felt fine in a day but vowed to remember and to learn that this feeling was hormonal, not the emotional apocalypse it felt like.

However, sometimes knowing you’re pre-menstrual when you’re pre-menstrual is not enough and averting the more serious tantrums requires a few basic rules, especially around food and its preparation, my own personal root to happiness and despair.

1. When you are pre-menstrual it’s ok to eat whatever you want to eat. Even if that’s a whole packet of sliced Jarlsberg straight out of the packet standing in front of the fridge. Because frankly, at this point you have no control over yourself, physically or mentally or emotionally, so you might as well roll with it and not try to beat yourself up.

2. Drink lots of water. It helps.

3. Do not attempt to cook anything new, anything elaborate or anything that takes more than 10 minutes to prepare.

4. Emotional instability is not a good time for gastronomical experimentation.

Now that I’ve had the coil fitted (too much sharing?), this PMT stuff is mostly a thing of the past. So when last week I turned into King Kong on gin and beta-blockers I wasn’t ready for it. I even went to go and see a counsellor in case I was actually falling off the road to sanity into the undergrowth of serious mental health issues. Unfortunately, I hadn’t read the signs and attempted to cook something that was a) something I’d only tried once before b) complicated to prepare c) something I didn’t have all the necessary ingredients for. This made for a tumultuous afternoon with mixed results.

I was trying to make Momos – Nepalese steamed dumplings. They are fiddly and require several stages of preparation. Here is the original recipe which comes from the SOAS Cookery Book Mark 1.

Momos

For the dough:

Looking deceptively successful

350g plain flour

150-200ml warm water

pinch of salt

For the filling (vegetarian):

2 medium onions

2 carrots

5cm piece of ginger

3 cloves of garlic

1 cabbage

salt

(this is not in the recipe but I cannot resist the urge to tinker so I added it and was tasty: soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, fresh coriander)

Dough: You can probably guess. Mix it all together to make a dough. Umm… Knead it for a bit until it’s smooth and then wrap it clingfilm and set aside.

Filling: Grate the cabbage, sprinkle with salt and set aside to draw the liquid out (this is what it says in the recipe but I didn’t do this but in retrospect I think I had the wrong kind of cabbage). Grate or chop everything else and put in a bowl. Add soy sauce and sesame oil to taste. Give it a good mix.

Construction: Either, roll out the dough and cut out circles of dough about the size of the mouth of a teacup OR pinch off pieces of dough and roll them out individually to the same size. The dough needs to be quite thin, so you can almost see through it. Put a spoonful of filling in the centre and then draw the edges together to make a pasty shape. It says in the book that you then draw the two corners together ‘to make a small pinch’ and then flatten the bottom slightly  - please do do this if you can.

Oil a steamer and set over a pan of boiling water and steam them for about 12 minutes. Eat with sauce.

Here is the recipe I made. I recommend not trying this one (although, in fairness, they were quite tasty).

Amy’s Reject Momos

Some ’00′ pasta flour because you don’t have any normal flour

Salt

Some warm water

Garlic

Half a courgette

Half a kohlrabi

One small onion

Zest of half a lime

Red pepper

Goat’s cheese

Dried apricots

Chilli powder

All varieties of wonky

Put the flour in a bowl and add a pinch of salt. Mix in enough water to make a soft and elastic dough. Knead for five minutes. Marvel at how the texture of pasta flour is different from normal flour. Feel worried that this may be a bad thing. Set aside, covered in cling film.

Look in fridge for carrot, onion, cabbage, coriander, garlic and ginger and find only old courgette, a vegetable you cannot remember the name of but turns out to be kohlrabi, a wrinkly red pepper, a lime, garlic and goat’s cheese. Consider that it may be better to make proper Italian egg pasta. Find there are no eggs. Have a tiny cry holding the fridge door. Feel despairing of empty fridge but incapable of putting on shoes and venturing out. Have only got 27p.

Resolve to make the most of crappy fridge contents. Grate courgette and kohlrabi into bowl. Try and fail to grate wrinkly pepper, grate knuckles. Chop pepper inexpertly and angrily and add to bowl. Slice onion and garlic thinly and grate the rind of half the lime into the bowl. Feel concerned about lack of flavour. Add grated goat’s cheese to bowl even though unconvinced by lime/goat’s cheese combo.

Look around kitchen for inspiration. Add chilli powder. Think about goat’s cheese and think that adding something sweet maybe a good idea. Discover three very old dried apricots. Slice finely and add to bowl.

With a wine bottle attempt to roll out dough. Remember that last time you failed to make neat little dumpling parcels by hand. Consider the Italian technique for making ravioli. Roll out dough into square. Imagine accolades in national media ‘Hackney Cook Wows World with Fusion Cooking’. Make little piles of suspect filling on square. Roll another matching square, finding that second piece of dough is not big enough. Roll out thinner. Lift square off surface only to find that it then rapidly shrinks before you can get it onto the patiently waiting bottom sheet and filling. Feel bottom lip trembling. Attempt to do it piece by piece. Find dough does not stick together well and holes appear. Find that bottom dough is stuck to deck. Feeling rising panic/anger/frustration. Take knife from drawer. Attempt to lever sticky mess of surface. See red. Draw veil over following events.

Just sad really...

Steam messy piles of dough and filling for 12 minutes. Eat whatever can be rescued from the ruins. Buy take away.

Suffice to say this was not a runaway success but they were edible. Even better, I did find the goats cheese and lime combo surprisingly tasty, even though everything was slightly marred by the liberal seasoning of blood, sweat and tears. Just remember next time, Amy, if the dough being slightly sticky is enough to make you cry, back away from the dough, Amy, back away from the dough.

So I was having a slight tense discussion with my much beloved and erratic, not to say impatient and sometimes irascible mother, along the lines of her saying ‘Someone should work out how much energy we would save in a year if all the things on stand-by in London were turned off”. I said it would be much better to de-centralise the production of electricity and save on the amount of energy that gets wasted in transporting it. She didn’t buy it. I don’t know where I read it but I felt pretty confident that some huge percentage (what, like maybe a quarter?) of all the electricity produced in the UK was wasted by trailing it through wires or whatever (am not a scientist, can you tell?) all over the country. Any humming sound or heat it produces is effectively lost or wasted energy. Naturally, I couldn’t remember where I’d read it, when or if I had really just made it up so I Googled it. And found this mind blowing graphic. It’s for America but I bet the wastage is similar in the UK.

According to these stats, in 2009 of the 94.5 QBTU (quadrillion British Thermal units – really) of energy produced in the US only 40 actually get used. And of all the energy produced, 38.2 QBTU gets turned into electricity of which 26.1 QBTU gets wasted before it reaches the consumer. 26.1 of 38.2! THAT’S LIKE 68%. SIXTY EIGHT PERCENT. Wasted even before it gets to the consumer.

That is the bad shit. This is why my mum has bought herself a tiny windmill to make her own electricity – she wants to be ready when all this bad shit hits the fan. When civilisation goes down in a blaze of riots and anarchy my mum wants to be able to make tea and listen to the radio in her field.