The Spice of Life
slowfood.com
slowfood.com
He still let’s the core ingredients shine and doesn’t “over spice” but somehow manages to take you on a road that begins with a fiery amuse bousche and ends the meal with numbing peppercorns sprinkled atop a fragarent orange slice.
European cooking has a long tradition of using fresh herbs and spices that are geographically available. Fresh herbs are an essential part of French cooking, and fresh paprika is essential to Spanish cooking.
It's the spices that don't grow in Europe that get neglected for cooking. I have a suspicion that gin distillers are a bit more discerning in the freshness of their spices though.
I used to do home distilling, and I made gin from old juniper once and it was foul, you really need botanicals that are as fresh as possible.
Also, especially for the bigger distillers, consistency in your product is important, so they'll likely have quite thorough sourcing for their botanicals, rather than just buying them from a local wholesaler.
I had a friend who tried making his own gin a few times. Since I have (far too many!) juniper bushes/trees on my property, I gave him some fresh juniper berries to try.
The resulting gin smelled absolutely amazing, but tasted like ass!
Before refrigeration tech, salt and spices are one of the best ways to make food last longer in a hot environment.
No. In the Roman Empire Garum (a fermented fish sauce) was produced in industrial scale in the Iberian peninsula and exported as a luxury condiment all across the Empire.
Many other ingredients followed similar production and distribution.
A salt-processing town that may be the oldest town in Europe dates to nearly 5000 BC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solnitsata
That's the issue. Spices in the article refer to asian spices in the spice trade, unlike salt, chilli peppers, (which are not native to asia at all), Garum, etc.
Evidence: Garum was subject to capitalist and imperialist processes of production and distribution before spices.
Claim is therefore incorrect.
That's before we get into the bullshit of "capitalist and imperialist processes".
Garum was processed and distributed from Roman imperial colonies across the Roman Empire.
And there is no such thing as "capitalist and imperialist processing and distribution". That's just made-up bullshit.
Also, spices are perfectly suited for commodity production due to their handling characteristics.
Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs
Wheat and other staples have been used for such purposes for thousands of years. Some researchers think that the power of staples to act as currency for large scale civilizations is what led to their dominance - since nutritionally they aren't compelling.
Just avoid the terrible "eat local" idea. It's horrible for the environment.
Grow food in the climate/area that suits it best. Not in the area that happens to be next to the consumer.
Transportation costs are a LOT LOT lower than you think. Eating only local uses more energy, not less.
This is completely unrealistic, and unhealthy as well.
There are lots of places were food grows OK (and humans lived that way for a long time), but the best is to grow food in the best place for it, not just "OK".
You use less fertilizer, and energy that way. The slight added transportation cost doesn't even come close.
And in any case, what's the value here? Why do that? What difference does it make where the food grows? I've heard silly things like "less pesticide" - but that makes no sense - what about the people living near that food? If they eat it does it somehow have less pesticide, but people far away get more?
Are you willing to have a discussion and apply the Principle of Charity or not? And again, do you have any sources?
> The slight added transportation cost doesn't even come close [...] What's the value here?
If you preferentially buy food that does not need to be shipped long distances, you can reduce your carbon footprint.
> In 2005, the import of fruits, nuts, and vegetables into California by airplane released more than 70,000 tons of CO2, which is equivalent to more than 12,000 cars on the road.
If you can figure out the math, you're a better engineer than me.
Puts on goggles and aviator's cap to resume tilting at the Organic Lychee windmill
Canada's most prominent food related export is Maple Syrup. Is it such a stretch? For them that's a very efficient export. And the native population used to eat a lot of Seal meat, so clearly that's the most efficient food for that area.
> Are you willing to have a discussion and apply the Principle of Charity or not?
Go for it. The growing season in Canada is so short you'd have to farm a ton of land to feed everyone. Tell me how you'd make it work.
Again, you have not explained why bother doing that?
> In 2005, the import of fruits, nuts, and vegetables into California by airplane released more than 70,000 tons of CO2, which is equivalent to more than 12,000 cars on the road.
That's it?? That's nothing. But why are you looking at airplane to California? Most food is shipped by truck, and California imports relatively little food.
And how much extra energy does it take to grow food in the wrong place? It's a comparison, not an absolute.
> And again, do you have any sources?
You can google just as easily as me. Here for example: http://freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/the-inefficiency-of-local...
"My conservative estimates are that under the pseudo-locavore system, corn acreage increases 27 percent or 22 million acres, and soybean acres increase 18 percent or 14 million acres. Fertilizer use would increase at least 35 percent for corn, and 54 percent for soybeans, while fuel use would climb 23 percent and 34 percent, for corn and soybeans, respectively. Chemical demand would grow 23 percent and 20 percent for the two crops, respectively.
In order to maintain current output levels for 40 major field crops and vegetables, a locavore-like production system would require an additional 60 million acres of cropland, 2.7 million tons more fertilizer, and 50 million pounds more chemicals. The land-use changes and increases in demand for carbon-intensive inputs would have profound impacts on the carbon footprint of our food, destroy habitat and worsen environmental pollution.
It’s not even clear local production reduces carbon emissions from transportation. The Harvard economist Ed Glaeser estimates that carbon emissions from transportation don’t decline in a locavore future because local farms reduce population density as potential homes are displaced by community gardens. Less-dense cities mean more driving and more carbon emissions. Transportation only accounts for 11 percent of the carbon embodied in food anyway, according to a 2008 study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon; 83 percent comes from production."
Canada exports ~$200mm worth of maple syrup a year, and $5bn worth of wheat. Similarly, seals were only an important food source for the Inuit, who have never accounted for a significant portion of Canada's population.
>Go for it. The growing season in Canada is so short you'd have to farm a ton of land to feed everyone. Tell me how you'd make it work.
Canada is a net exporter of food and food products - 56bn export, 44bn import: http://www.agr.gc.ca/eng/industry-markets-and-trade/internat...
You seem to be getting your facts from the book of lazy stereotypes. Do you think we also ride moose or polar bears to work instead of driving cars?
Partly my fault, I admit, since I added those details to try to make my point.
Can I ask you to redirect to the actual topic of: Is preferring to eat local good or bad for the environment?
> Canada is a net exporter of food and food products
Good. So there are things that grow well there. It doesn't really have any bearing on my point.
> You seem to be getting your facts from the book of lazy stereotypes. Do you think we also ride moose or polar bears to work instead of driving cars?
This is really unnecessary, and derails conversations.
Pick any major city in Canada and you can get local, fresh berries when they're in season, lettuce, squash, beans, corn, wheat, any of the usual staples. It's only when you go above the Arctic Circle that your options get more constrained. Just because the growing season is shorter doesn't mean it's not possible to farm. You just need to pick appropriate crops and be more selective about their varieties.
An example of this is Winter Wheat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_wheat) which is a specific variety of wheat that grows much better in the northern praries. There's a lot of other crops like this with hardier, more durable varieties that have been adapted over decades by farmers. Fruits and vegetables of all kinds do just fine with the right choices and careful attention.
You won't get local avocado, bananas or oranges, but the same holds true for about a quarter of the continental US, states in a row from Washington over to Maine.
Instead there's apples, strawberries, blueberries, peaches and apricots. There's also a wide variety of livestock that don't have any trouble with the winter weather or can be housed indoors, from chickens to cows to goats to ostrich and emu if you prefer. There's also vast amounts of land for ranches in the western part of the country.
I don't know what your point is other than blathering on about total nonsense regarding maple syrup and seals.
(Honestly, the biggest single export from Canada is probably marijuana. In many cases it eclipses lumber in terms of revenues.)
> when they're in season, lettuce, squash, beans, corn, wheat, any of the usual staples.
What do you eat the rest of the year? That's the question. It's not a question on the ability of Canada to grow food.
If you only ate local, you are extremely constrained in what you can eat because things are only in season for a short time.
An additional question is: Where is the best place to grow a particular food?
For example, you mentioned Winter Wheat. Perfect! Grow that, and livestock, in Canada, and don't grow Wheat in Florida. Instead Ship Food! Let Florida grow oranges, and Canada grow Wheat, then trade, and get rid of this "local" nonsense.
> I don't know what your point is other than blathering on about total nonsense regarding maple syrup and seals.
Do you understand my point now? Or do you still think I'm somehow criticizing Canada?
By growing food in the best place for it you can save a ton of energy and fertilizer. Eat local is bad for the environment because it uses more resources, and because it forces people to have restricted diets.
And you're right, to a certain extent. We wouldn't have oranges or avocados, unless they were grown inefficiently. We would have to change our diets.
The point you're missing though, I think, is that pretty much any region that had a significant population before industrialization is able to grow and eat a reasonably well-balanced diet locally. Would I miss avocados and oranges? Definitely. Would it mean that I'd be incapable of eating a nutritious diet? Absolutely not.
> What do you eat the rest of the year?
Well, lots of vegetables will last a long time in a "cold room". This is an uninsulated room in the basement that usually hovers just above freezing point. Meat can be frozen, or preserved, or butchered as needed. Grains and legumes keep a long time (wheat, lentils, peas, etc). Dairy farms run all-year-round.
Around here, many people produce significantly more fruit than they could eat before it spoils; the solution is generally to freeze it or can it. At my house, we keep the deep freeze outside, so keeping frozen food is pretty much zero cost for a significant portion of the year.
I dunno dude, while my diet would be a little less interesting, eating entirely local would be quite plausible in the Canadian prairies. There's things I'd miss, but it wouldn't be nutrients.
[...but you can pry avocados out of my cold dead hands]
(I'm of the view that carbon dioxide emissions are simply too complex for any central labelling authority to figure out; the only way that can work is imposing a cap and trade system on emissions (like we did for sulphur dioxide) and then letting the market incorporate those costs into food prices)
Eating local is very bad for the environment, unless you're eating only what grows nearby better than anywhere else.
If anything eat local makes that worse, since there is a very very short timeframe where the food is ripe, so you need long storing food even more than before.
With remote shipping you can rotate around the world and have crops ripen all the way around the year, so less storage is needed.
I'm pretty sure tomatos from averagely tomato-friendly part of the world are better than whatever you grow in my local darkness and rain. Not to mention winter.
People in worse climates are already behind when it comes to quality of life, and suggesting them to eat local is to suggest them to further lose their quality of life voluntarily.
"Local" as in "nearby" I try to buy because it gives me confidence in how the product is produced. I'm too fond of eating animals to become a vegetarian, but I could see myself eating only animals I have that I have reasonable idea of how and where they lived.
Completely agree with things like tomatoes though: it's much better for me to buy tomatoes shipped in a boat from spain than buying them grown in a heated greenhouse next doors. But that brings me to my next pet peeve: don't just eat local, if you want to eat local make sure to also eat seasonal.
Any one else have a good source?