Category Eat

You may shy away from the idea of eating cane toad leg stir-fry; Emma Lupin will not. As a Northern Territory resident for the last seven years, Emma has channelled all her efforts into learning the ways of the tropics, finding local produce and searching for sustainable ways to grow it and delicious ways of cooking it – including cane toads, which she doesn’t recommend because they’re poisonous.

Finding and using local produce in the remote city of Darwin isn’t easy. Emma says a lot of dry goods can travel up to 30000 kilometres to reach there. Motivated to change how Territorians view their exotic local produce, Emma began a website ‘tasteofthetopend’ where anyone can go online to view and share their produce and recipes: ‘I thought there was a real need to get people in touch with local food and to tell them more about it’.

A permaculture-designed diet is healthy, local and sustainable, with much of the food grown in our own gardens, farms and communities. When we choose to eat what’s in season, and to eat locally grown foods, we reduce or remove the harmful and wasteful aspects of processing, packaging, transport, storage and additives, and we begin to take control of what we eat.

Most people want to know what a good diet is, and many want to heal their bodies through eating natural foods. For some it’s because they appreciate good food and diversity of tastes. But for many it’s because our wealthy Western diet is making them sick. Millions of Australians suffer from a range of serious digestive diseases including diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, coeliac disease and food allergies.

Almost fifteen years ago, a young Shanaka Fernando dreamed of a world based on need rather than greed. He wished people would focus less on money and more on each other, and wondered if the act of giving would make a difference.

It was a philosophical question, about generosity: ‘If we are as generous as possible, would people value that and reciprocate? Could we create a culture of generosity?’ Although Shanaka was born into comfortable circumstances in Sri Lanka, as a child he’d seen the struggles of those less fortunate than himself. As a student in Australia he wondered what would happen if food was made available to people without them having to worry about money.

Not content to wonder, Shanaka took action, and in early 2000 opened the first restaurant of the not-for profit organisation Lentil as Anything in St Kilda. The restaurant served simple, nutritious vegetarian food with the help of local volunteer staff. ‘I knew that it wasn’t being done anywhere else. I hoped it would work, and was happy to try for three months. I knew that people needed an opportunity to bring out the best in themselves.’ Nearly fifteen years later, his experiment in generosity is a success: Lentil as Anything has five restaurants in Melbourne and Sydney, and each has no fixed prices – some customers pay more than the cost of providing the food, others are not able to pay at all.

When I first heard about permaculture I was drawn to how it provides tools for living in sync with the planet, as a designed approach with ethics and principles. What I wasn’t prepared for was how it could be applied to so many aspects of life. So, when I was introduced to lactofermentation it was no surprise that it did the same thing, but on a microbial level: we have a gut food web similar to the soil food web, which can be nourished, maintained or killed by the choices we make.

Consuming fermented foods and drinks promotes diversity of gut microbes, builds resilience in our immune function and has other benefits. Fermenting uses microbes in, on and around us to create foods that benefit our gut and bodies: microbes consume sugars and create enzymes and vitamins, and perform other digestive functions.

During fermentation beneficial microbes work together, sometimes as a colony referred to as a culture or a ‘symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeasts’ (SCOBY). We can manipulate the fermenting environment to favour the desired outcome, for example to preserve food.

Not far from the north-western coast of Italy, near the French border, is a beautiful and fascinating ecovillage created out of a crumbling medieval village. The Torri Superiore Cultural Association was founded in 1989 to restore and re-inhabit the abandoned village and create a cultural centre.

Torri was an early adopter of permaculture in Italy, and continues to lead permaculture education programs. The restored stone village is surrounded by farming terraces, many of which the Association manages as permaculture gardens and orchards. It also tends free range chickens and produces many homemade products such as bread, pasta, olive oil, honey, jam, yogurt, ice-cream, culinary herbs and herbal teas. To produce the olive oil, the Association worked with neighbours and the local community to restore the old water-powered olive press in a nearby town.

Chorizo is a sausage that you can eat at three different stages: the first is fresh, and cooked on a barbecue as normal; the second is hung and cured for a couple of weeks, and then sliced and fried and eaten inside fresh bread; the third is hung for four weeks until it is hard, like a good salami. Try the different stages and see which is best for you.

Makes about seven to nine sausages.

Making your own chorizo is really exciting and satisfying but you must be aware that there are risks associated with it, especially to the young, the elderly and the infirm of constitution. Do your research and understand the process. Cooking cured meats before you eat them, however, reduces that risk to almost zero.

My friend Barbara and I were disappointed with the amount of fruit and vegetables available for sale locally and knew that, with the great range of microclimates and soils in Nethercote and surrounding localities, there must be a lot being grown. We hoped that starting the market would be a great opportunity to encourage local growers to get involved and hopefully grow more.

We were frequently asked to hold the markets more regularly. One Sunday afternoon, while parked in the main street of Eden, I spotted an empty shop and the idea for Sprout was born.

My vision was to create a mini version of the seasonal markets, providing customers with daily access to locally grown produce, and a regular outlet for local growers to sell their excess. I also wanted to combine that with a friendly café, for people to meet and relax in while enjoying great food using local ingredients.

I could not believe how easy this is to make. Now I never buy ricotta, it just doesn’t compare to what I make at home. This is best made with whey (a by-product of cheese production) but failing that use full cream un-homogenised milk.

Ingredients

4 ltr milk or whey

50 ml white vinegar or lemon juice

Salt (optional)

I think that if any of the readers of this magazine were asked if they ate local food most would say ‘yes, I shop at the local farmers’ market, grow my own vegies, swap with friends and support local businesses’. I would have said the same a year ago, but I decided to put my ‘eat localness’ to the test and to eat only local food for a month. I set myself a few stringent guidelines:

eat only food produced here on the farm or traded with local growers

cook using only the wood stove and wood I have collected locally

no other fuel use – no car for the month!

It was our month off, so instead of going on holiday we stayed at home and lived off the land. I say ‘we’, for although my partner Do had the good sense to draw the line at giving up that morning coffee, we were in this together.