Do you want mine?

Exchange has been the subject of one of my earlier posts already. About a year ago I made a series about differences in Dutch and Italian food culture. This time I will stay more close to my and your home. However, if you want to you can still go far from home.

Before monetary value was invented people used to exchange to foresee in their needs. Eggs were exchanged for cereals, some goats for a cow. Besides exchanging goods knowledge was turned over from father to son when it concerned professional intelligence and from mother to daughter when it concerned cooking, sewing and raising the children.

The Romans introduced the money as we know it now. However, only later people became more dependent on the content of their wallet. The market squares in cities were still the center of commerce but in a different way. The seller came with a product and left with money while the buyer did it the other way around. It made it easier because the seller and buyer became less dependent from each other; it wasn’t necessary to find someone who had exactly the merchandise you needed. As soon as you sold your stuff you could go somewhere else to buy what you wanted to own. Market slowly were replaced by (specialty) shops.

Now money seems to get scarcer exchange of goods becomes popular again. We share cars, bikes and homes when necessary. But also knowledge is on the market again. It is now exchanged in books, on the internet, during lectures between colleagues and so on. It seems we don’t care that anyone can read the information we send out onto the World Wide Web. Whether it is about our latest holiday, a hangover or a new home.

A more exiting exchanging  way to trade in knowledge is to go back onto the market again. Meet the people who made or produced it. Ask some questions and get back information. Try to go down on the price in a real life discussion. Or even better. Make sure that it doesn’t cost you any money at all.

This recipes market was one of the activities I recently found out about. But more is to come. Like the DAG HAP festival hosted a home-made food market and a fashion label organized a clothes swap. So step from behind your computer and go into public again!

Fastfood at your doorstep

One of the main characteristics of fast-food is that it is delivered soon after you placed your order. This minimizes the time you have to wait almost to zero. Now someone found a way to make it even more easier!

After WWII, when domestic appliances became available to everyone and televisions became the most important object of the house, producers started to think how they could make it easier for housewives and working moms to make dishes. The first ready-to-eat meals were prepared and on sale in supermarktes. It became incredible popular within a short period of time.

At that time families could also start to buy their first car. Production of these machines became more efficient and thus cheaper. Due to shorter working weeks, people also first encountered the phenomenon of leisure time. In the weekends people didn’t stay at home anymore but drove out of the city to see more of the country. All these impressions made hungry. That’s where the hamburger restaurants get in.

In the same efficiency as cars were made, the hamburger restaurants ‘assembled’ menus containing fries, shakes and of course (ham)burgers. Costumers should order their food at the counter to keep the prices low and the system as efficient as possible. Later drive-in made it faster than ever. There was no need to get out of the car anymore, so less time was ‘wasted’ on eating.

Now fast-food is available everywhere. The prices are still low. Most of the times even lower than primary products like fruit and vegetables which can be picked up in supermarkets. You know what is has caused. 

Soon the drive-in might not be necessary anymore. At most a drive-in for the fast-food delivery service. Some smart guys recently started a delivery service which brings your favorite hamburger menu at your doorstep. It takes no effort at all.

I am not sure whether to be happy on this. It is no good when fast-food is becoming available easier than it already is. On the other hand will it probably become much more expensive and so more comparable in price to other home delivery services. And than people might decide for the healthier option.

If I was the pig on the picture I wouldn’t complain at all; a relaxed place to spend my days, plenty of food and attention of happy little children and no pressure to perform at all. Unfortunately most pigs live a completely different life.

Have you ever considered where you daily/weekly piece of meat is coming from? Most of us (still) don’t eat meat from their own ‘backyard’ (read: grown within a certain distance from our homes). Which will in most cases mean that the meat you eat is bought at the supermarket. Or are you brave enough to visit the butcher regularly?

Some butchers are still in close contact with the farmers which grow the animals they later sell as steak, sausages or cutlets. This Dutch butcher even fed two pigs in his own backyard. Some female clients fell in love with them and decided to buy the pigs alive when they heard the butcher wanted to bring them to the slaughterhouse. You can discuss whether this was the best choice to do.

When you go shopping it is highly probable that you choose for the highest quality for the highest price. Most people look for a good balance between price and quality. A balance in which the quality is as high as possible and the price the lowest. This will satisfy you because you will enjoy your meal and have some money left to spend on other things which you think are more important than your food.

Pigs are animals which like to walk around, cool down in the mud and love to eat our food leftovers. The pigs owned by the butcher could enjoy all these advantages because only then the butcher was sure the meat they would produce would be from a special quality. So the pigs are happy in their live, the butcher in his shop and the clients in their kitchen.

But this butcher becomes more and more unique. Pigs and other animals we like to eat are disappearing further and further away from our lives. We don’t seem to want to know how our schnitzel has lived when it was still able to walk around. Like the woman showed when they bought the pigs from the Dutch butcher. As long as we pay a reasonable (low) price we don’t care how and where it’s grown. We just want to be sure it’s safe and tastes a certain way.

How strange if you realize that we like to grow our own fruit and vegetables in our garden. And we want to be sure that our food from the supermarket is safe and preferably organic. Then why are we so afraid to think of some cute animals - which could have a good life as a farmer takes extra care of them - being killed to be on our plate one day. Well, I’ll tell you something. All your meat was once walking around, hopefully breathing some fresh air and enjoying the environment they lived in. Only you haven’t accepted this.

Do it yourself

Still pretty but some sun, water and lot's of love will make them strong soon

In our food-supply we have made ourselves completely dependent on supermarkets. While it is so much more fun to do it yourself.

Before industrialization started most people grew (at least some of) their own food. There were no supermarkets yet. Let go of fridges and freezers which could keep the produce fresh for a couple of days. In summer the strawberries and other fruits where picked and eaten. Special treatments enabled the people to conserve the surpluses for periods in which less food was available. Many houses even had special cabinets with a stable temperature in their houses. 

In this period it wasn’t even strange to have a pig or some goats around your house. Despite the smell people profited from the presence of these animals. In times when food was plenty, they could eat the leftovers and grow. In times when food was scarce, the ‘pet’ was eaten. It was a normal lifecycle which everyone excepted because it was the only way to survive.

Now we in cities cannot really accept the neighbor having a smelly and maybe also noisy animal in the garden. Eat least not a kind of animal which you could also eat in cases the supermarkets are empty.

The current trend on food manly focuses on the growing of vegetables and fruits in and around the city. It is a good trend since finally people start to value their food again, it brings people together and it saves energy for transporting the foods you normally buy at the supermarket. But it can’t feed all of us.

After being interested in the relation between food, people in cities for four years now, I finally started to bring my theoretical knowledge into practice: I grow my own food. Well, not really food but tomatoes. And it is such fun. From planting seeds into the soil, watering them to the moment the seeds to pop-up. And then the growing process. It’s unbelievable to see how fast these seeds change into small plants which are - hopefully - within a few months strong enough to carry beautiful tomatoes.

If there’s too many to eat, I will definitely use some old tricks to conserve them so I could enjoy my work until next spring. Or I can call you in. I’ll keep you updated.

Royal insects

Read the interesting blog which will convince you to at least try to eat something new

Insects are usually related to nature and dirt. Hoe surprising to hear that the Dutch Queen-to-be was recently handed-over an insect cook book.

The number of people on earth keeps growing while there also is an expansion of people which could afford to live a Western lifestyle. This means more cars, more travel, more meat on the plates and thus more CO2 emissions.

Researchers concluded that we cannot continue eating as much meat as we do now. It is too energy consuming to grow cows, pigs, chicken and any other four legged animal. Growing animals is not very efficient way of making food for humans. The animals need liters of water and kilo’s of food each day. And the food has to grow somewhere and transported to another. The more energy, water and soil we need for the animals, the less we have for ourselves.

Since this problem is expected already some years specialists started to look for alternatives. Food which helps us to get the right nutrients but avoids all the energy use. If you don’t want to eat meat you already have the choice to eat tofu, beans and eggs or (if you live in Holland) a piece of ‘meat’ from the Vegetarian Butcher. But now there is something different available: insects.  

In some cultures insects are not an unusual aspect of dinner at all; 80% of the world eats them as a delicacy. In Mexico people love to eat ants, in Japan wasps are favorites on the menu. But Europeans don’t really seem to be attracted to eat these. To convince us of the possibilities, two academics and a chef made a book full of information and of course delicious recipes with the sustainable meat substitutes.

If this book can really make us to eat less meat it could mean a big change in the way agriculture is organized now. At this moment farmers mainly seem to look for more efficient kinds of growing plants and animals to be sure we can all eat what we want. This leads to an unhealthy way of producing food in which landscapes are dominated with monotonous crops and animals never see daylight. The bug industry could change this into more traditional landscapes filled with cows and pigs and grown with a diversity of crops.

If you - like I - have never tried consciously y eat an insect, then this might be a reason to at least try it. Go to a specialty shop which sells grasshoppers, mealworms or black fungus worm and just order some. Then find a recipe which guarantees a good taste. Do you like it?

Legally addicted

A beautifully growing tobacco plant hasn't a beautiful effect on our health

During the last years the discussion about eating food on the streets has grown. It might not be a good trend that people eat in public. Having a meal is namely very important for social and health reasons and therefore asks for serious concentration. What about the growing number of smokers on the streets?

Smoking was very popular after WWII. It used to be just for the rich but soon lighting a cigarette was accepted by all even for working class. Smokers where facilitated with ashtrays in cinemas and public transport, television series and films filled with by smoking persons and offices where filled with a blue mist.

When a clear relation between smoking and all kinds of chronic diseases was proved, the anti-smokers lobby grew. From that moment on smoking in public buildings wasn’t allowed anymore or only in designated areas. Airplanes and public transport became non-smoking, commercials were only allowed at special occasions and cigarettes couldn’t be sold to persons under a certain age anymore. Special taxes were introduced similar to the one they are considering for fats now.

Now smokers are moved out of the buildings we see them more often on the streets. Before you enter your office, a restaurant or the train station, you might have to walk through a smelly mist caused by the smokers. The strict regulations should discourage people to smoke and protect others from suffering of effects caused by the addictive habit. But in effect we seem to suffer more than ever.

Smoking also influences our agriculture. The biggest European tobacco growing countries are Italy, Poland, Spain, Bulgaria, Greece and France. Like any other plant it needs soil, water, some food (read: fertilizers) and sunlight to grow. The plantations absorb a significant part of our agricultural area. A smoker should not forget that every cigarette he  lights not only has a negative effect on his health and to that of those around him but also uses some of our valuable agricultural area.

The discussion of European food security and health now seems to focus mainly on animal diseases, bio-fuels and obesities in relation to the subsidies going to European agriculture. But we should not forget to remember the tobacco industries. If this bad habit would be banned we will have more space and energy left to grow food we can really survive on. Maybe this is a convincing argument to stop now?

Something is growing

A chicken freely walking around in an (sub)urban farm

It is Easter. The time that the sun appears, trees start to flower and the first baby animals are born. The sober winter period slowly disappears and gives room to a fresh new world. Humanity starts to smile again.

The shops also show a transition in their assortment. The last cabbages are sold and replaced by more light leafy vegetables like spinach and different kinds of lettuce. And now it is Easter the supermarkets offer all kinds of specialties which you can serve to your guests. As a consumer you can choose from luxurious breads and cutlets, cheeses and jams. But it is Easter so we cannot forget about the eggs.

Since the beginning of this year it is not allowed to hold laying hens in battery cages anymore. A battery cage was a space just a little bit bigger than an A4 sized paper (25*30cm) and was meant to produce as many eggs a possible while using no space at all. Very cheap and efficient for the farmer. Not at all pleasant for the hens and thus for the quality of the eggs.

Despite the attractiveness of the low prices consumers realized it couldn’t continue like this. They started to buy free range or even organic eggs. The supermarkets picked up this new trend and started to offer a bigger diversity of good eggs and banned the battery ones from their shelves.

Unfortunately it is more difficult to find the animal friendly version in processed products which contain eggs. Most biscuits, pasta, ice cream and mayonnaises still contained ‘the bad ones’.

Now the battery cages are not allowed anymore, it becomes more difficult for these producers to get their cheap eggs. Good news for hens and consumers but the producers still knows to find a way around these regulations. Although the European committee is forcing their member states to strictly control the execution of these regulations, there are still farmers which illegally produce in the old fashioned way and could thus deliver to producers which want to use these eggs.

As a consumer we should be more aware. Don’t just buy the mayonnaise you’ve always bought. First check if it is made with free-range or organic eggs. If not, then check the others brands. By boycotting the incorrect products we will force those producers to change their production methods and ingredients (from battery cage to at least free range eggs).

In the end there is nothing better than an egg freshly taken from your own happy hens in your own beautiful garden. So if you have the chance and room to house then consider buying some. Then next year’s Easter will definitely perfect.