Archive for November, 2006Veg News magazine in the US has just announced the winners of the Veggie Awards 2006. Apparently 10 000 people voted in the awards, which Veg News claims makes it “the world’s largest survey of all things veg.” The awards have a strong US slant (so unfortunately I didn’t know a lot of the products and restaurants). However, Andy and I have decided to eat at the best vegetarian restaurant winner, Millenium, when we’re in San Francisco on our honeymoon. I thought it was interesting that Subway took out the award for most popular takeaway joint, given most of the other winners have a strong ethical slant. I think people had to vote from a shortlist, and maybe it was limited to franchises. Or perhaps the US isn’t lucky enough to have great vegetarian takeaway joints, like the Iku Wholefoods chain, in Sydney. San Francisco was voted the most vegetarian friendly city in the US, while London took out the award for best international city. I think there must have been some bias in the voting on this one. I lived in London for a little while in the 1990s, and while it was much more veggie friendly than some of its continental counterparts (that means you Paris) it was not a vegetarian nirvana. However, I was there before the mad cow disease outbreak, so maybe that frightened Londoners into becoming vegetarian. Personally, I voted for Sydney because a) I’m biased and b) we have lots of vegetarian restaurants, many other restaurants that are vegetarian friendly, and ready access to ingredients for vegetarian cooking. It also helps that Sydney has a strong multicutural base, because in my experience European cooking is not the kindest cuisine for vegetarians. Some other winners were Moo Shoes, for best storefront. I’m really happy about that because I’m a fan of their online service and was planning to hit the NY store when we’re in the US in February. Best online store went to Vegan Essentials. In the most prestigious category, favourite vegetarian celebrity, Joaquin Phoenix and Natalie Portman took out the awards for best male and female, and Paul McCartney took out the award for favourite musician. Next year will be yours, Thom Yorke! Technorati (the blog monitoring site) has just released its latest state of the blogosphere report. Among other things, the report looks at how blogs come to be authoritative (a question I’ve often asked myself). They measured authority according to how many blogs linked to the blog within a six month period. They only included blogs that had a minimum of three lnks. Anyhow, technorati found that there are some common characteristics of top bloggers. The biggest determinant was how often bloggers posted (d’oh). The ‘blogging elite’(the very high authority group - 500 or more blogs linking to their blog in the last 6 months) posted around two times per day. This group represents the top 4000 blogs. The next two groups (the high authority group with 100-499 blogs linking in the last 6 months and the middle authority group with 10-99 blogs linking in the last 6 months) both posted around 18 times a month - 50% more than blogs in the low authority group. The main factor distinguishing the high and middle authority groups was the age of the blog - the older the blog, the more likely they were to have more people linking to them. That makes sense, because I guess the longer you stick around the more likely it is that people will find you. So, I guess the take out for Veggie Friendly (currently a middle authority blog) is that I have to be diligent with my posts, and just keep on keeping on. Hmm, this authority business seems like a lot of work. Ivonne from Cream Puffs in Venice and Orchidea from Viaggi e Sappori have created a special, one-off food event, dishes of comfort, to celebrate special dishes people loved as a child.
I loved Ivonne’s story of being brought up by her Grandma, and the Italian food they ate. However, despite my mum’s love of food, when I was growing up in the 1980s, “typical” Australian food was quite bland. It wasn’t easy to find the range of ingredients that are stock standard in supermarkets today, and the influence of food from non-European cultures hadn’t permeated Anglo Australian culture (particularly in country South Australia). So, our dinners consisted of tuna mornay, roasts on Saturday nights, boiled vegetables with sausage or steak, and cold salads in summer. I think a lot of dishes at that time had nods to Asian and Italian food, but the dishes were heavily anglicised and had lost touch with the original spices, sauces, and techniques that made the food notable in the first place. My grandmother (on my father’s side) also loved food and cooking. She lived in a different state to us, so we only saw her about once a year. However, almost all my memories of her involve her kitchen, her garden and food. Grandma constantly wore an apron, and loved to bustle around the kitchen, taking care of everyone and talking for hours (seriously) on end. At lunchtime we would gather around a table laden with food. There were plates of salads, cold meats, sweets and fresh iced doughnuts that Grandma would sneak out to buy early in the morning when my brother and I came to visit (Grandma was not of the school of thought that worried about childhood obesity). Despite Grandma’s love of cooking, I didn’t spend enough time with her to learn her recipes. My other strong childhood memory of food is eating fresh, summer fruits. Until I was eight years old, I lived in a fruit and grape growing region in South Australia called the Riverland. Our large backyard had apricot, nectarine, plum and almond trees, and I took full advantage of them every summer. Even when we moved away, fruit and vegetables remained amongst my favourite foods - one of the reasons why becoming vegetarian was a very easy decision. Anyhow, this is a roundabout way of saying that it was hard initially to think of ‘tasty, comfort dishes’ from my childhood (especially dishes that were vegetarian), partly because my family don’t come from a wonderful tradition of food, like Italian, Japanese, French or Indian, and partly because my wandering childhood meant that I didn’t have a consistent experience of particular dishes. However… there is one dish that holds an extremely special place in my memory: cauliflower cheese (that’s cauliflower au gratin for you francophiles). We ate cauliflower cheese with formal, roast dinners and on special occasions like Christmas, so I associate the dish with wearing my best clothes, setting out the mint sauce on the table, using Grandma’s special crockery and running around waiting for guests to arrive. I loved cauliflower cheese so much I would always save it until the end of my meal so I’d leave the table savouring the taste in my mouth. Even better than eating cauliflower cheese at dinner was eating the leftovers the next morning. After a roast dinner I could carefully scrape together all of the leftover vegetables and gravy, and cook them up in a fry pan as bubble and squeak. Yum! While our Christmas dinners are much more modern these days, as befits hot Australian summers, my poor mum still has to make cauliflower cheese for me, and I still leave it until last to eat. So, here is my family recipe for cauliflower cheese. Enjoy! Ingredients Method Melt butter. Mix in flour. Stir well – at least a minute (must all be incorporated). According to my Dad, this is the secrete to a white sauce, lots of stirring to remove all lumps. Gradually add milk and stir very well after each addition (lift off the heat if getting too hot). Add salt & pepper, nutmeg and mustard. Add grated cheese. Meanwhile, lightly steam the cauliflower then add to a quiche or baking dish. Cover the cauliflower in white sauce and bake for about 20 minutes in a 180 degree oven (or until the cauliflower has turned golden brown). Enjoy! Speaking of McDonald’s, the latest Hitwise newsletter rates the McDonald’s Apparently the makeupyourownmindwebsite was rated 16,447 in Australia up to the week ending Saturday 16th September. One month later, it was ranked 1,284 (on the back of a saturation marketing campaign). Hitwise also reports that the primary visitors to the site are “better-off families in core suburban and rural fringe locations” (25.52%) while the second highest group can “best” be described as “disadvantaged peripheral urban and country neighbourhoods” (14.84%). I guess the campaign failed with inner city latte-ites, but then they’re probably not McDonald’s core customers. The makeupyourownmind campaign is widely regarded as a preemptive strike ahead of the release of the film Fast Food Nation. McDonald’s deny this. Apparently they just happened to be running a consumer education campaign at the same time as the movie came out, and it’s a coincidence that the campaign launched the week before Eric Schlosser (the author of the book on which Fast Food Nation is based) arrived in town. I’m guessing the makeupyourownmind web campaign is the brainchild of interactive marketing agency Tribal DDB because the makeupyourownmind domain name is registered to Emily Thompson, a senior account manager with Tribal DDB. Her profile on the Tribal DDB website says she “services some of [their] most challenging accounts.” If they say so. Bray told the ABC that the website was not affiliated with the film or activists. However, I saw a print ad for the film about a week before it’s Australian release, and the website was mentioned in the ad. This was the first I’d seen of it, so I assumed it was the official website of the film. As the website mirrors the look of the McDonald’s site, and is hosted on Dendy films, seems like there must have been some communication between Dendy and Clear Blue Day. So far as I can tell, the makeupyourownmind campaign is Australia specific. While that may support McDonald’s claim that the push has nothing to do with the release of Fast Food Nation, it could also reflect the fact that the Australian arm of McDOnald’s seems to place the highest premium on conveying a ‘we can be healthy, too’ image, for example, through the launch of the ’salads plus’ range. Personally, I was bemused by the the makeupyourownmind TV ad campaign because it drew attention to some of the negative claims about McDonalds (and I didn’t really pay attention to the rest of the ad where they “proved” these were wrong). Seems like a risky marketing strategy - but then, with so many people visiting the website, maybe it’s paid off.
A pox on McDonalds. Forgive me, but I was desperate for a bite to eat today and I dropped into a McDonalds on my way home. I don’t know when it happened but it seems that their vegetarian Deli Choices roll is now no longer available. Once I established this with the bored drive-thru operator, I just kept on driving. There is now once again nothing on the McDonalds menu for vegetarians – unless you are prepared to suffer the indignity of looking like a wuss and eating a cheesy garden salad while your non-vegetarian friends are tucking into their high calorie, spare-tyre inducing “meals”. I know what you are thinking. It is embarrassing that I was near a McDonalds in the first place. Having just watched the movie Fast Food Nation (the one that McDonalds is trying to out-PR with its series of ads showing gullible young workers being shown on “milk runs” of Australian meat packing plants), I shouldn’t have gone near the place. No bull. If you are wavering as a vegetarian and haven’t seen Fast Food Nation, see it. McDonalds may be able to put a thin gloss on their operations in their 30 second TV spots, but it’s impossible to explain away the fact that McDonalds earns its profits from the mechanised mass slaughter of living creatures. McDonalds: V-Ware. GR V Rating: VV Back in September Andy and I had the pleasure of attending a wedding in the Margaret River region in WA. It was my first time in the area, and I was gobsmacked at the awesome scenery. There were surf beaches surrounded by low-lying hills, wild white lillies growing alongside gum trees, and bucolic wineries offering plenty of fine local wines for the tasting. Driving about half an hour down the road from our accommodation, we encountered the Evans and Tate, Leabrook Estate, and Madfish wineries and had a great time tasting wines, chatting to the winemakers and buying a few… souvernirs. After a lovely morning, we sought advice from the locals about our best bet for a vegetarian meal, and were told to head for Cullen Winery, a biodynamic, organic winery with a restaurant that served vegetarian food. Perfect. This was a particularly lucky find, as most wineries we visited still don’t serve food (unlike more established wine areas like the Barossa). As soon as we walked into the Cullen restaurant I knew we were in for a treat. The restaurant had slate floors, wooden tables, and large glass windows that soaked in the sun. The menu was fancy with a few vegetarian options indicated.
Andy and E. chose the potato, leek and asparagus soup. It was divine. The soup had the beautiful soft thickness of a traditional potato and leek soup with the asparagus adding an underlying sweet taste. I went with the artichoke and asparagus salad. And yes, it tasted as good as it looks.
For mains, we decide to share a vegetarian tasting plate. This was a master stroke.
It came with dahl, frittata, tofu in sesame seeds, marinated tempeh strips, hummus, and salad, and some semi-dried tomatoes and olives grown onsite. My favourites were the tempeh, and the creamy frittata. After a delightful time sitting on the verandah, watching frolicking children and animals, and eating fine food, we left to attend a wonderful wedding in the Wildwood valley. Congratulations Sarah and Michael! Sanitarium, the health food company that makes weet-bix, is ramping up the promotional effort for their vegetarian meat replacement range, Vegie Delights. For awhile they’ve been running a campaign called Meat Free Monday. It’s backed by a TV advertisement and a website. The idea is to encourage people to have a lighter meal following the weekend. Interestingly, the ’spokesperson’ is a butcher, perhaps to reassure customers that vegetarian food isn’t just for wusses (or that even the most hardened carnivore can mend their ways?) Sanitarium has now launched a second campaign, called the 2Day Challenge. The idea is that for six weeks you have to buy two of their fake meat products per week (and therefore have two meat free meals per week). At the end of the six weeks you fill out a form and send it back to Sanitarium to go into a prize draw. I’m curious to see how it turns out. I don’t think it will appeal to people who are already vegetarians because they are already meat free and the cost of buying the products is relatively high (Their sausages, stir fry strips, and mince meat cost about $4.50 - $4.80, so it costs you almost $30 to enter). On the other hand, maybe it’s a good excuse for vegetarians to try something new (I have registered for the challenge out of curiosity). Alternatively, maybe the idea is that the the prize will be an extra drawcard for people interested in sampling a vegetarian lifestyle, but unwilling to give up the idea of meat. Love to know how many people fall into that category, and have emailed Sanitarium to see if they’ll tell me! My favourite idea on the website is a DIY cookbook. Vegie Delights have pulled together about 15 - 20 recipes featuring their products. You can choose to download all of them, or just select the ones you want to create your own cookbook. Anyhow, it’s great to see Sanitarium putting a strong marketing effort behind their Vegie Delights product range. This support is consistent with the company’s position statement on plant based eating, which advoctaes a healthy, vegetarian diet, consistent with Sanitarium’s Seventh Day Adventist origins. It always fascinates me that so many commercial vegetarian ventures have a basis in religion. |
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