Om… Organic Mushrooms from the Burmese Community in Melbourne

Once a person starts researching what’s out there, it’s incredible. Take this, members of the Burmese Karen Community are undertaking studies at CERES in Melbourne to produce Om Organic Mushrooms.

At present Swiss brown and shiitake mushrooms are produced for CERES Market, café, food-cops and excess sold to Melbourne Wholesale Market.

Used mushroom blocks are sold for growing mushrooms at home and mushroom compost for use in the gardens as manure and mulch for growing healthy plants. Om Organic Mushrooms is certified by National Association Sustainable Agriculture Australia (NASAA) and currently in conversion to Organic.

organicwine.com.au

It’s not usually in our purvue to recommend retailers, but organicwine.com.au is such a stand out it’s impossible not to.

Not only is the website a beauty — easily navigable, comprehensive and attractive, but all you have to do is email or call Michelle Gadd to get even more info. She’s more than happy to talk to you and answer ANY question you may have about her product. She will freight nationally and internationally. I don’t know about internationally, but her interstate rates are more than reasonable. I can buy a dozen bottles of my fave for less than I can get it at my local bottleshop. And last time she included a block of organic chocolate. Love the Gift With Purchase!

And Now For the Beef

My partner and I had a very quiet Christmas this year. We had just spent a month in Vietnam, where the pork is stupendous and the eggs are out of this world. Partner hadn’t tasted eggs like it since his days on the farm. Many of the farmers are too poor to use chemicals, so much of what one eats is organic by default, if you like.

So I was lying on the sofa reading Hugh Fearlessly Eats It All: Dispatches from the Gastronomic Frontline written by the wonderful Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall of River Cottage fame reminding myself to renew my commitment to sustainably and humanely produced meat. After pootling around the ‘net for a while I found Landtasia beef producers that seem to fit the bill. So I fire off an email and by Boxing Day I have a response ~ no holidays for farmers ~ yes, I can buy, yes, they will deliver to me in Sydney. (They’re located near Bungendore). And Richard even suggested I try reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma if I was enjoying Hugh’s book. Love it. Another producer who gets involved with their customers. My 40 kilos of grass fed sustainably produced beef is arriving on Thursday. And I do believe there’s a tongue in there as well. (I’m of the firm view that if a person’s going to eat an animal, no part should be wasted. After all the animal did die on our behalf.

R A R E L A M B W E L L D O N E !

I can’t take claim for this post title. I snitched it from Taroona Farm Lamb producers of sustainably produced lamb, in Wirrinya, NSW. I love the whole tone of their website. It’s very local, in a virtual kind of way, and really makes you feel like you’re having a relationship with your producer. After all, the word of the year is Locavore, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. (Go on, Google it). I’d love to get my hands on some of their lamb, but unfortunately they’re sold out for this year. And I particularly applaud their work with Father Chris Riley and Youth Off the Streets, where you can donate a portion of your lamb order. What an elegant fundraising idea.

Your Very Own Greenroom.

As part of my desire to tread more gently on the earth this year, I’ve been thinking of growing some fruit and veggies. Now, we live in innercity Sydney you understand, and our backyard is the size of a tablecloth. (I was going to say hankie, but it’s a little bigger than that). We have two fish ponds, and all the rest is cactus and succulents, so it’s pretty water-wise, but I really would like to grow something we can eat. So I’ve been looking at all sorts of articles about courtyard and balcony gardening. The Chinese in China are really into balcony gardening with some amazing edible results. I know which way our garden faces, and I know where it does and doesn’t get sun, but that’s about the full extent of it. Anyway, we’ve got a self seeded tomato going great guns in our outdoor ottoman, which is a palm trunk that I hollowed out and filled with mondo grass. The little dog loves catching a few rays there.) It’s grown with no help to a whopping 3 feet, and has flowers on it, which augurs well I would think. So maybe we can have an edible backyard. But really, I need help. And this is who I found: Greenrooms. What a great idea. I think I’ll be giving them a call. They’ll come and design, build and plant your veggie garden. Sure there’s an expense, but at least you know your veg will grow.

The Organic challenge

Over at A Year’s Worth of Eating there’s the Organic Challenge. Can you do it for a week? Will it break the bank? No reasonable person would expect any other reasonable person to eat 100% organic product for 100% of the time, but it’d be interesting to see how easy or otherwise it could be on differing disposable incomes.

There’s an interesting and controversial article at Cosmos magazine. That’s Cosmos the science magazine, not Cosmo the women’s magazine

What Are You Doing Here?

If you’re from Australia we want to hear from you. We want this place to be one of shared organic information,  resources and hot tips. Be you producer, processor, wholesaler, retailer or consumer (the bottom of the food chain, or is it the top) we want to hear about your product or your customer experience. Who is the  best organic delivery company in your area? Do you belong to a food co-op? Is it expensive to live organically? Who is producing organic almonds, and where can we get them?  Are you a manufacturer trying to source organic ingredients? Are you a primary producer looking to get your “happy meat” into the market?  Let’s all hook up and see what we can do. Until organicaustralia.info goes live this is the forum where we’re going to be collecting our info. So tell us, people, please.

What a Sterling idea!

This, from Danish airline Sterling. Might Australia’s airlines think about this too?

09.01.2008

PRESS RELEASE

Copenhagen, 8th January 08

Sterling Airlines first for Organic food in the Air!

As the first international airline in Northern Europe to do so, Sterling Airlines is now introducing organic food on all its scheduled flights. So from now on, Sterling’s customers can tuck into sandwiches and other delicacies which are both healthy and tasty. The increasing focus on ecology and health is the reason behind this marked alteration of the range.

“In-flight food has never been especially exciting, but we have decided to change all that. In close co-operation with nutrition experts and our catering company, we have developed some much tastier products which are at the same time healthy and 100 percent organic,” says Michael T. Hansen, Commercial Manager at Sterling Airlines A/S.

Healthy and tasty

Now you can start your meal with creamed organic yoghurt from Naturmælk, made from the milk of Jersey cows with a naturally high protein content, and follow this with a sandwich of organic bread from Il Fornaio with delicious Gouda cheese and sun-dried Italian tomatoes. Round off with a small Emmery’s muffin with high-cocoa El Rey chocolate – and enjoy your food with a view across the snowy white clouds, 10,000 metres above the Earth’s surface. “We aim to be the international airline that Scandinavians prefer. We will still be selling tickets at super-low prices, but we also want to make sure our guests have a good experience while they are with Sterling. The new meals are just one of a number of initiatives that we are introducing in the New Year to make us the most attractive airline,” says Michael T. Hansen.

Every day, you can choose between a delicious brunch on the morning flights, and two kinds of sandwiches during the rest of the day. The menu varies and is altered every second week, so you can try something new every time. Our organic Brunchbag costs EUR 8, and an organic sandwich EUR 6,50.

At child’s-eye level

At the end of 2007, Sterling was the first airline to launch Funny Meals for children – a meal specially adapted to the taste and playfulness of young children, and designed to make flights both easier and more fun for the whole family. The Funny Meals will continue to be available on selected departures – just in a new, organic version.

A Funny Meal is full of children’s favourites, such as a roll with salami, and raisins from Urtekram. For dessert, the children get a mini chocolate muffin from Emmery’s. There are also toys in the pack, in the form of a colouring book and pencils. The price of an organic Funny Meal is EUR 7, and you do not need to order it in advance.

Less packaging

It’s not just the food that is being enhanced at Sterling; the packaging has also been altered, to produce less waste. This is done by using rectangular sandwiches, which weigh the same as traditional triangular sandwiches, but take up less space.

You can see all our departures, and place advance orders for organic meals, at: www.sterling.eu

Miss Carole Arnaud-Battandier, Sterling Airlines International Marketing Manager, adds: “With so many people making new years resolutions in 2008, we are helping them to stay healthy with our delicious new range of in-flight meals available on board our Boeing 737. Sterling Airlines new years resolution is to help more people than ever discover Scandinavia with our low fares, and with tempting tasty organic meals on board. At www.sterling.eu, you will find great Sterling Viking destinations with fascinating waterfronts, cultural events, historical settings and trendy, peaceful and cosmopolitan atmospheres.

Coming soon to a computer near you

“Wouldn’t it be great if there was one place we could go to on the internet and we’d be able to find out everything we needed to know about the organic and sustainable agricultural industries in Australia? Your entry to an organic Australia. Not a government site, or a shop, but a comprehensive, interesting, smart looking gateway for all the industry ~ from the producers to the customers.”

Well, now there is. organicaustralia.info is in development.

It’s independent of government, certification bodies, and representative associations, and it doesn’t have any particular affiliation with any one subsector of the industry.

It’s comprehensive, it’s always up to date, and by bringing everyone together it will be more than the sum of its parts. It will provide the Australian industry with the presence it needs ~ locally, nationally and internationally.

It will provide you with a full listing, all your details, a description of what you do, and a ‘single click’ will take you straight to your website. If you don’t have a website we can provide a low cost one for you.

How is it different to the hundreds of others already rattling round in cyberspace?

Well, for a start, it’s our business, so it’s in our best interest to be smart about it. What do we want when we use the internet?

We want speed, easy searchability, no irrelevant material, comprehensiveness amongst other things. We want to know that the information we’re looking at is the most current. We don’t want to search and find out half our results relate to ‘organic chemistry.’ So we’re going to filter all that out, to make it easier for your customers ~ be they here or overseas ~ be able to find you. So it’s in our best interest to have your best interest at heart. Because it’s your information that will make it work.

It seems to us that a lot of well meaning people have set up sites to try and do this, but they never seem to be very good. Why? Because they don’t really understand how the internet works. How you construct your site so that it’s searched properly by search engines. They don’t understand that you can’t just launch a website and it’ll take care of itself. There’s other things you need to do ~ advertise, attend agriculture shows and agribusiness events, markets, expos. You need a presence in newspapers, magazines, retail outlets. People have to know how to find you. The marketing of the website is as important as the marketing of the product the website is promoting.

So organicaustralia.info is coming to help.

If you are a producer, processor, wholesaler or retailer of Australian organic or sustainably produced product, please leave a comment here, so we can contact you and include you.