Report from Emerald City: Part one: finding my organic groove

A few weeks shy of the six-month mark since my move, I thought it was time for an update.

The  food adventures in my new home have been rather eclectic. This is largely due to my own dietary perculiarities combined with the Not Boyfriend now being in his third year of veganism. It has also been a year or so of unexpected hiccoughs, interrupting our cash flow – so we’ve been a tad parsimonious.

Sydney is a noticeably more expensive city to live in. From the price of produce to the inflated real estate market, eating out or at home just costs more. No longer having my tiny but productive 9 square metres of veggie garden doesn’t help either. Though I’ve got my name down on the waiting list at the nearest community garden (but that could take a decade to come to fruition!)

Organic produce

I mourn my mid-week pilgrimage to Vic Markets. Not just the healthy competition between the organic stalls and diversity of conventional produce available but the one-stop shop aspect of the market. There’s nowhere that even remotely replicates the quality and variety of the fresh fruit and vegetables, plus the diversity of the market hall vendors. I yearn for a single market to buy quality fish, great olives, fantastic bread, my weekly staples (oats, nuts and tofu) and graze delectable edibles. 

Pick of the crop

Orange Grove Public School

Cnr Perry Street & Balmain Road, Leichhardt, 2040, Saturday, 7 am to 1 pm. 

This has more organic stalls than all the food markets I’ve shopped at, plus interesting homemade food and a delightful array of plant stalls. It's nice to see plants and foods come together.

Bonus: ample on-street parking.

Marrickville Organic Market 

142 Addison Road, Addison Road Centre, Marrickville, 2204, Sunday, 7.30 am to 3 pm.

It's a little bit hippy with a relaxed atmosphere, the famed chai tent (or sloping lawn) and a wide variety of home cooked food to graze on. There's a dearth of Sunday markets, so that's a bonus.  A couple of beefs with it though. Despite the name, only one stall is 100% organic (but it’s a great one). Parking is a nightmare, necessitating being there by 8am if you need to drive. Not a lot of fun on a day off. But otherwise a charming weekend diversion.

Don't miss the amazing smoked olives available at the smoked salmon stall - at Leichhardt on Saturday and Marrickville on Sunday.

Fresh chamomile at Marrickville

Eveleigh Market at Carriageworks


245 Wilson St, Eveleigh, Saturday 8 am – 1 pm

Well curated and a good place to bring visitors, it’s handy for topping up on a few extras for the fridge and pantry but a bit pricy for a weekly shop. Favourites include the truffle oil, exotic mushrooms, flowers, pho stall (vegan and omni) and watching Kylie Kwong cook. There’s a knife sharpener as well, plus good coffee and pastries. Definitely a foodie outing for both locals and tourists.

Bonus: If you’re lucky you’ll catch Barbara Sweeney AKA The Talking Cookbook – I love what she’s about and if you're a reader of food blogs, you'll also enjoy having a chat with her.

Back to the weekly shop

After many weekends spent exploring produce markets and weekdays trawling through expensive health food stores (don't get me started), we’ve settled on ordering a weekly organic veggie box. After a couple of months buying one elsewhere for more than twice the price, we’ve settled on a Wednesday box from our local food co-op Alfalfa House and topping up on fruit and other goodies elsewhere as needed. The $25 box of organic veg is great value and always fresh (though oddly I often find the fresh produce in store expensive and of variable quality). We can combine a mid-week collection while restocking the pantry. There’s a great selection of grains, spices and pantry staples but it’s the tempeh collection that  exceeds my Vic market stalwart. The Byron Bay fava and seaweed (soy free) tempeh is exceptional. There's lots of other yummy stuff in the fridge including a locally made coconut yoghurt (the makers are sometimes at Eveleigh Market).

While I still dream of Melbourne’s cornucopia of goodies at an affordable price, the kitchen is now fully stocked with an interesting variety of fresh organic food. I’ve always loved the challenge of culinary improvisation, so a box of mystery goods (bar the turnips and capsicum!) is a joy to create from. 

The dreaded turnip

Despite the odd moments of frustration it has been fun exploring the shopping options in my new locale. And while I think I've finally cracked it, there's something new opening around the corner,  pandering to the gamut of Sydney food fads from vegan to paleo, with a side of kale and activated nuts.

collard greens

Rarely do I suffer from buyers remorse. But two weeks ago I was struck with the regret that comes from forgoing a purchase.

I looked at the collard greens in all their splendour and hesitated. With a head of savoy cabbage begging to be eaten in the fridge at home, as well as the small acreage of silverbeet in the garden, I really didn’t need more greens.

At home, collard greens-less I suffered remorse. What would those fleshy leaves taste like? How would I cook them? Were there any recipes for collard greens that didn’t feature pig in some form?

But all was not lost. Seven days later, a fresh bunch stood ready and waiting at my favourite organic stall and this time I didn’t hesitate.

How do they taste?

Cabbage-y, a definite brassica.

The leaves were more tender than they looked and didn’t need to cook as long as expected.

The perfect dish for collard greens?

The winner, hands down, has to be colcannon. The slow cooked greens work well against the softness of mashed potatoes spiked with onions, garlic and anchovies.

Have you cooked with collard greens? What do you make with them?

Is there an American peasant food revolution going on here in Australia that I don't know about? What next, Poke salad Annie?

abundance: a report from the trenches

The barbecue’s been ignored for the last year of so since the Significant Eater became vegan. However the other day I got the urge.

But there was a bit of an access problem.

Parts of the garden have been abundant this year.

It has been a stellar year for grapes and tomatoes.

The eggplants weren’t so happy and got a nasty case of sunburn, while the strawberries totally gave up the ghost in the heat.

Some herbs thrived. The chives, chilli and Vietnamese mint got hidden under the sprawling tentacles of Tommy Toes. Providing perfect shelter on blistering days. Should I admit now, I barely watered my garden this summer?

Once more the let ‘em spread approach to tomato growing has come up trumps. While still young I stake the plants and that’s it. I let them free range. By not pinching out alternate laterals the greenery provides inbuilt sunshade. Early in summer I threw an old sheet over them on the worst of the hot days. Towards the end of the season I’ve given up.

It’s now late March and I’ve been harvesting tomatoes for a couple of months.

And those grapes, oh the grapes are dandy!

The organic conundrum

Warning: a long, possibly biased rant with no pictures or recipes.

I trundle up the organic aisle not sure what I will find. I watch the seasons come and go by the availability and price of the produce. Cavolo nero, our new best friend has been looking a little weather-worn in recent weeks while the chard has stood proud and glossy. An easy segue from one leafy green to another, unique in flavour but close enough to substitute. This week my friend has picked up her frilly skirt and run, perhaps we won’t see cavolo nero til next winter.

I can live with that. Sure I get a little toey at this time of year when the Australian grown, organic garlic is hard to find and pricey when you do but I’m getting better at planning ahead for that seasonal eventuality.

This week’s market haul featured no new stars but a greater variety of affordable basics – broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, new season potatoes and leafy greens. Not quite a cornucopia but ten different types of vegetables plus an expensive local bulb of garlic and some fresh turmeric. Enough veg for two massive consumers to eat their way through over a week at a cost of $40. We’d easily get 5, often 7 plus, serves of vegetables a day. Sadly the Significant Eater consumes fruit at too higher rate for us to be completely organic at this time of year.

Australian Food News yesterday reported that an average basket of organic groceries costs 70% more than its conventional counterpart. This includes things I don’t eat such as meat and dairy (the former having the highest price difference and the latter being at the lower end) or buy (like biscuits, baked beans and sugar). Taking all this into account, the premium for organic fruit and vegetables alone, according to the report, is still a hefty 60%.

Before we plunge headlong into the latest organic debate regarding nutritional value. I’d suggest that any canny shopper doesn’t do the “standard basket” approach. We buy what is in season at a reasonable price, allowing for the odd weakness (garlic or fair trade organic chocolate). We make choices over what tastes better (organic strawberries) and what we don’t mind compromising on (Coff’s Harbour conventional but naturally ripened bananas and passionfruit). Heading off to shop with a flexible grocery list and to somewhere like Vic Market where there is some healthy competition, rather than an organic superstore (like Macro when it existed), certainly reduces the organic premium. Sometimes a particular organic fruit or vegetable is cheaper than the conventional but overall with savvy shopping I’d estimate it’s less than 30%.

So is it worth it, this sizable mark up at the cash register? Last month a British report stating that ”Organic has no health benefit” hit the headlines. While the independent study commissioned by the Food Standards Agency crunched the data and could not find any strong evidence to support the nutritional benefits of eating organic produce, there are some inherent flaws. The biggest problem is study size. The bigger the study the more it costs to fund. Oil companies, the manufacturers of conventional agricultural chemicals, have the money to potentially fund big research projects that can select limited nutritional criteria when comparing organic and non-organic produce. The organics industry however, cannot. Study size determines whether it can be included in the meta-analysis. The many smaller studies that overwhelming proved case for the nutritional benefits of eating organically were excluded.

But ignoring my paranoid ravings for a minute, The Organic Center has gone over the original report with a fine tooth comb and their analysis of the flaws in the FSA study make illuminating reading. Before you swallow the version the media has served up for you, read a little more deeply and make up your own mind.

Ironically, on the BBC news page that I linked above I noticed today’s top health story is “Primary liver cancers 'soaring'”. No link with eating conventional produce? Well, that hypothesis hasn’t been tested yet.

Buying organic produce is a luxury and it is about personal choice. But making an informed decision remains a vexed issue.


A few links to studies demonstrating the nutritional benefits of organics

Biological Farmers of Australia (I heard the fabulous BFA nutritionist, Shane Heaton, speak at the Organic Expo)

Organic Trade Association (USA)

The issues around the potential health risks of pesticides and herbicides touched on in the Food and cancer report included a suggestion that “a precautionary approach is wise for women of reproductive age”.

it aint easy being green

We all know fresh is best. It’s almost too fundamental to repeat in the hallowed world of food blogging. We flock to read what our fellow food devoted friends are eating around the world. We recently had a buzz about samphire, from Melbourne to the northern hemisphere. Despite two different seasons we synergistically were getting into it’s salty goodness and exploring its crunchy delight. The samphire I found in my local market had come about 1,000 kilometres, over a state border. Though the last leg of its journey from stall to plate took only a few minutes by car.

I shop locally – within a stones throw of my inner city home. I am lucky as this could be a fresh produce market, an Italian specialty store or a Middle Eastern deli. Of course the major supermarket chains, and one valiant independent retailer, are also close by – a short stroll 3 out of the 4 compass points away.

The close proximity and its minimal carbon emissions to gather from them are misleading and I admit lull me into a false sense of security. When a friend in New Zealand told me that their family’s quest for the year was to move towards a carbon neutral life, I felt a little smug that the first thing they had chosen to have maximum impact - was to stop eating meat. I’d been ahead of that one for a couple of decades, before the effects of beef production had been viewed through such energy inefficient glasses. No real sacrifice for me, then I realised that meat still comes into the house to feed 4 furry carnivores. Though a cat could possibly live on fish and chicken, these guys are geriatrics and we swear will not be replaced after their eventual demise!

I am a long time fan of Barbara Kingsolver and her latest piece of non-fiction is causing quite a buzz. “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” takes the world of seasonal eating by storm. It follows her family's choice to to eat locally for a year, contrary to their compatriots who happily consume food produced from around the country or the world. Like Paul Mathis and hjs 100 Mile Café, they have hit some similar obstacles – both nominated coffee as an exotic food they would barter for exclusion. Here in the nontropical Melbourne climate the nearest coffee producers are in Byron Bay – at least a 2 day drive in a road train, if amphetamines fuel the driver. Unlike the Kingsolver clan, olives are grown within the state and produce some fine olive oil. Actually, there are olive trees dotted throughout the neighbourhood (this being a once strongly Italian migrant stronghold) though I’ve yet to see any oil pressed from them and sold at the gate.

I have in the past had a largely seasonal diet. In my final years of communal housing we sourced an organic farmer who drove 250 km (still a fair hike beyond Mathis’ 160km/100 mile exclusions zone) to the city once a week and formed a food buying collective. About 10 households, of 2-9 residents apiece, bought 90% of their fresh produce through the collective, making organic food very affordable on a low income and for minimal effort of sorting the orders every couple of months. Though some struggled with the realisation that there would be no avocados or tomatoes are only in season for the first couple of months of the years, others got excited, bought extra and started bottling excess produce just as many of our own mothers had done. I have to say though, that the human energy cost of each precious glass jar of perfect peaches or tomato sauce is rather high, unless done collectively to offset the tedium.

Am I about to jump on the ecologically sound bandwagon? Well not quite yet. The first step is to increase awareness about where my food is really coming from. Sure I know to sidestep those ludicrously glossy cherries that have turned up in the past month. I have been on the earth long enough to know they don’t grow in a winter climate (the highly priced fruit has come to our city across the world in a jet plane from America, which may explain why it’s a pricey treat). But it’s the other things that slip under the radar that I need to become more aware of – that nice sauvignon blanc from New Zealand or my favourite Fruili Pinot would have to go in a carbon friendly lifestyle. Is the rocket in my salad coming from a massive, heated greenhouse while the frost settles outside? The prawns on the plate are at best from Queensland, at worst further a field in Asia and let’s forget about barramundi, as that hasn’t ever swum in Port Phillip Bay.

My pocket handkerchief garden produces a few green herbs, the odd lime and in autumn an incredible yield of grapes. I can squeeze in a few more vegetables but in the heart of a city, so close to roads and factories, I am unsure just how many heavy metals these home crops deliver. Chooks, though up to 3 are quite legal in these high density areas, are out of the question – even if we could find the space – free range poultry would be too tempting for the colony of cats in the meantime.

As for cooking classes in Bali – if I’d sailed in a boat, maybe they would be allowed!


Just how green is your valley?


update: it aint easy being green part II