Fighting the Banana Wars and other Fairtrade Battles, by Harriet Lamb
Fair Trade has been around for a few years now and for most of us has had to share voice in the public domain with the competing virtues of organic, carbon-neutral, free-range and non-GM amongst others. If you want to know what it stands for, where it started, how it’s doing and what you can do to help, this is a book for you.
In it, Harriet Lamb - director of the Fair Trade Foundation - talks us first-hand through the journey of the movement from the banana fields of Central America to meetings with M&S via the successful launch of the first bar of Green and Blacks’ Maya Gold. It is a detailed diary of what she and the movement have had to face to get as far as they have done. There are some heart-rending accounts in here, of farmers who have either been made infertile by the pesticides they have been forced to use or have seen hideous deformation of their newly-born children. It s truly upsetting to read that something as simple as buying your bananas from Sainsbury’s instead of ASDA can have such a direct impact on the livelihood of others. And we’re talking about aspects of their lives which we would take for granted like basic health and water supply. One can’t help but feel that if we in the Western world knew of a group of countries who could dramatically improve on our welfare and levels of poverty with such simple acts as changing which brand they supported, wars would be waged without a second’s hesitation.
So, what can we do as consumers? Well Harriet has devoted a section at the back of the book to this - a concise ten step guide. I suspect that for those who choose to buy this book, those will be the most well-thumbed leaves. It’s simple, practical and empowering. Within a day of picking up this book (and not being a follower or dedicated supporter of the FT label), I had put to my company the idea of stocking FT coffee and tea in our kitchens and meeting rooms. After all, why not?
But should we change our habits? After all, doesn’t the market naturally find a happy medium where the consumer and the producer are both happy? And besides, we often want to put the best on our tables, in our mixing bowls and into our children’s packed lunches. It used to be that fair trade coffee was only drunk by the brave and those first bars of FT chocolate were as granular as the soil they came from (though I must confess I only know this by reputation as rumour was enough to put me off) but now this excuse is less valid. The supply and consumption of FT products have risen dramatically over the last decade so they must be doing something right.
A final question then; should you read this book? If you want to hear about fair trade, international relations or what the supermarkets are up to with farmers in developing nations from someone who has been at the heart of the action for over a decade, yes. It is quite detailed and at times either sad, stressful or a little dry - so for the rest of us doesn’t really represent holiday reading.
I think Harriet would much rather that you actively looked for the Fair Trade logo the next time you’re in the supermarket and gave it a go. You never know, you might even like it. And if you still feel that this isn’t enough to help struggling farmers in the developing world, I’ll leave you with a pearl of wisdom from Victor Perezgrovas, a Mexican farmer who when explaining fair trade to his own brethren simply replied “Many little raindrops in the mountains make the mighty rivers flow”.
To hear a podcast of the full lecture which Harriet held at the LSE in Feb ‘09, please follow the link below. It’s 1:30 and features Fairtrade Businessman Adam Brett and his Father Dr Teddy Brett who is a well known figure at the university.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/publicLecturesAndEvents.htm#generated-subheading1
Recipe Roadtest: My First Cake, Nigel vs Delia
We all love a bit of cake, don’t we? And it’s pretty cheap to buy: even a posh, moist, rich chocolate cake from a stall or bakery would set you back less than a tenner. So why would we want to make one? Well if you enjoy your cooking, the feeling that you couldn’t make a Victoria sponge if you want to can be somewhat frustrating. It’s like being a good tennis player with the backhand of an old man swatting a fly.
I don’t mind sharing that I already have some notches in the wooden spoon of failure. Trusting Nigel Slater, as have done for so long, to help teach me in all ways culinary, I thought he’d be the man to help locate my very own baker within. I was a little disappointed however, when a year ago I selected from his book Appetite, a recipe for ‘a simple cake to be served with summer berries’. I invested in the requisite equipment - springform tin, greaseproof paper, spatula - and of course the basic ingredients. I followed the recipe word-for-word, pre-heated the oven and slammed it in, bristling with pride and anticipation following my (by this stage, many hours of) planning, toil and well-floured sleeves. It came out smelling great and looking like someone had run it over. I simply couldn’t understand.
The answer was simple - I had estimated my quantities, which as any baker will tell you is pure suicide. Neither did I own an electric mixer at the time so resorted to the old-fashioned bowl and spoon approach. (There was just something about all those arty pictures in his books of wooden-handled vegetable knives handed down through the family and chopping blocks which have been in use since the Crimean War that lulled me into thinking this would be a charming, yet still workable option.)
So then - a year, a set of electronic scales and a Kenwood mixer later, and it was time for my second attempt. Miraculously, the cake came out exactly the same. Heavy a lead, it was a fat disc of rather buttery, sweet dough. It tasted ok but as I’d baked it for some visiting friends, i felt slightly embarrassed but worse than that - I was mystified.
Taking a moment to reflect and regroup as I ate a wedge of the dense cake with my tea, I considered my options (incidentally - what it lacked in texture, it more than made up for in terms of buttery-goodness!). I would crack this baking malarky, and being relatively self-sufficient in these matters, I wanted to find guidance in the printed page. So who could help me in the endevour? Scanning my cook-book shelf, I spotted the almost unreadably pale spines of Delia’s How to Cook Book One. My mother had bought this for me around the time I went to University. It struck a chord as I mooched this time around because I remember the effectiveness with which she had taght me to make a decent omelette. Could the woman with such an excellent grasp of simplicity, mastering the basics and of explaining things to her readers in plain language be the one to help my mixture rise?
Well as I was guided through the process by the section of the book entitled Cakes and Biscuits for Beginners (sounded promising!) and roadtested her Classic Sponge Cake (with passion fruit filling), I certainly hoped so.
Click back soon to check out the thrilling conclusion. There will be icing sugar up the walls, there will be emotions - but above all there will be pictures. . .
The 10 Best Food Books of All Time
1: An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David
This is simply the most evocative collection of food writing of the 20th Century. The inimitable pioneer of food-writing may have taken her influence from the author of the first modern recipe book, the Victorian Eliza Acton, but she brought up to date a fine heritage which has continued with the likes of Nigel Slater. Discovering Elizabeth David even existed for me was a bit like finding out that your favourite bands had influences of their own.
2: Appetite: So what do you want to eat today? by Nigel Slater
I want to eat NOW Nigel - thanks to all your juice-filled, crust-peppered and goo-laden descriptions of food and the act of cooking it, I’m salivating at the chops! Just reading the line about how he refuses to teach anyone how to cook a steak well done was enough to keep my interest for another 50 pages.
3: Roast Chicken and Other Stories by Simon Hopkinson
Whimsical and delightful - written in handy bite-sized segments. Perfect if you’re a busy person who wants to read a little of foodie wonder before drifting off.
4: The River Cottage Fish Book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
The darling of middle class eco-foodies from Surbiton to Glastonbury. So much love, devotion, time, energy and fun has clearly gone into compiling this tome. No wonder it won a Food Writers Guild Award, it is a detailed pleasure to read without either being too detailed or too preachy.
5: Planet Chicken: The Shameful Story of the Bird on your Plate by Hattie Ellis
Modern food comes with a hidden cost. Hattie, with a little nudge from HFW in the foreword gives us the grisly detail. Reading this is akin to cleaning out the hamster’s cage - when it died in there months ago - it has to be done but you’ll feel genuinely relived you did. For a full review of the book cluck here. (sorry)
6: Delia’s How to cook book one by Delia Smith
Much as I loved Rory Bremner’s charachter send-ups of these books (showing Delia demonstrating to the nation how to make a cuppa-soup for example), I can’t help but have some quiet respect for the lady. I’m not a fan of her corner-cutting, vac-pack using ways especially in more recent publications but she recognised the same trend which lead to Jamie’s ministry of food a decade earlier. Come on Delia - let’s be ‘avin you!
7: The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen by Nigel Slater
I know it’s Nigel again but this is the man who taught me to throw caution to the wind, roll-up my sleeves and know how and when to put in ‘just enough’.
8:Grub on a Grant by Cas Clark
Its recipes read somewhat simply (and sometimes evn a little bit skankily) to me now but at the time, having something so compact and discreet to tell me how to knock-together those early sauces in a sparsely-equipped Lancaster student kitchen was a godsend. Thanks mum!
9: The Silver Spoon by Italy?
It’s not often you read a book which was actually written by an entire country. In this, Italy have what is equivalent to a bible of some ind in this vast collection of inventive but simple classic recipes. It may be short on imagery and description but its size, weight and sheet breadth of recipes which have clearly kept the Italians going for years will hopefully keep me going just as long. Trust me, the next time you don’t want to make soup out of your kale glut (again), you’ll curse that you don’t have this on your shelf. Although you may have to keep it on a bottom shelf as it’s heavy enough to collapse most varieties of modern Ikea shelving.
10: Further Adventures in search of Perfection by Heston Blumenthal
The man’s come in for a lot of criticism over his newest and by all accounts totally unuseable cookbook costing over £200 and requiring equipment which would not be out of place in a boutique oil refineary. Despite the fact that his recipe for a hamburger in this book runs to about seven pages, it’s how he gets to his conclusions which are both fascinating and fun. It also gives handy tips for when you’re in NY, go to “the burger joint”, it’s amazing!
Planet Chicken: The Shameful Story of the Bird on Your Plate by Hattie Ellis
I’d like to start by saying that it’s a little ironic that the very first book I’m reviewing for the tastybooks site is one of the least appetizing reads of the year.
Planet Chicken is a well-informed look at the world of chicken farming. It takes us on a journey through the history of chickens from farm birds to their current state as ‘lumps of matter’, via cockfighting and the salmonella crisis of the 1980s. But this is not predominantly a history book, it is an issue book. The issue being that we humans as a race are eating so much chicken that the only way to sustain our habit at pricing point we have come to expect is by employing methods of intensive rearing so horrific, that if someone were to be caught on camera doing it to just one backyard bird, it could plausibly form the basis of an RSPCA fundraising video.
Having said this book is centred around an issue, the main prong of which concerns animal welfare, it does so while managing not to be a tub-thumping, vegan-shoe wearing, carnivore-hating pamphlet. By looking at the facts, the author takes us through the possible health implications for humans and the appealing alternative of eating less - but much much nicer - chicken.
If you are reading it, the chances are, you are making moves towards the organic and the free range already. Issues such as food miles, the state of our school dinners and genetic modification have more than likely already appeared on your radar over the last few years - which is why you will hopefully enjoy, or at least feel engaged by this book. It helps to fill in the gaps and along the way hands out a generous basket of chicken and egg related facts; from the history of cockfighting and its centrality to London street-naming, to what really constitutes a free range hen and who controls an industry which sees these birds ending up on our tables, in our sandwiches and deep fried, half masticated on our pavements.
Planet Chicken is a well-organised book, neatly separated into two halves. The first half, “What are we doing?” covers the grim reality. This is not for the feint hearted but as I have alluded to already, if you are reading it, you would probably rather not than remain in the dark anyway. The second is entitled “What can we do?” and gives a somewhat lighter and more hopeful side to proceedings. This technique of two halves serves two purposes. Firstly, it helps to create a balanced view about the life of chickens; by discussing on the one hand what we are doing to chickens through modern farming process and the positive action we can take on the other.
Secondly and - from a reader’s point of view, more importantly - it acts as a relief from the stream of unrelenting and gruesome imagery; broiler birds who cannot walk, the hot water bath which they are passed through to loosen their feathers before the rubber fingers pluck them and the battery hens who have had their beaks removed so as not to damage each other or fight their keepers. I must admit I had trouble picking it up at times during the first half, worried that I was going to be subject to another barrage of horror before bed time. Thankfully, once I passed over the brow of the hill, the view was more hopeful. Descriptions of chickens in the natural surroundings abound as do those of the quarter of a million Brits that keep them as hobby-fowl. Even the way farmers dye free range egg yolks darker by feeding them marigold petals, and descriptions of old-school cockfighting seemed lighter and somehow more innocent than our modern, mechanised acts of cruelty.
I changed my chicken buying habits within hours of reading the first few chapters of this book. As the author points out several times, with reference to various other food revolutions in recent history, if we can all change a little, then we can contribute to real progress.
Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall has written the foreword to this book and there clearly could not be a finer champion or higher endorsement. The baton which he has been running with, with notable success over the past few has been taken up and run with on fresh legs.
Creamy words
Food writing and broadcasting is big business. In the current age of the celebrity obsession in particular it seems we cannot turn on the TV, open a colour supplement or walk past the first table in a book shop without being tempted by some attractive and mouth-watering new opportunity to cook ourselves some more lipsmacking grub.
Inevitably with an industry so big, there will be mediocraty; huge, creamy, swathes of the stuff. Some of it excels in entertaining us while some nourishes our social conscience. Most of it however ends up looking good on our shelves while we make that first risotto we learned a few years ago.
On tastybooks we think that good food writing should cut through all that glossy, coffee-table show-boating like a hot, wet, properly sharpened knife through a slice of home-baked vanilla cheesecake.
Inspired by the writings of Elizabeth David, Nigel Slater and others like them, tastybooks is about good food writing. This in turn is invariably about good food. But over and above that, it is about writing that has been done with the passion to inspire you.
If a recipe book or columnist makes your mouth water, compells you to pick up a spatula, baste an unusual joint of meat or run outside early in the morning looking for the nearest dehydrated mushroom stockist - we want to know who did this to you and how. Share it with us, please.
We will be reviewing new food writing from cook-books and travelogs to good-husbandry guides and food history. We will be reviewing old cook-books we have just discovered which are new to us. We will be doing this in the hope that we can help guide each other through the dark, dense delicious jungle of modern food publishing.
So if you want to share your joy at a sumptuous description of a provencale kitchen or tell us what happened when you baked your first cake on the nurturing words of one of your food heroes, your contributions are welcome here.
In the mean time please be patient as this site is still under construction.
Scrumptious scribblings, tasty text and delicious diatribe will appear as soon as possible.