The British Library has recently launched a new interactive
resource entitled Food Stories, a website that examines the
revolutionary changes that have taken place in the production and
consumption of food in the UK over the last century. The website can
be found at:
Using recordings from the British Library Sound Archive, the
animated resource covers a range of subjects: from tradition and
ritual, cultural identity and migration to farming, technology, food
miles and Fairtrade.
Detailed transcripts and background contextual information are
provided for each recording. Teachers' Notes and Student Activities
also accompany the website.
The recordings featured on the website were selected from the
British Library Sound Archive life story collections focused on
food. This collection, titled 'Food: from source to sales point'
holds over 300 life story recordings of people who work in all
different aspects of food production in the UK – chefs,
manufacturers, farmers, food activists etc. The recordings cover the
period of time from the late 1880s to the present day and range from
4 hours to 30 hours in duration. The recordings have been archived
at the British Library and are available, subject to copyright, to
British Library users.
There is enough food in the world to more than sustain the hungry
while not disenfranchising the mobility and alertness of the rich
and the aspiring rich, enough food to feed the world. Enough food to
reach the hungry.
Relish, Guild of Food Writer member Ruth Cowen's biography of
Alexis Soyer, described as Britain's first celebrity chef, has
provided the basis for a play by James Graham, being performed
in September by the National Youth Theatre. Relish will run from
3-18 September at The Tramshed, London EC2A 3EQ.
Leading chef
Marcus Wareing recently declared that British pub food is now worse
that airline food and that, "if you want a decent bite to eat, you'd
be better off getting on a plane".
Richard DeDomenici finds this a rather
environmentally irresponsible thing to say, and has created a far
more exciting alternative: a Plane Food Café that sells genuine
airline food in plastic trays delivered straight from the airport
factories and served at ground level by DeDomenici and his cabin
crew. The cafe is housed in an installation of fixtures and fittings
procured from aircraft reclamation yards, complete with on-board
entertainment on the wider subject of air travel, which will
hopefully provide an immersive, educational experience, to accompany
the gastronomic one.
In-flight meals taste different on the ground –
pressurised aircraft cabins deaden the taste buds, and the low
humidity hinders the ability to smell. Therefore plane food on the
ground should theoretically taste spectacular.
It is envisaged that Plane Food Café will
help to discourage the environmentally conscious and paranoid from
further flying, whilst simultaneously enabling the 95% of people in
the world who have never travelled by plane to inexpensively
experience the delights of aviation cuisine.
Artists have a unique touch in the kitchen due to their eye
for form and colour, or their sensitivity to the smells and
memories associated with food.
Author and Former Editor of ArtNews, Donald
Goddard, wrote:
"Some artists hardly go into their kitchens... except for a
glass of water or to scramble some eggs. Others go into
their kitchens quite a bit. They make things they think are
good for themselves and other people. They have fun, they
really get into it.
Sometimes it's really good what they do, I mean
extraordinary and good to look at. It means something. It
has meaning. It's simple. It tastes like nothing you have
ever had before, like some great quintessence of food,
especially with a glass of wine. "
Budding chefs and
food lovers are being urged to put their money where their mouths
are and hold a dinner party – while raising cash for people living
in poverty overseas. Brand new initiative Food for Good
is being spearheaded by Practical Action,
a charity which runs food projects with some of the poorest
communities across the world.
Whether a formal
dinner party, an informal coffee morning or a barbeque, guests are
asked to make a donation so the charity can continue its vital work.
Or why not follow the ‘Come Dine With Me’ route and get together
with friends to do a week of dinner parties and score each other?
Practical Action
works in 13 countries across the world; and many of its projects
focus on helping people grow and sell food. From working with
Bangladeshi communities to grow pumpkins
on barren land, helping farmers to grow and sell crops, to
introducing fuel efficient stoves, the charity has a number of
exciting and innovative projects which improve people’s access to
food across the world.
To host your own
Food for Good event please contract Practical Action on 01926
634400.
On 17th June
at the DesignMuseum, London, the Guild of Food Writers announced the
winners of their much- coveted annual Awards. Colin Spencer
presented the beautiful engraved trophies to some of the industry’s
finest writers and broadcasters. Amongst the 12 winners there were
some familiar names and some new ones to add to the roll of honour.
Nigel Slater, Hugh
Fearnley-Whittingstall and Tom Parker Bowles were all recognised as
leaders in their field.
Hugh’s triple nominations (for
the Michael Smith Award for Work
on British Food for
River Cottage: Winter’s On The Way, the New Media of the Year Award
for the Landshare project website and the Evelyn Rose Award for Cookery
Journalist of the Year for work published in The Guardian Weekend
magazine) bore fruit as Landshare and the Weekend columns won their
categories. The Michael Smith
Award went to Tom Parker Bowles for his travelogue Full English, which the
judges said ‘evinced a deeply felt identification with all areas of
food production, from farm to restaurant kitchen, and an equally
deep commitment to quality.’ Nigel Slater’s Simple Suppers, loved
for its ‘direct, simple advice and uncomplicated partnerships of
ingredients’ won the Food
Broadcast of the Year Award.
There were also prizes for less
well-known authors. Laura Santtini’s triumph in the Jeremy Round Award for Best First
Book category with
Easy Tasty Italian was a lovely moment, while Gaitri
Pagrach-Chandra won the Cookery
Book of the Year Award for her international baking
collection Warm Bread and Honey
Cake. Alex Renton also won his first Guild Award for Food Journalist of the Year,
for work published in The Times
and The Observer.
Those with even more crowded
mantelpieces this year include Tracey MacLeod of The Independent, who won
the Restaurant Reviewer of the
Year Award for the second time, and Hugh
Fearnley-Whittingstall, who has co-authored two past winning books.
The crowning glory of the evening
came when Guild President, Jane Suthering, surprised one of the
Guild’s most renowned members by presenting the Lifetime Achievement Award
to pioneering journalist and scholar Colin Spencer. He joins the
pantheon of recipients who become Guild Life Members, including Mary
Berry, Hugo Dunn-Meynell, Marguerite Patten CBE, Katie Stewart,
Grace Mulligan and Liz Burn. Last year’s Lifetime Achievement Award
was presented to the late Egon Ronay, who had presented the Awards.
Guild president, Jane Suthering,
commented: ‘What a fantastic party, and a great way to celebrate
talent in the industry. Congratulations to all our shorlistees, and
especially the winners.’
John Walsh for work published in
The Independent Magazine
Lifetime Achievement Award
Colin Spencer
THE GUILD
OF FOOD WRITERS AWARDS
The Guild
of Food Writers Awards were established in 1996, to be presented
annually in recognition of outstanding achievement in any area in
which food writers work and have influence. The awards are the only
ones judged entirely by professional food writers, journalists and
editors. There are twelve awards; the full list of categories is:
The
Cookery Book of the Year Award
The Derek
Cooper Award for Campaigning and Investigative Food Writing or
Broadcasting
The Evelyn
Rose Award for Cookery Journalist of the Year
The Food
Book of the Year Award
The Food
Broadcast of the Year Award
The Food
Journalist of the Year Award
The Jeremy
Round Award for Best First Book
The Kate
Whiteman Award for Work on Food and Travel
The
Michael Smith Award for Work on British Food
The Miriam Polunin Award for Work on Healthy
Eating
The New
Media of the Year Award
The
Restaurant Reviewer of the Year Award
THE GUILD
OF FOOD WRITERS
The Guild of Food Writers was founded 26 years
ago, and is a professional association of food and cookery writers,
journalist, broadcasters and editors in the UK and abroad, with a membership
numbering over 390.
The
WFP says food shortages are having a devastating impact
on North Korea's children [EPA]
Millions of North Korean women and children are
facing a critical shortage of food as aid supplies to the isolated
communist nation dry up, the United Nations' food agency has warned.
With sanctions against North Korea tightening
and the North Korean government itself stepping up restrictions on
aid groups, the World Food Program (WFP) says it has received just
15 per cent of the $504m it needs.
Without that aid, it says, some 6.2 million
vulnerable North Koreans are at risk.
The warning comes during a lean growing season,
with food shortages in cash-strapped North Korea worsening ahead of
the November harvest.
Food aid to North Korea has dried up following the May nuclear test.
"We have a situation where a
very large part of the population has been undernourished
for 15 or 20 years"
Torben Due,
World Food Program
The UN estimates that overall 8.7 million North Koreans depend on
regular food aid.
The WFP had planned a relief operation to target
6.2 million, but with only a fraction of the contributions it needs
it has had to scale that back to 2 million.
Compounding the difficulties, Due said the North
Korean government has also ordered to the WFP to scale back its
operations and to get rid of its Korean-speaking staff.
Poets, writers, artists Wherever you are in the
world, protect and promote your current theatre, art, poetry,
music campaigns We want to emphasise real links between the
arts and food economics and to help fair trading and direct online
access for small food producers.
Over the past eight years Food in the Arts has begun a dialogue
between artists, musicians, authors, filmmakers and poets and also
with representatives of the food industry from over 30 countries, as
a consequence of the very active website. Essential world regions
where ‘artistic transactions’ might beneficially occur are being
studied and explored.
We wish to identify artists and arts
organisations that might be able to contribute to the growth of this
website. In particular, we want to initiate contact between artists
and relevant local food growers or suppliers.
We believe that much
talent is unexplored or inhibited, simply because someone happens to
live in the ‘wrong’ country. Our target is to bring together the
artistic element for the proposed mainstream event, to be held in
London.
Food is something that crosses all generations
and international communities. It is socially inclusive and
cohesive, it is necessary to our survival and, in an aesthetic
context, has unlimited appeal. The wealth of the planet is becoming
increasingly polarised in the global market. Market growth is at the
expense of the freely given, the non-monetary transactions of human
communication. Everything that springs from affection and creative
expression is an action that does not exploit the poor.
All usefulness has one thing in common - an obsession with wealth.
The real problem in the world is not the poor, but the rich. The
opposite of poverty is not wealth, but sufficiency. Poor people want
enough for their sustenance. They want to be relieved from
insecurity, which threatens them with constant eviction and hunger.
They want a period of security, peace and stability to bring up a
new generation and nurture creative talent.
Support
Food in the Arts and London Food Film Fiesta!
Rough Guides
,
Dorling Kindersley
,
Quadrille
