Monday, August 15, 2011

Springing Back into Uni



It's good to be back! Spring lambs abound (albeit in winter) to tantalise our taste buds with plenty of exciting new challenges ahead! Being a total nerd with no social life over the last six months really paid off although I think I may have set the bar a little too high. Hopefully, and with a little luck I'll be able to keep my GPA at 6.75 for at least one more semester. 

This time around I'll be studying Biometry (some super boring and impossibly hard computer-based statistical unit), Resource Sustainability, Food Science 1 and Crop Production. Most are pretty interesting. One of them is unmentionable. Funny how the crappiest content-overloaded courses all begin with 'Bio'...

Food Science 1 looks like it'll be pretty exciting stuff. We get to make bread and yoghurt, compare taste, titration and brix results of fresh and commercial orange juice, we even get to visit a sake production plant! Crop production is by far my favourite though. Nothing beats being out in the field on a Friday morning with the sun's gently warming rays, knees deep in chalky soil tending to my mountain of kale and strawberries.

Resource Sustainability assessments sound terrible from what I've heard but I think it's something that is incredibly important to learn about. Where does our food and energy come from? Can we continue current practices well into the future? How can we minimise our carbon footprint? Are we able to find a balance between the growing human population and our ever increasing resource consumption?

There are some hot topics on the student discussion board and it seems like there are so many more aspects to consider than first thought when it comes to living sustainably. Sure, some of us can live the slow life on an isolated property with a tiny mud house, a swale and a food forest, but what about the rest of us? The global population is estimated to hit 9 billion people by 2050 and urban populations will soar. With increased housing, property sizes will shrink so what happens then? 

In terms of the sustainability of our food production I think that the key aspect that we need to face up to, whether we live in urban or regional areas, is waste. Waste is created when fruit doesn't grow to be picture perfect, when tomatoes don't survive the long haul to the supermarket, when we peel back the husks of corn, when we're not quite sure what to do with that last mushroom or we leave an avocado sitting out for just a tad too long. It becomes an environmental problem when we chuck it all in a hole somewhere far, far away and it's left to produce toxic methane and leachate. Harvesting crops, burying excess in plastic and flushing the rest out to sea means that farmland is becoming degraded.

We're still years away from convincing people to think of human poop as a renewable resource but the answer seems fairly simple and straightforward. Why don't we have a separate bin to collect biodegradable household waste? If we could keep it separate and send it off to a processing plant to be turned into compost through the use of worms, bacteria or heat, then we'd have a crapload of organic matter to redistribute to improve nature strips or backyard gardens or farms or whatever. Is it really that hard to make such a small adaptation to a system that we already have firmly in place?

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

The Rocks Aroma Festival












 See more pictures here..

Monday, August 1, 2011

Tuesday Tasting Menu @ Duke Bistro


I dined at Duke Bistro once before in late February. My memory of the event is a little shady - I'd had champagne at a friend's house and a few beers with the sexy blonde girls who I used to work two doors down from; before meeting work colleagues, dashing to the Duke for a quick drink, and then running off again to another party.

I remember lounging in the dark and sipping on a Penicillin, my senses awash with the warmth of smoky scotch and honey. Complimentary dishes arrived at our table, thanks to the magnetic pulling power of the very charming EggBert - ex-partner in crime to Mitch The Pasta Master from Sepia days. There was something with prawn and a bizarre seaweed I'd never seen before, slivers of cured ham of some description, a smoky soup with clams and fregola perhaps? Details are wishy washy at best. It was damn good though, and I've been dying to return ever since.

What a serendipitous moment to find an old friend slaving over the hot coals of my desires. Textural delights, meat mastery, edible flowers and housemade butter for crying out loud! This is love - the real thing, but beware. Kate Moss was here. This Duke is addictive.

Leather Jacket Cheek, Oyster, Cucumber

Duck Liver Parfait, Bread, Housemade Butter

King George Whiting Fish Finger                                       Drinks List                 

                 Prawn, Pasta                                         Pig Tail Tile, Bone Marrow     
  
Boar Neck, Garlic Shoots                                 Nasturtium, Goat's Cheese

          White Miso Caramel Eclair                        Rhubarb & Rosemary Jelly, Mini Pavlova 



63 Flinders St
Darlinghurst, Sydney
Duke Bistro on Urbanspoon
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