Author: Jeremy Cherfas

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The glories of the harvest

The Big Picture, a wonderful round-up of great photographs hosted by The Boston Globe, takes a look at the harvest.

Wheat being harvested.
Wheat grain is poured into a truck on a farm in Great Wilbraham, United Kingdom on July 18, 2012. (Simon Dawson/Bloomberg)

Harvest is a time of plenty, when the season’s hard work is rewarded by bounty. Many of the rhythms of our lives are shaped by the gathering of crops, even if most of us now live in cities. Worldwide, festivals and rituals mark the passage from growing season to harvest, with indigenous and popular practices making fall in the Northern Hemisphere a festive time. This year sees a reduced harvest in much of the world as extreme weather decimated many regions. Half of the United States is in prolonged drought, as well as much of Europe. In India, the monsoon is 20 percent off the annual average. Food prices are expected to rise by 2013 as demand taxes supplies, and later the price rises will transfer to the meat industry as costs of feed for livestock are passed on. Gathered here are images of farms industrial and traditional, crops critical and obscure, and harvest festivals among drought and bounty.

All the images are just stunning, and a reminder of both the similarities and the differences of cultures around the world.

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How vanilla is like Chanel No. 5

The Food Programme, on BBC Radio 4, has been running a little miniseries on spices: cloves, vanilla and mustard. I haven’t yet heard mustard, but cloves and vanilla were interesting, not least because I had no idea vanilla was thriving in Uganda, thanks to Ndali farm and Lulu Sturdy. The programme even prompted Luigi to wonder whether his MiL might be able to grow vanilla in Kenya.

What really caught my attention, though, was when someone called Niki Segnit enthused that:

Vanilla is the Chanel No. 5 of the flavour business.

First of all, I have absolutely no idea what that means. Secondly, I wondered whether she actually knew how right she was, in at least one respect. Ylang-standing readers of this blog will remember that Chanel No 5 “is a blend of entirely synthetic aldehydes, and has been since its launch in 1921“. And vanillin? That was one of the first important flavours to be synthesised, in 1876.

Somehow, I doubt that that is what was meant.

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When is a plantain not a plantain?

Corner a Musa-wallah over a pint of sorghum brew, and ask them to tell you the difference between a banana and a plantain. Seven will get you eleven you’ll be no wiser when they eventually finish frothing. So turn instead to the CGIAR Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Banana’s Facebook page, for true enlightenment.

Yesterday, you see, was Plantain Tuesday. So what do we learn?

That’s right! ((You may have to click on the photo to enlarge it enough to read.)) “There is in fact no formal, botanical distinction between plantains and bananas; the only difference is in how they are eaten”. So stick that in your cooking bananas, Dr Musa-wallah.

And there’s more.

“Plantains originated in southeast Asia and were cultivated in south India by 500 BC”. Triffic. What about bananas, then?

Hang on, though, I know what you’re thinking. Those two pictures don’t look much like any bananas you’ve ever seen. And you would be right about that. But hey, it’s only Facebook. Who cares whether the information is accurate?