Cooking

October 27, 2008October 27, 2008

Nibbles: Creole cooking, Cattle, Greenhouses, Cartograms

Seychelles’ “living botanical herbarium of Creole Culture.”
Kerala tries to save Vechur cattle.
Terra Madre day 3: Tom ♥ Vandana.
Pix of how intelligent greenhouses can be used to grow huge vegetables. I wonder if these technique can be applied to regenerating accessions in genebanks
Don’t you just love cartograms?

October 25, 2008October 25, 2008

Nibbles: Cereal, Bushmeat, Aquaculture, Olive oil

Neolithic parboiled bulgur wheat.
Applying “catch shares” to bushmeat.
The pros and cons of fish farming in Latin America.
“It’s a masochistic business. Masochistic.”

October 24, 2008October 24, 2008

Nibbles: Bananas, Avocadoes, Slow Food, Chilli, Sweet potatoes

Red bananas: one man’s story.
Avocado mayonnaise: one woman’s story.
Terra Madre, Day 1: one man’s story. Almost like being there.
Indoor hot pepper: someone’s grandad’s story.
Sweet potatoes: several people’s stories.

October 23, 2008October 23, 2008

Nibbles: Milk, Capsicum, Beef, Fruits

Adventures in Food No. 1: Camel milk chocolate.
Adventures in Food No. 2: Hawaiian Chili Water.
Adventures in Food No. 3: Beef.
Adventures in Food No. 4: Fruits from abandoned orchards.

October 18, 2008October 19, 2008

Nibbles: Slow Food, Fonio, Origin of agriculture cubed, Domestication, Beer, Medicinal plants,

Survival of the Tastiest. Via.
Fonio Power.
Tuberculosis linked to agriculture.
Women’s caries linked to agriculture.
~~Lower~~ Higher probability of reaching reproductive maturity linked to agriculture.
Dienekes discusses dog and cattle domestication papers.
The African roots of medicine.
Beer can be good for you. Who thought otherwise?

1. What has agrobiodiversity ever done for us? Kent Nnadozie of the Plant Treaty lays it out.
2. Michael Frei of the HealthyDiets4Africa project doesn’t need it laid out.
3. Neither do the people who awarded a prize to Charlotte Allender of the UK Vegetable Genebank.
4. What has the US National Plant Germplasm System ever done for anyone? The Guardian, the NY Times and NPR News lay it out. I guess someone in D.C. needs it laid out, but will it make any difference?
5. Everyone: Potatoes in Florida! Breeders: No problem. NPGS: You called?
6. Here’s The Guardian again, but this time thinking it is making the case for not putting seeds in the fridge, whereas in fact it’s making the case for the complementarity of ex situ and on-farm conservation.
7. Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s a couple of pieces on community seed banks in Guatemala.
8. Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s the heart-warming story of Welsh organic farmer Gerald Miles.
9. Meanwhile, the World Vegetable Centre opens a new genebank.
10. And Türkiye hosts an international, no less, olive genebank.
11. And genebanks can be so beautiful, like works of art. Former Tate Modern director Vicente Todolí lays out his citrus samples. I wonder what he could do with olives.
12. Botanic gardens are beautiful and often act a little bit like crop genebanks. Here’s an example from Portugal I stumbled onto recently, I forget how.
13. You know what I’d like to see? An international pepper genebank, that’s what. No, not the kind that might be in those Guatemalan community seedbanks or the WorldVeg genebank. This sort of pepper. Piper pepper.
14. I bet the ancient Egyptians had pepper. Egyptian archaeologist Mennat-Allah El Dorry lays out what else they had.
15. Maybe you could lay out world history using pepper. You can definitely do so using cacao and chocolate.
16. No, not using ancient DNA, but actually…
Published on April 4, 2025