While browsing the iafrica.com website after reading its features on the potato, I ran across an article about tea-tasting at the Mont Rochelle Hotel in Franschhoek, not far from Cape Town. Which sounds wonderful. But a poignant complement to it was provided by a post I found a little bit later on a blog from the Botswanan village of Nata, which has a line about how tea and bread are served at funerals there. Anyway, Nata Village Blog seems like it’s definitely worth following. Franschhoek and Nata are about 1,600 km apart, as the crow flies.
Crop books reviewed
More about food and farming from bookforum.com, including links to reviews of books on the history of citrus and of beans. Meanwhile, iafrica.com has features on the potato in history and the potato and politics to remind us that 2008 will be the International Year of the Potato.
Kill and cure
There’s a great article at Common-Place about the Great American Ham. No, not Kevin Bacon. We’re talking how to cure “the thigh of a back leg of a hog, [with its] three large cross braided muscles, now designated the inside round, outside round, and sirloin tip.” It’s down to the “three s method: salt, saltpeter and smoke.” Sugar sometimes features as a fourth s. Fascinating historical stuff, and something of a (welcome)Â antidote to our incredibly popular mini-pig nibble.
Eat local
Interactive map of local foods in US.
Alfred H. Peet dies
The “grandfather of specialty coffee” goes to the big caffè in the sky.