Healthy cows give healthy milk

We are asked for raw milk several times a week. Whereas raw goats’ milk is legal to produce and sell for human consumption, cows’ milk is not. Regulations against its sale for human consumption are clear and our government has determined that its ingestion is potentially dangerous. We sell both types of milk here, though we must advise you that only raw goats’ milk is suitable for human consumption. The raw cows’ milk we sell is only for bathing. One suitable use might be to swirl no more than 1 -2 tablespoons under the running water as the bath is filling. This makes its use very economical, especially with its reputed skin-softening properties.

It’s been pointed out before that the human race existed long before Louis Pasteur was around. You can find a lot of information about raw versus pasteurized milk online, including Food Standards Australia/New Zealand’s working papers. Interestingly, despite working jointly on almost all food regulations, New Zealand is parting ways with Australia on this issue and is set to allow the production of all raw milk cheeses. It is not clear however that they will allow raw milk sales. Australia’s proposal is to possibly allow the production of hard cheeses using raw milk but stopping well short of permitting the manufacture and sale of soft cheeses or raw milk for human consumption.

Drink up

Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, was recently in Australia. He reported having dinner with the Minister for Agriculture in Western Australia and pointed out that the cheese they were eating was made with raw milk in Europe and then imported. “Are Australians to be protected against the “dangers” of raw cheese made by Australians but okay eating raw cheese from Europe?” he asked. If you’d like to see Carlo Petrini’s speech at the Sydney Opera House in October, click here.

If you are interested in the issue of raw milk and raw cheese, you may like to sign the online petition organised by Slow Food Australia, which is being conducted by pioneering, beyond-organic farmer Michael Croft.

You can also find out more about this subject from Real Milk Australia, advocates of raw milk.

Note that the views expressed by Real Milk Australia are not necessarily those of Granny Smith Natural Food Market. We most certainly do not condone the consumption of raw cows’ milk.

Please, please, please remember that we do not advocate that you or any of your family drink raw cows’ milk. It is clearly sold as a bath milk only and you should be very careful to avoid getting any on or near your face when you’ve put it into your bathwater. Please be careful!

Sometimes something really special appears in store. Let me introduce you to Alf and Lee Sorbello’s magnificent heirloom tomatoes. Heirloom tomatoes are those that grow true from seed and can be passed from one generation to another. They are gold. Today most growers will choose hybrid varieties that give them the highest yield and can be tumbled into a box and transported vast distances. Taste, quality and beauty are secondary. Many varieties have entirely disappeared: a blow to our culinary heritage.

Alf and Lee have decades of tomato growing experience and what’s more, they are absolutely passionate about tomatoes! That’s why they grow dozens and dozens of varieties of tomatoes with poetic names like Black Krim, Green Zebra and Yellow Pear. You’re unlikely to find most of them anywhere else in Australia. In fact with their years spent collecting tomato varieties, you’d be hard-pressed to find their selection anywhere else in the world outside a tomato seed bank.

Now you know how much I bang on about seasonality. It’s important to understand what grows locally and when. A local diet means less energy spent on transport and fresher produce on your table. Seasonality can be affected by many things: weather, greenhouses, storage and even the expertise of the grower.

There’s no doubt tomatoes are a real taste of summer. Their delicious flavour was something you had to wait until the warmer months to enjoy. In the past you ate tomatoes through the colder months from cans: in rich pasta sauces and stews for example. So much so that many people don’t realize that tomatoes only appear in the Sydney region at Christmas when they’re grown outdoors.

Alf and Lee’s expertise allows them to grow their fruit all year round. Yes tomatoes are a fruit! Grown undercover just across Galston Gorge at Middle Dural, Alf and Lee represent a vital but disappearing part of Sydney’s food production heritage. They minimize or entirely avoid the cocktail of unwelcome chemicals many conventional growers use. Their investment in covers for their crop allows them to reliably turn out dozens of varieties right through the winter when other tomatoes are trucked in from far north Queensland, thousands of kilometres away.

The tomatoes Alf and Lee grow are magnificent. Full of flavour and beautiful to look at, don’t be caught out thinking that they all have to turn red. Some of them stay yellow, some black, some green even. When they give under slight pressure, they’re ready to enjoy. For a beautiful and special Sunday brunch, try slicing some perfectly ripe tomatoes of various colours on a platter, drizzle them with quality olive oil and a little balsamic vinegar and finish off with a generous grind of salt and pepper. And don’t forget to toast the growers for all their hard work!

What goes around ...

Attention all you gardeners out there!

Sydney’s LNS (Leafy North Shore) is awash with summer’s bounty: our LNS deciduous trees have almost entirely dropped their leaves. Each one is a tiny packet of nutrition from the surrounding soil, drawn up by the tree’s roots and converted with the help of summer sunshine into a single-season, solar panel. They’re designed to drop to the ground, break down and enrich the soil anew, the ultimate in sustainable recycling. So why are all the wheelie bins full of them? Why are these bins called “green waste” anyway? It’s not waste.

These brown leaves, crisp and brittle when dry and eddying around in the gutters and on nature strips, are perfect for your compost. Don’t forget to collect them from errant neighbours and add them to your compost pile. Amazingly, those neighbours, standing in their impoverished gardens, may even thank you for your theft of their garden’s valuable nutrients! In fact if they were simply going to go into their “green waste” bins and be carted off inside a noisy, polluting truck, you’re doing the world a favour.

Compare your body to a healthy lake. When you eat well, exercise, feel rested and are surrounded by a network of people who love and support you, you are full of energy.

In a pristine lake water laps gently at the shore, fish swim in the depths, insects skim across the surface and trees grow abundantly at the edge. Streams and rain flow in, evaporation removes some and balance is maintained. The surface of the water reflects well-being.

As life progresses, it can become harder to keep the self/lake full. Life’s challenges cause the level of the lake to drop. A pristine lake depends on a good environment, without too much variance in the ecological conditions. We humans can choose to be more in control of our “lake’s” health. No longer pristine, we have to work harder to keep ourselves feeling our best. (more…)