Cooking School Winter-Spring 2009
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MELBOURNE
The Green Grocer North Fitzroy
Bookings 03 9489 1747
Organic Master Chef
Saturday 11th July 11-2pm $95
We
return to our original and favourite cooking school haunt at the green
grocer to
deliver an exclusive organic masterclass where we will share our
latest research
into food as medicine.
Recipes include San choi bao with quinoa and smoked tofu,
seared duck
breast with figs and orange and simmering soba noodle broth with fresh
shitake and shredded chicken. Fun, informative and always "Rude with
Health",
Sam will take you on a fascinating journey of cultural
cuisines and their nutritional philosophies. Grand Hyatt Melbourne City Club
Bookings 03 9653 4894 The Seven Secrets of Unlimited Energy
Corporate Health Workshop
Monday 13th July 2009 1pm - 1.45pm $25
Join us for an entertaining and informative health workshop at the home of our Melbourne practice, Grand Hyatt Melbourne. Samantha will explain the principles of sustainable, achievable health and wellbeing. Seminar handbook included & Door Prize. Why not take advantage of City Club's fine surrounds and book in for a Nutrition appointment or a yoga and Pilates session?
BRISBANE
Mondo Organic West End Brisbane
Bookings 07 3844 1132
An Introduction to Indonesian Ingredients $110
Saturday 18th July 9.30 -11.30am
Take
a seat and relax. Samantha introduces you to this popular and diverse
cuisine.
Learn how to cook with turmeric, tamarind, pandanus leaf,
galangal, palm sugar,
lemongrass and much more. Sam also explains the
health benefits of these beautiful
ingredients and cooks up a delicious
banquet dinner finished with her famous
sticky black rice for dessert. An Introduction to Indonesian Ingredients $110
Saturday 15th August 9.30 - 11.30am
Learn
how to cook with turmeric, tamarind, pandanus leaf, galangal, palm
sugar,
lemongrass and much more. Sam also explains the health benefits
of these beautiful
ingredients and cooks up a delicious banquet dinner
finished with her famous
sticky black rice for dessert.
Indonesian Curries and Satay $110
Saturday 29th August 9.30 - 11.30am
Sam shares her extensive knowledge of healthy Indonesian regional cuisine.
This spicy class celebrates the Padang flavours of Sumatra and Nonya favourites.
Discover how to create curry laksa, rendang chicken, sensational satay, crunchy
spiced rujak and more.
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Movie: Food, Inc. (2008) - NY Times
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Meet Your New Farmer: Hungry Corporate Giant
By MANOHLA DARGIS
New York Times June 12, 2009
Forget buckets of blood. Nothing says horror like one of those tubs of artificially buttered, nonorganic popcorn at the concession stand. That, at least, is one of the unappetizing lessons to draw from one of the scariest movies of the year, "Food, Inc.," an informative, often infuriating activist documentary about the big business of feeding or, more to the political point, force-feeding, Americans all the junk that multinational corporate money can buy. You'll shudder, shake and just possibly lose your genetically modified lunch.
Divided into chapters dedicated to points along the commercial food chain - from farm to fork, to borrow a loaded agribusiness phrase - the movie is nothing if not ambitious. "There are no seasons in the American supermarket," the unidentified voice intones in the opening scene, as the camera sweeps the aisles of one such brightly lighted, heavily stocked if nutritionally impoverished emporium. From there the director Robert Kenner jumps all over the food map, from industrial feedlots where millions of cruelly crammed cattle mill about in their own waste until slaughter, to the chains where millions of consumers gobble down industrially produced meat and an occasional serving of E. coli bacteria.
The voice in the opening belongs to the ethical epicurean and locavore champion Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food" and "The Omnivore's Dilemma," as well as a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. (Somewhat confusingly, the movie uses voice-overs without clearly identifying who's issuing forth on the soundtrack.) Mr. Pollan, who periodically appears on screen seated at a homey-looking table, is a great strength of "Food, Inc.," as is one of its co-producers, Eric Schlosser, the author of "Fast Food Nation." These two embodiments of conscience, together with Mr. Kenner, chart how and why the villains not only outnumber the heroes in contemporary food production, but also how and why they outbluff, outmuscle and outspend their opponents by billions of often government-subsidized dollars.
If you've read either "Fast Food Nation" or "The Omnivore's Dilemma," you won't be surprised by what the movie shows and tells about the killing floors and soybean fields. Chances are that you'll still be appalled, which is to Mr. Kenner's credit. Much as Mr. Schlosser does in "Fast Food Nation," the movie takes a look at the animal abuse in industrial food production - including clandestine images of sick and crippled cows being prodded to join the rest of the ill-fated herd - but its main focus is on the human cost. It's a cost visible in the rounded bodies of a poor family that eats cheap if filling fast-food burgers for breakfast and in the obscured faces of farmers too frightened to go on record about Monsanto, the agricultural biotech giant.
As Mr. Kenner marshals his prodigious evidence, including bushels of statistics, a veritable village of talking heads and too many dopey graphics, he makes the case that there's something horribly wrong with a system in which a bag of chips cost less than a bag of carrots. It's such a good case that you soon realize there are a dozen more documentaries tucked inside this one. The section on Monsanto is particularly eye-opening and could be spun out in more detail. And I could have spent more time with the philosophizing organic farmer Joel Salatin, who guts his chickens al fresco, hails his free-ranging livestock ("Hey, pig!") and is a reality show waiting to happen. It could be called "Hello, and Goodbye, Pig!"
There is, in the end, something inherently frustrating about a movie that's at once as fine, ambitious and, at a crisp 93 minutes, as abbreviated as "Food, Inc." Time and again the movie stops short before it really gets started, as with the debates over the big business of organic food. The moment when an organic farmer cheerily tells a smiling Wal-Mart representative that her family has been boycotting the company for years is hilarious. But it's also over before the issues have really been thrashed through. And while I appreciate the impulse behind the final checklist that tells what viewers can do for themselves and the world (er, eat organic), given everything we've just seen, it also registers as far too depressingly little.
FOOD, INC.
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The Wealth of Wheatgrass
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Jocund juice joints across the land are bountiful with spiky trays
of wheat grass, gently waving their nutritious blades. Whilst it
may seem that this is a new fad, wheat grass and its juice have been
available for some time.
Many a Manhattan juicery has been dealing in the commodity of wheat
grass since the 1980’s, injecting New Yorkers with the living light of
plants. Some enthusiasts have embraced this pasture with all the
fervour of a Jersey cow, whilst others are less reverent -
usually being put off by its pungent odour of a freshly mowed
lawn. What we are discovering is what our farmyard friends have
known all along - that grass is good - just how often have we seen our
usually carnivorous pets enjoy a blade or two to restore their
health?
The medicinal use of grasses and chlorophyll date back to the Bible and
have been used widely ever since. Grass poultices are been used for
their cooling properties to treat inflammation, burns, itchiness and
eyestrain.
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