Focus on: 19th Century France!

While much of America still takes part in the seasonal joy of gardening, many have abandoned this practice for the ease of the supermarket. While we here at PovertyFood are also modern food shoppers, we still hope to encourage everyone to do at least a little gardening, to bring back that joy of savouring the fruits of our own labour.  To inspire us, let's go back to 19th century France and the "potager"!

If you were lucky enough to live in even the near countryside, your home in 19th century France would not have been complete without a "potager". That is, literally, a "soup garden", where you would grow your staple and favourite vegetables as well as herbs and even flowers that would add to your table throughout the seasons. As we  make our way through the long month of January, the snows, the ice and those feelings of potential that the new year brings, consider planning and planting your own "soup garden" for spring. Your harvest will be fabulous even if small, and you will get a wonderful sense of satisfaction, particularly when you savour those dishes that YOU made possible with a little help from the soil and the sun.

If you plant a soup garden, consider what would have been typical of a 19th century French "potager". For inspiration, PovertyFood HIGHLY recommends the book, Vilmorin, The Vegetable Garden. While more of a collection of drawings from the Vilmorin Seed Company which was popular in 19th century France, this collection of drawings will surely inspire the gardener and the cook in anyone. Actually founded in 1742, Vilmorin is today the fourth largest seed company in the world!

Get yourself started with a "potager" of any size, whether a few window sill herbs or a full blown, multi-crop garden... just PLANT! And consider some of the herbs and vegetables which would have been in every "potager" in France, courtesy of Amazon.com and the book Vilmorin, The Vegetable Garden.

 

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone around the world from PovertyFood!
I hope you enjoy a happy and healthy year!

Please consider sending your favorite PovertyFood recipe to be included
on the site. Or perhaps a fond childhood story about a cherished food memory.

Whatever you do, enjoy simply food with loved ones. There is nothing better in life!

Happy New Year!
PovertyFood

Focus on Australia: Bush Tucker

 

In a recent adventure program called Ray Mears' Walkabout from the BBC, which you may be familiar with, the host, Ray Mears, talked extensively about the survival foods, not sure what else you could call them, of the early settlers of Australia and the original Aboriginal inhabitants.

Bush tucker (pronounced "tucka" if trying your best Aussi accent) is any of the staple foods or dishes that would have been consumed routinely in the outback in the early days of Australia, and before. Using only very basic staples such as flour, sugar and salt the food focus of these hearty people was primarily on bread and tea. A bland diet to be sure unless meat was also on the menu. None the less, bush tucker, in it's simplest form, kept many people alive in the brutal conditions of the Australian outback.

                             Making damper in the bush

The bread made is called damper or bush bread if you are Aboriginal, and the tea most often consumed, Billy tea, made from the leaves of indigenous trees, typically was the staple survival diet of those explorers, settlers and Aborigines who truly invented them.

Bush bread, a simple flour and water bread, was cooked in the hot ashes of a campfire. Once cooked, the ashes would be have to be tapped off the bread. None-the-less, you would surely consume some of the ashes. And Billy tea, according to Aussies, has a real cultural component to it beyond the simple tradition of tea. Read more here on the art of Billy Tea.

In any event, these foods are the stuff of legend and survival. Entertain the kids and make it a truly cultural experience. Next time you are camping, make a batch of damper. Or fire up a DVD on Australia and enjoy a little bush bread and billy tea, wherever you are. Here are the basics for making your own  bush bread or damper.

Ingredients: - 5 cups flour (white or whole wheat or a combination of any kind of flour)
- 4 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1/2 cup milk powder
- 2 to 3 Tbsp. fat (butter, margarine, shortening, bacon grease)
Directions:
-place the dough in a greased and floured dutch oven
-cover
-place the dutch oven under the coals and hot ashes of your campfire (or place dough directly under the ashes without using a dutch oven! )
- bake about thirty minutes
- to know if it is done, tap on the sides with a knife. It should sound hollow
- serve with great amounts of butter and jam and a cup of your best Billy Tea!

More to come about other bush tucker in future installments.