Food Archives - The Courier News

Tag listing: Food

‘Foody’ couple dine out on win

August 02, 2012 Admin

Building their eateries brought them together and now two Hahndorf restaurateurs are celebrating being among the best in the State together.

Feral dishes to feature at winery event

July 26, 2012 Admin

Forget the lamb roast and the scotch fillet steak, one Hills winery has found a feral food match to complement its new release reds.

Land key to SA food security

July 19, 2012 Admin

SA needs to protect its “finite high quality agricultural land” to ensure the State’s food security, according to an Adelaide Hills Council submission on sustainable farming practices.
The submission was approved recently by elected members and sent to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Sustainable Farming Practices.
The select committee was initiated by Hills MP Ivan Venning, the Member for Schubert. It is in the process of collecting submissions from the public.
The Adelaide Hills Council has identified four key issues, including farmland viability and problems at the rural and urban “interface”, and has called for right to farm legislation and a Rural Development Module to be prepared for the State’s Planning Policy Library.
In the submission Mayor Bill Spragg said the council was “vitally concerned” with the pressures on farming on the urban fringe.
“The Adelaide Hills contain some of the State’s highest quality agricultural land, yet this land is consistently being fragmented and taken out of production to meet demand for rural residential allotments,” he said. The submission pointed out that between 2000 and 2006 the council lost 8% of its productive agricultural land.
“This formerly productive land was bought to, in essence, place a house on a large block in an attractive rural environment,” Mr Spragg said.
“Demand for rural living blocks is high… which means that a person from outside the area can easily outbid a farmer looking to expand.”
The select committee will use the public submissions to draft an issues paper for public release.

Chefs enjoy taste from kids in the kitchen

July 05, 2012 Admin

A national program teaching children to grow, harvest, prepare and share fresh and seasonal food was officially opened at two Hills schools last month by Australian culinary icon Maggie Beer.

Local ingredients take the cake in bake-off

July 05, 2012 Admin

In the end barely a crumb separated the top two cakes in the Adelaide Hills Farmers Market’s inaugural contest.

Sharing based on ideas of abundance

June 28, 2012 Admin

The Lobethal Community Association has embraced the sustainable lifestyle, sponsoring a bi-monthly produce swap for residents’ home grown fruit and vegetables.

Hills eateries among State’s best

June 28, 2012 Admin

Hills eateries are proving to be strong competition on the State’s food stage, qualifying as finalists in 12 classes of SA’s top restaurant honors.

Hills products flagged in stores

March 22, 2012 Admin

Up to 2000 products made or grown in the Adelaide Hills could be on the shelves of a Romeos supermarket at any one time.

Small operators fear retail giants

February 09, 2012 Admin

Bridgewater Greengrocer owner Silvana Codr knows most of the farmers behind the fresh produce she puts on her shelves.

Food for thought

February 09, 2012 Admin

That no season is the same as the last one is one of the few certainties in farming.
What Australian growers produce and what it sells for are highly sensitive to the vagaries of the weather, market supply and demand and the performance of the Australian dollar.
For fruit and vegetable growers, this year has delivered an abundance of high quality fresh produce with an Aussie dollar that makes exports tough.
There’s an oversupply of produce on our domestic market and the unlikely white knight riding in to save our farmers is one of the nation’s biggest supermarkets.
Coles is capitalising on the produce boom by using it as its latest battlefield in the price war against fellow grocery giant Woolworths.
It is buying up low-cost fruit and vegetables and passing the savings on to customers as a way to push large volumes of produce through the supply chain, so growers are not forced to leave their crops to rot.
It is admirable that one of the two major corporations that dominate our food sector wants to support the nation’s farmers, but let’s not forget Coles is also making the most of a market situation to win some public relations points in its war against Woolworths.
While growers and the State’s biggest wholesale market support low prices during an oversupply, they are understandably jittery about what Coles’ new pricing strategy means for their future.
The duopoly’s cut-throat battle for supermarket dominance has already targeted bread, milk and meat and Australian farmers are wondering how long the chains will continue to absorb the losses from reduced prices.
What happens in a few months’ time when the oversupply ends, but consumers are used to paying a lower price for fresh produce?
The industry’s fear is that Coles will refuse to pay a higher rate for fruit and vegetables, choosing to be supplied only by big producers who, through economies of scale, can afford to receive less per product unit.
That could then push smaller growers and the greengrocers and independent supermarkets they supply out of the market.
Worse still, it could pave the way for a flood of produce imports from countries that have lower overheads and can afford to sell the fruit and vegetables cheaply.
That is surely not what customers want if the growing interest in buying local is anything to go buy.
The more than 2000 shoppers that swamped the Mt Pleasant Farmers Market, and the ongoing success of similar markets around the State, shows that consumers want to know where their produce is coming from.