tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-369729822024-03-12T20:13:54.199-07:00Tammi Tasting TerroirThe infrequent and imperfect yet impassioned musings of a PhD candidate, mother, wife, sister, daughter, friend and would-be cultural commentator with a penchant for food and community...Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-17490506171461147802010-06-08T17:58:00.000-07:002010-06-08T18:15:24.998-07:00Tammi is now Tasting Terroir on WordPressAll good things... yep. And so although Blogger did what I needed for the first 3 1/2 years of this blog, it was time to up stakes and move. I need more functionality, a wider column ('cos I'm wordy, hey?) and increasingly, just for you lovelies to be able to see my blog on Chrome.<br /><br />I'm still ironing out the kinks <a href="http://www.tammijonas.com/">over there</a>, but I reckon it looks pretty good. In fact, I toasted the new site with my first glass of alcohol in a week and a half last night with Stuart. Cork popped, blog launched. You'll find me now at<br /><br />http://www.tammijonas.com<br /><br />That's right, my domain is eponymous. Cool, eh?<br /><br />To end this part of the adventure, I'd like to leave you with my recipe for lemon roasted almonds. :-) These are my standard afternoon blood sugar recovery plan.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lemon Roasted Almonds (aka Zomigod Nuts)</span><br /><br />Take a bunch of raw almonds, marinate them in plenty of lemon juice and salt for about half an hour. Pop them into a hot oven (around 220C) for about 10 minutes. Give them a stir, and pop them back in for about another 10. Keep an eye on them so they don't burn, but they're tastiest on the darker side. When they're completely dry, leave them to cool. If you don't eat them all up immediately (if there are family or friends around, this is a real possibility, even for a kilo of nuts), store them once they're cool in a sealed jar.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/TA7q1S4ZshI/AAAAAAAAAWk/KxdE8QmKkv8/s1600/DSC_0167.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/TA7q1S4ZshI/AAAAAAAAAWk/KxdE8QmKkv8/s320/DSC_0167.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480575997878841874" border="0" /></a>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-30065285319698395032010-06-02T04:24:00.000-07:002010-06-02T04:37:17.888-07:00How Joel Salatin Unknowingly Convinced Me to Become a FarmerI spent the second half of my childhood living on a 2000 acre cattle ranch in Oregon. Before that, we were city slickers in Orange County, California (before anyone called it 'the OC'). In spite of this idyllic existence where my cowgirl dreams came true, I didn't learn much of the ways of the land, so to speak. We had a ranch-hand in charge of the cattle, and although my parents were deeply involved, we kids largely just went along for the lark of a good round-up. I was good on a horse and knew a lot about their care, as well as the castrating and vaccination routines of pasture-fed cattle, but I couldn't have told you a thing about growing fruit or vegetables, and chickens were a total mystery.<br /><br />Three years after high school, I found myself on the cliffs of Wales, walking with a lover I met in a hostel in London after dropping out of university while protesting the 1991 Gulf War. I'm vegetarian. We're discussing our life's dreams in that starry-eyed youthful way, and I pronounce my intention to own a property in Colorado someday, near enough to Boulder that there will be a like-minded community of hippies and dreamers, but far enough out to buy a farm big enough to do some serious growing. My lover says, 'no way. I totally can't picture you on a farm.' (He also shortly thereafter informed me he had recently left the Australian Army Reserves. It is one of the true mysteries of this story that we are still together 19 years later...)<br /><br />Some six years later, my lover/husband and I visited Daylesford for the first time. As always when we spend time in the country, we were enchanted and immediately commence dplans to move there. We signed the Convent Gallery's guestbook with, 'we'll be back... to live next time.'<br /><br />Since we met, Stuart and I have spent a total of two years actually living in the country, one in a small town in Oregon, where for most of the year we lived in a gorgeous little log cabin under a magnificent cherry tree, the other on a remote property in far east Gippsland, Victoria, which is an environmental education campus for Year 9 girls. The latter year was a pastoral dream, a poetic success, and professionally challenging. We swore again that we would live in the country on our own property one day...<br /><br />But in all these pastoral dreams, I never really entertained the notion of actually being a farmer, in the sense of a producer for a market to make a living. Mine has always been a hippie's halcyon daydream of self-sufficiency. Which, unsurprisingly, is probably why we haven't yet made it happen. Exactly how do we earn a living on our own little unplugged piece of the planet? Even around Daylesford, there's not a lot of work for an academic and a business development manager in building automation technologies.<br /><br />But everything changed when we heard <a href="http://www.polyfacefarms.com/default.aspx">Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms</a> last weekend. In case you haven't heard of Joel, he describes himself as an environmentalist, capitalist, lunatic farmer. He is one of the most intelligent, charismatic speakers to whom I have had the pleasure to listen, and he did a great job of busting my every stereotype of 'dumb farmers'. He even has a philosophy about that...<br /><br />We went to the <a href="http://www.lakehouse.com.au/index.htm?what-salatin.html%7EmainFrame">Lakehouse to hear Joel talk about building a local food system, and how to scale up 'without losing your soul'</a>. I was interested in the way I always am – how can we feed the world through smaller, more local production where farmers are embedded in communities? You know, the usual, 'how do we save the world' sort of questions that are my trademark. I came away convinced that the best way for Stuart and I to help save the world was not simply by 'living the changes we wish to see in the world' but by flogging them and making a living from them as well. Yes, I'm convinced that we can and should be primary producers. I give us about five years to get through a start-up period. How did Joel convert me?<br /><br />Here are the highlights of Joel's double-feature seminar, in note form with minimal editorialising.<br /><br />First of all, a local food system has six components:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Producers</span><br /><ul><li>local farms will be 'aesthetically and aromatically, sensually romantic'. Large scale commodity 'farms' are so opaque they allow unsustainable practices. Local producers are embedded in communities. The industrial economy has created 'commercial apartheid' – it is 'opaque, confused and inefficient... with a semblance of efficiency only enabled by cheap energy'. Stop subsidising the petrochemical industry and cheap, industrial food will have to increase in price.</li></ul><ul><li>(Sadface fact of the day: in California, organic growers are now required to sign an affadavit to keep under-5-year-olds off their farm because they might wear nappies, which might contaminate the produce. See <a href="http://tammijonas.blogspot.com/2010/04/rant-raising-chickens-is-good-or-on.html">my rant on agro-industry </a>for my thoughts on this sadness.)</li></ul><ul><li>Local producers look after the 'ecological umbilical' with practices such as pasture-based livestock, stacking and symbiosis.</li></ul><ul><li>Farms should be solar driven (not petrochemical). Fertiliser is in-sourced.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>Farmers should be 'Jeffersonian intellectual agrarians'. :-) In order for 'city folk' to take farmers seriously, they need to professionalise and outwardly express their intelligence.</li></ul><ul><li>Traditional family farmers are not good at creating a successionally successful business – they must learn to collaborate and take on more young workers outside the family where necessary.</li></ul><span style="font-weight: bold;">Processing</span><br /><ul><li>With our loss of local canneries, butchers, bakeries, etc, we must reclaim spaces for community food processing, such as church halls.</li></ul><ul><li>Government regulations are not scalable for small operations. At some point, we should be able to take individual responsibility for our food choices (eg raw milk).<br /></li></ul><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Accounting</span><br /><ul><li>Most farmers are not very good accountants. You need to be able to understand which of your products are being subsidised by others and do something about it if you want to be profitable.</li></ul><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marketing</span><br /><ul><li>No matter how good your produce is, people need to know it exists. A great way for small farms to market more easily is to collaborate with other small producers nearby.</li></ul><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Distribution</span><br /><ul><li>Distribution can be the great bottleneck for small, local producers, who end up selling everything to supermarkets via the big distributors. Again, collaboration with other local growers can solve this problem.</li></ul><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Patrons</span><br /><ul><li>Every product needs a consumer, & a small, local farmer's patrons are likely to be people who appreciate seasonality, who are excited about rediscovering their kitchens, and who know that processed food is expensive.</li></ul><br />In the second seminar on scaling up, Joel went into more detail about Polyface Farm. Here's what we learned...<br /><br /><ul><li>Polyface sales are approximately 25% on-farm, 35% restaurant and boutique supermarket, and 45% 'box drop' internet sales.</li><li>They separate the delivery fee from the farmer's cost so consumers can see how much goes to the farmer – as Joel said, he's a farmer, not a transporter.</li><li>His boundary is deliveries within 4 hours of Polyface.</li><li>The box drop system works much better than farmers' market attendance – there's no speculation about what stock to take, they deliver to a central point at agreed time and customers collect their boxes, which they were able to choose from entire inventory. (The internet, once conceived as a tool of globalisation, has emerged as an excellent tool for localisation.)</li><li>Polyface employs interns and apprentices, provides housing and board and very small stipends.</li></ul><div style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">The Mental Protection from Wall Streetification of Polyface<br /></div><ol><li>Never have a sales target.</li><li>No trademarks or patents. 'Hold your innovations lightly.'</li><li>Identify your market boundaries. (Then you can just tell those outside them to seek other fabulous local growers, thus supporting the movement & reducing your own stress.)</li><li>Incentivised workforce (bonuses and commissions). [apologies to those who hate 'incentivise', which isn't a word, I know. Am quoting.]</li><li>No Initial Public Offering (IPO). That way you will never be beholden to shareholders, whose primary aim is merely to make a profit themselves.</li><li>No advertising – it's all word of mouth.</li><li>Stay in the ecological carrying capacity (the ecology of the farm should be able to metabolise its own waste).</li><li>People answer the phone.</li><li>Respect the pigness of the pig.</li><li>Quality always has to go up. (If you can't increase quality when increasing volume, then don't increase your volume.)</li></ol><br />Two other quick, interesting, important points:<br /><br />And I quote, <blockquote>“GMO is evil.”</blockquote>Patenting seeds and suing small growers, including traditional native American communities, when patented DNA is found in their seed stock is EVIL. Indeed.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Organic certification</span> is insufficient as it is a pass/fail system. Those who would get a D- are alongside those who would earn an A+ - it's a perverse incentive to work to the lowest common denominator. For example, one farm might produce all of its own organic compost – all of its outputs become inputs for the farm – no organic waste leaves the property. Another might bring in organic fish emulsion from the east coast, which has been sourced as a byproduct of Japanese driftnets and has a carbon footprint bigger than importing petrochemical fertilisers from Australia (this is to the US, of course).<br /><br />According to Joel, if you ask whether something is organic, and the producer or seller says, 'yes', the conversation is over and you buy it. There are many things that might be environmentally or ethically suspect about the produce, but they are masked by the organic certification. When he's asked why he doesn't certify, there is a conversation, everybody learns more, and the word is spread further. :-)<br /><br />As I listened to Joel, it increasingly dawned on me that many arguments against running a small farm were being systematically debunked. He is a passionate advocate for farming in a way that is socially, environmentally and fiscally sustainable. He speaks my language. He writes fascinating books detailing what we only heard a few hours of. And he's on the lecture circuit proselytising about all of it. Zomigod, I can do that.Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-63466104026173920152010-05-05T22:28:00.000-07:002010-05-05T22:30:33.950-07:00A Civil Campaign<style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } A:link { so-</style>Yesterday's announcement of the sacking of Catherine Deveny from <i>The Age</i> came as no surprise to many of us who have loathed her particular brand of lowbrow vitriol that covers a wide spectrum – from class hatred and '<a href="http://meloukhia.net/2009/07/hipster_racism.html">hipster racism'</a> to attempts at humour around the sexual activities of an 11 year old girl. And yet the Twitters are alight with dissent over whether she should have been sacked for her tweeting at the Logies. <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a href="http://overstimulated.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/the-problem-with-catherine-deveny/">Others have already blogged on the issues</a> around whether she should have been sacked for her tweets and questioned why more socially destructive and offensive columnists like Andrew Bolt haven't been fired yet. The most compelling piece I've seen came from <a href="http://newmatilda.com/2010/05/06/embarrassment-latte-belt">Jason Wilson over on New Matilda</a>, who asks why she was hired in the first place. And surely those of us who dislike Deveny's work would agree that she's hardly the worst offender. The other trollumnists should be reined in as well, in the interest of a more civil society. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">And so I have an idea.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">In my meeting yesterday with Graeme Innes, Race Discrimination Commissioner and Disability Discrimination Commissioner for the Australian Human Rights Commission, we talked through the <a href="http://www.humanrights.gov.au/complaints_information/index.html">complaints process available to all Australians</a> if they think something published is discriminatory on the basis of race, sex, age or disability. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">For example, if you read one of Bolt's columns (and I don't recommend it, though to get this campaign going many of us might need to) and find it offensive, you can <a href="http://www.humanrights.gov.au/complaints_information/index.html">lodge a complaint with the AHRC</a>. Even if you believe an 'anonymous' comment is racist, sexist, etc, you can make a complaint and the publisher is responsible for defending or denying.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">You can then tweet what you find offensive and suggest others might complain if they too find the material offensive. So rather than all of us simply tweeting our outrage, we can take action. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The AHRC (or you could use your state Commission, such as the <a href="http://www.humanrightscommission.vic.gov.au/making%20a%20complaint/default.asp">Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission</a>) is required to investigate every complaint. Clearly, the system will look after itself – spurious complaints should not end up sacking somebody who is undeserving. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The important thing is that <b>the AHRC and state commissions cannot act on racist comments in a column or the comments without an official complaint</b>. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">So it's time to speak up!</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Logically, if trollumnists start attracting as many complaints as they do rabid comments of agreement, they becomes liabilities for their employers, as Deveny did for hers it seems. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The trolls have had their day. It's time we take away their oxygen. </p>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-17214865142722295642010-04-26T20:39:00.000-07:002010-04-26T20:59:38.067-07:00How do you do it? On good cooking and finding time.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S9ZdCQwbe_I/AAAAAAAAAVk/DdI5k9j9my0/s1600/IMG_1448.JPG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 247px; height: 185px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S9ZdCQwbe_I/AAAAAAAAAVk/DdI5k9j9my0/s320/IMG_1448.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464657491299892210" border="0" /></a>This is not a post to make others feel guilty about what you're not doing, though it may have that unintended effect on some. I apologise in advance to any who take it that way. But while we have a quick look at the life of the Jonai, here's a brief bit of background: <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I was raised in a family with two working parents who outsourced most domestic labour, including quite a lot of what cooking was actually done (very little, in truth). Our 'junk cupboard' (full of Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Chips Ahoy, Ruffles potato chips, etc) was precisely half the size of the 'real food' pantry, which was stocked with tins of vegies, soup and other highly refined items. There was minimal fresh produce in the house beyond bananas and apples. My mum hated to cook, but would occasionally produce a dinner of pork chops cooked to cardboard consistency (to ensure we didn't get salmonella) and mashed potatoes (made from real potatoes). Many dinners were toast or a bowl of Cheerios we made ourselves, though we could sometimes convince Ma to make french toast, waffles or pancakes (from Krusteaz). She also made oatmeal to order as we all chilled out in front of the tv at night.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Stuart, on the other hand, was raised in a family where fresh food was paramount and readily available. Hardly any refined foods sullied their pantry, and his mother was a steady and plentiful cook of quality meat and three veg. Neither of our fathers cooked, though mine would man the barbecue at parties (Stuart's still doesn't like to do so) and mine also taught my mum to whip up a damn fine southern-style fried breakfast (he's from Alabama).</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The point is, I certainly wasn't raised with any cooking skills, let alone positive food memories from childhood, except for the beautiful restaurants my folks would take us to during our regular travels. Our housekeeper did teach me a lifelong love of quesadillas, which I have passed on to my own children, though with many added vegies and my own refried beans.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S9ZdfIORb0I/AAAAAAAAAVs/7DWLWUCN18I/s1600/IMG_1459.JPG"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 291px; height: 218px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S9ZdfIORb0I/AAAAAAAAAVs/7DWLWUCN18I/s320/IMG_1459.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464657987225349954" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">So here we are, late thirtysomethings, both working full time, with three children. I work as well as doing my PhD, and this year my role as President of the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) sees me interstate on average one night a week. Yet this year is the year <a href="http://tammijonas.blogspot.com/2010/02/all-bread-is-not-created-equal.html">I am learning to </a><a href="http://tammijonas.blogspot.com/2010/02/all-bread-is-not-created-equal.html">make sourdough</a>, it is a year <a href="http://tammijonas.blogspot.com/2010/02/do-you-eat-chicken-could-you-kill-one.html">we are slaughtering chooks and eating them</a>, a year our garden has proven extremely bounteous (and we rent, by the way), and we manage to put a home cooked meal on the table nearly every night. How do we do that, we're often asked?</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I've written plenty on the importance of skills – competence is the friend of efficiency. The other thing I've written about is the pleasure of competence, and the <a href="http://tammijonas.blogspot.com/2010/03/feminists-dont-have-to-eat-fast-food.html">need to take pleasure in the everyday</a>, including 'chores' such as cooking, gardening and tending the chooks. Finally, I've also pointed to the benefits of teamwork and the further efficiency of a larger household to reduce waste, a point supported by <a href="http://www.manningclark.org.au/html/Paper-Denniss_Richard-Australia%E2%80%99s_Affluence_Consumption_Trends_Indicators_Progress.htm">last year's report on household waste</a>, which showed that smaller households waste more, though large share houses that are not families still tend to waste more as well. Just briefly then, here's <i>how we do it</i><span style="font-style: normal;">:</span></p> <ol><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">We don't do exhaustion. Our philosophy is that everything is achievable if it's a priority, and cooking when you're tired can actually be a way of relaxing if that's how you see it. For Stuart, this extends to foraging on the way home, doing a bit of harvesting or staking tomato plants, etc, and for me it extends to finely chopping a number of ingredients for a quickly fried Thai basil, chili garlic fish instead of</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> ordering takeaway. This is not to say we never get tired. We do, but perhaps we think of it differen</span><span style="font-style: normal;">tly to others, and reasonably expect ourselves to still cook a meal for the family, which may be some</span><span style="font-style: normal;">thing as simple as rice and avocado on a really laz</span><span style="font-style: normal;">y night. (NB We do order takeaway sometimes – perhaps once a month.)</span><span style="font-style: normal;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S9Zdw75b_ZI/AAAAAAAAAV0/MVYf2mRij0k/s1600/IMG_1554.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 187px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S9Zdw75b_ZI/AAAAAAAAAV0/MVYf2mRij0k/s320/IMG_1554.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464658293154381202" border="0" /></a></span></p> </li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">We share the shopping, and make do with what's in the house when necessary. Stuart pops into the Vic Market once or twice a week on his lunch break to pick up mostly fruit or a bit of meat. I stop in at the butcher, Italian groc</span><span style="font-style: normal;">er, organic grocer or fruit shop in our local shopping street after dropping kids at school on </span><span style="font-style: normal;">a day when I work at home, or on the way home from working in the city. When we're really low on fresh f</span><span style="font-style: normal;">ood and too busy to go get some, we raid our freezer, which is always full of stock, homemade pasties and sausage rolls, and frozen meat for 'emergencies'.</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> Plus we keep a lot of beans, both dried and tinned, for quick and simple meals. Having chooks means we always have eggs on hand, and my breadmaking obsession keeps us in bread!</span></p> </li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Although I'm the primary and more passionate daily cook, we share the cooking as well. Like I said, if we're very busy, sometimes the meals are incredibly simple: rice and avocado, pasta with a jar of passata from last summer's harvest, lamb chops with roast potato and a simple salad, or Stuart's stir fry</span><span style="font-style: normal;">, much beloved b</span><span style="font-style: normal;">y the children. When th</span><span style="font-style: normal;">ere's time to do something more, we do. I love nothing more than having time to get into the kitchen by 5pm so I can serve something delectable between 6:00 and 7</span><span style="font-style: normal;">pm. Sometimes I'm overly ambitious and dinner is late – in which case I let the children graze on nuts and fruit to tide them over.</span></p> </li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>But you even make bread during the week?</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> Yes, and I can do this because I believe in a </span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S9ZeTQKJsGI/AAAAAAAAAV8/t9yhzZ9_zcA/s1600/IMG_1550.JPG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 215px; height: 161px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S9ZeTQKJsGI/AAAAAAAAAV8/t9yhzZ9_zcA/s320/IMG_1550.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464658882708746338" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: normal;">lackadaisical approach that makes it possi</span><span style="font-style: normal;">ble. You can see <a href="http://tammijonas.blogspot.com/2010/02/all-bread-is-not-created-equal.html">my post</a> on how I wander through the kitchen, giving a dough a quick knead here and there, before letting it rise overnight to pop into the oven when we get up. This takes me no more time than someone el</span><span style="font-style: normal;">se might spend reading the paper or watching the news (in fact, much less). Much of my bread is fairly flat because I leave it to rise for too long – it's still totally scrumptious! Stuart </span><span style="font-style: normal;">also regularly brews beer of an evening, and does so quickly and efficiently after more than a decade of p</span><span style="font-style: normal;">ractice</span><span style="font-style: normal;">.</span></p> </li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">What about all the preserving? Harvesting and processing the masses of plums, tomatoes, pumpkins, olives, apricots, and more is one of</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S9Zeu-9tPrI/AAAAAAAAAWE/vDLMvwFP5Bo/s1600/IMG_1384.JPG"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 257px; height: 197px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S9Zeu-9tPrI/AAAAAAAAAWE/vDLMvwFP5Bo/s320/IMG_1384.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464659359129484978" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: normal;"> th</span><span style="font-style: normal;">e pleasures of our 'down time', though some of it can be rather tedious as well</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S9ZfyZREFNI/AAAAAAAAAWM/t43lfTEJYGE/s1600/IMG_1236.JPG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 171px; height: 128px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S9ZfyZREFNI/AAAAAAAAAWM/t43lfTEJYGE/s320/IMG_1236.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464660517241230546" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: normal;"> (ie pitting plums!). We do most of this on the weekends, though Stuart, who never rests, will often do some after work as I make dinner (does this cause some tension in the kitchen occasionally? Yes. ;-))</span></p> </li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">How do you manage to have a social life, take children to lessons and sport, and do any exercise, etc? Okay, a confession: I'm a little </span><span style="font-style: normal;">allergic to exercise. When I commute to the city I try to ride my bike (8km), so I get exercise that way sometimes, but admittedly not enough. Stuart rides every day, rain or shine, so does about 20km a day. He also brings crazy amounts of stuff home on his bike, so perhaps he is a little superhuman and not everyone is inclined to do what he does. We socialise plenty, but often by having people over or going to their houses for dinner. Our kids are not heavily scheduled, though Antigone now does gymnastics (shared between 3 families, so only have to drive once/three weeks) and piano (the teacher comes to us). The boys aren't keen to do lessons, and we don't push. We'd rather have more homely time here, cooking, reading and playing, which we think will give them what we regard as more important life skills than many other things we could outsource, though we're not knocking the value of those other things – they're just not priorities for us.</span></p> </li></ol> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">So how can everyone 'find time' to cook more delicious and nutritious foods? First of all, through practice. The ability to use limited time well requires skills. Skills lead to competence, which is pleasurable. It feels great to know you've dashed in with a few ingredients and knocked up a lovely meal for the family, which leads to you wanting to do it again. Rushing in and throwing a frozen or takeaway dinner on the table doesn't feel that great, but you'll probably do it again if you don't know how to cook something better, leading to a dreadful cycle of bad food and related guilt/bad feelings. It's a no-win cycle, but skills are the way out.</span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S9ZgVqmA61I/AAAAAAAAAWU/7clivOM8zEQ/s1600/IMG_0763.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 251px; height: 188px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S9ZgVqmA61I/AAAAAAAAAWU/7clivOM8zEQ/s320/IMG_0763.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464661123187927890" border="0" /></a></span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">An important part of this skill-building is reframing cooking and food shopping as 'fun' and 'relaxing', leading to 'delicious'. It's also great to spend time as a family doing the harvesting and cooking – we think it's 'good parenting' to cook with your kids. :-) Ultimately, the creative process of imagining what's in the garden/fridge/pantry and how you might transform it into a meal to nurture yourself and others is deeply and viscerally joyful, in my experience. 'scuse me while I go knead the bread...</span></p>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-36943863348550188502010-04-07T05:58:00.000-07:002010-04-07T06:06:15.706-07:00A Rant: Raising Chickens is Good (or, on the Stupidity of Industrial Agriculture)I wrote this poem last year, but given my recent posts on <a href="http://tammijonas.blogspot.com/2010/02/do-you-eat-chicken-could-you-kill-one.html">why and how we raise and eat our chooks</a>, as well as <a href="http://tammijonas.blogspot.com/2010/03/feminists-dont-have-to-eat-fast-food.html">other sustainable homely practices</a>, I thought I'd share it here. Warning - this is not intended to be scholarly - it's an 'emoticons off' rant.<br /><br />A rant, or<br />F*&king stupid people f*&king up our world not an ounce of sense or personal responsibility wanting to own dogs & cats but not allow productive small animals like chickens stupid pointless people need to f*&k off now turning me into a bloody misanthrope when I really want to like people (that is not the poem).<br />16 July 2009<br /><br />It started with 3 chickens<br />3 clucking<br />egg-laying<br />bug & weed-eating<br />fertilising chickens<br />in one suburban<br />backyard.<br /><br />They cost her 7 dollars apiece<br />and gave her<br />2169 eggs<br />in their pleasant quarter-acre lives<br />worth a conservative 1100 dollars<br />leaving her 1079 dollars to spend<br />on organic fruit<br />she wasn't already growing in her own<br />backyard.<br /><br />The chickens<br />meant she needed no<br />pesticides<br />no herbicides<br />& needn't pay for any<br />fertilisers for the food she was growing<br />in her own<br />backyard.<br /><br />She called the chickens<br />John, Deere, and Tractor.<br /><br />Over the fence lived<br />a couple with a dog<br />a bright green lawn<br />a 4 wheel drive<br />a sedan<br />roses and no food growing<br />in their<br />backyard.<br /><br />The husband worked<br />for agri-business<br />who'd been stung<br />when their bagged spinach product<br />killed four<br />left 35 with<br />acute kidney failure<br />due to e coli contamination<br />in their Salinas Valley<br />industrial scale<br />vegetable fields.<br /><br />So clutching his values<br />his greed and his fear<br />he sat in his boardroom<br />and agreed<br />that a scorched earth strategy<br />was the only way<br />to ensure that he<br />and all his successors<br />could live in good conscience<br />that they would never again<br />be held liable<br />for what was contracted<br />from once-living products<br />now wrapped in sterile plastic<br />in somebody's<br />fridge.<br /><br />And so<br />if a squirrel ran along the edge of a field<br />everything within 10 metres<br />had to be<br />razed<br />eliminated<br />scorched<br />including<br />the pest-deterring<br />coriander<br />planted by the organic grower<br />in the next<br />field.<br /><br />And then he went home<br />and he heard a strange sound<br />not really unpleasant<br />but definitely<br />indubitably<br />belonging to<br />something un-hygienic<br />in somebody else's<br />backyard.<br /><br />He peered over the fence<br />and stared in shock/rage<br />at John, Deer and Tractor.<br />3 clucking chickens<br />alive, eating and shitting<br />in the neighbour's<br />backyard.<br /><br />It didn't take long<br />to garner the cries<br />of the neighbourhood association<br />who contacted the council<br />who knocked on the door<br />of the woman with chickens<br />in her<br />backyard.<br /><br />This will not do<br />they said<br />you must be rid of these animals<br />who have no place in the suburbs<br />if you want to have livestock<br />move to a<br />farm.<br /><br />Your chickens<br />they said<br />are unsanitary<br />unnecessary<br />and a temptation to<br />the dogs<br />in others'<br />backyards.<br /><br />And by the way<br />you must stop dumping your food waste<br />in that bin up the back<br />it attracts rats<br />and foxes and possums<br />in droves<br />and your grey water system<br />well it just won't do<br />it contaminates all of those vegies<br />you grow<br />here in this outrageously<br />farm-like<br />backyard.<br /><br />You must buy food that<br />we know is safe<br />you can get it at Coles<br />where it has been sprayed with<br />47 chemicals to ensure its<br />sterility<br />and bagged in clear plastic<br />so you can see it is safe<br />though you must wash it at home<br />just to be sure<br />it hasn't been tainted somewhere<br />along the industrial line<br />by some unhygienic worker<br />who probably looks and acts<br />a lot like you and your<br />unsanitary<br />backyard.Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-29167245114309646742010-03-21T22:53:00.000-07:002010-03-21T23:49:53.551-07:00Feminists Don't Have to Eat Fast Food<span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;font-size:130%;">Peggy Orenstein's recent </span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;font-size:130%;"><i>New York Times</i></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;font-size:130%;"> </span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;font-size:130%;"><span style="font-style: normal;">article '<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/magazine/14fob-wwln-t.html?ref=magazine">The Femivore's Dilemma'</a> really struck a chord with feminists across the internets. In the last couple days I've seen the term 'femivore' (which Orenstein says is a combination of feminist and locavore) defined as everything from sapphic to misogynist cannibalism, and I'd have to agree that it's an unfortunate coining etymologically speaking. </span></span><p style="margin-bottom: 0.5cm;" align="LEFT"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;font-size:130%;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Orenstein's concept of femivores arises from her friends who are raising their own chooks, and from <a href="http://radicalhomemakers.com/">Shannon Hayes' book </a></span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><a href="http://radicalhomemakers.com/"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><i>Radical Homemakers</i></span></a></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;font-size:130%;"><span style="font-style: normal;">, that is, strong, intelligent women (and men, as it turns out) who are choosing to produce food in their own backyards as a way of nurturing themselves, their families and the planet. Unsurprisingly, there have been a number of negative responses to the idea that it is only women who are involved in the locavore movement, or indeed 'downshifting', 'voluntary simplicity', Slow Food or any other version of 'slower', less consumerist lifestyles. </span></span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;font-size:130%;"><span style="font-style: normal;">It seems there are three primary threads then that require unravelling: gender, class, and sustainability. On gender, the most compelling argument for home food production and locavorism as intrinsically tied to feminist practice is that women are still by far the majority of the world's domestic labour force. Before anyone starts yelling 'my husband does most of the cooking' (and to wit, my own partner is a regular and good cook, does most of our laundry, and is a passionate home gardener), I am not suggesting that men don't do these things, but according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian women in fact still do <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Features40March%202009">two and a half times more food preparation and cleaning up</a> than men,whether they work outside the home or not. </span></span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;font-size:130%;"><span style="font-style: normal;">One of ecofeminism's claims is essentially that the patriarchy got us into this unsustainable capitalist mess, and feminism might just be able to get us out of it. </span>Julia Russell puts it quite plainly in 'The Evolution of an Ecofeminist': 'I call it the politics of life-style and I think it is a distinctly feminine politics in that it is both inner and universal, personal and all-inclusive. It is based on the understanding that lasting societal transformation begins with and rests on transformations of the individual.' </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;font-size:130%;">Russell's valorising of individual responsibility perhaps leads us to the heart of claims that there are insurmountable class issues with so-called 'femivorism'. Admittedly, Orenstein's 'femivores' appear to all be white middle-class women. But Lindsay Beyerstein's vituperative response <a href="http://bigthink.com/ideas/19124">“'Femivores'? Spare me.” </a>is disingenuous sour grapes to the extreme.</span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;font-size:130%;"> </span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;font-size:130%;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Beyerstein's argument is tired and reductive. While I don't believe anyone is suggesting that backyard gardens are equivalent to running a commercial farm, they are apparently important enough as to be encouraged by governments in times of war to address food shortages. Gardening can indeed be as simple as a hobby, but it can also be a significant means of saving money, ensuring the quality and freshness of one's food, and reduce one's carbon footprint substantially, and it is certainly hard work sometimes, as well as deeply pleasurable. </span></span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;font-size:130%;">Beyerstein even attempts to elide the importance of nourishing one's children if you choose to have them, with her hyperbolic question: 'How about figuring out how to share domestic labor more equitably so that SAHMs have more free time to spend as they see fit, even if their hobbies don't fit the stereotype of maternal perfection?' Sure, domestic labour should be shared more equally, that's a given. And of course mothers should have time to themselves without the constant pressure of the Good Mother mythology. But frankly, one's tennis lessons (mother's or father's) are not in fact more important than feeding one's children. And feeding your children well is at the core of good parenting, not external to it. Taking kids to swimming, tennis, guitar and dance lessons every weekday does not automatically a good parent make. Feeding them healthy food every day so they grow up without chronic illness or obesity is one essential component of good parenting. There, I said it, and now I'll wait for those who would shrug off this essential duty to our children to attack me for not being a good feminist, because apparently feminists eat fast food. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;font-size:130%;">Is it only middle class stay-at-home mums who 'have time' to cultivate a garden and cook wholesome food? Obviously not – families of many classes and cultures engage in gardening and cooking. And in fact, it is often those with the most spare time with partners in the highest income brackets who are least likely to spend their time on food production. By contrast, there are 18 community gardens in Melbourne's public housing estates, with over 650 individual plots tended by residents. </span> </p> <p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;font-size:130%;">It is obviously not just white middle-class privilege to have a thriving home garden, it's for anyone who cares about their own, their families' (if they have one) and the planet's well being. It is also not just drudgery, and a new way to chain women to the kitchen sink. Our culture's sense of entitlement to a life of convenience and uber-consumerism is neither making us happy nor providing our children with a future. Anecdotally, we talk of the Greek and Italian migrants of the 50s and their backyards full of tomatoes and fruit trees, plus the annual sugo making led by somebody's nonna. For many, these traditions are being lost, whilst for others they are just being discovered. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;font-size:130%;"><span style="font-style: normal;">At a salami making day I attended last winter, a third generation northern Italian claimed that even the 'Skippies' are getting into 'the old ways' now, and someone else quipped, 'people are calling them 'foodies', when all they are is wogs!</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:130%;" ><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">' The excellent group blog </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><a href="http://www.progressivedinnerparty.net/"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;">Progressive Dinner Party</span></a></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:130%;" ><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"> </span></span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:130%;" ><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">is awash with women one might call ecofeminists (even if they don't), and the stories you find there make it obvious how much pleasure is gained from growing, cooking and eating their own produce or that sourced from responsible producers. There is unquestionably satisfaction, pride and pleasure in being competent and/or skilled in the garden and/or kitchen. </span></span></span></span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; line-height: 100%; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;">In my research, I am finding that for those who have the requisite kitchen skills, consciously practising frugality (in terms of purchasing and re-use) is a powerful form of agency, and one that evident across class and culture. One of my interviewees, an Anglo Australian woman in her seventies, is frugal through both habit and necessity, and expresses a great deal of pride at being so. She says it is just 'common sense' not to waste or overspend. A Vietnamese-Australian couple who arrived as political refugees in the 70s echo her arguments for common sense, and further claim to feel 'smart' about their sustainable and homely practices. And their son, born in Australia, also insists that he feels quite proud about his more frugal habits, such as never wasting leftovers, and in fact 'ashamed' when he is wasteful, either in terms of unnecessary consumption or food waste. A key point is that none are expressing resentment at behaving sustainably, rather it gives them enormous satisfaction.</span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; line-height: 100%; text-decoration: none;" align="LEFT"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;">Ultimately, it is not only a feminist issue to engage in homely and sustainable food production, though feminists will have a particular interest in it. The need to provide education and opportunities to develop skills in gardening and cooking is evident in the plethora of issues facing us, from climate change to obesity, and from depression to loss of entire food cultures. And perhaps most importantly, there is an urgent need to understand and promote the intrinsic value and deep pleasures of quotidian 'chores' such as growing and chopping your own garlic.</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-4943551493173250742010-03-11T17:20:00.001-08:002010-03-11T17:35:21.756-08:00A Loser on Twitter #alotSo one day I noticed that @rod3000, @thewetmale and @nomesmessenger were playing with a new hashtag #alot. It appeared to be an amusing way to emphasise just about anything, for example 'I'm hungry #alot' or 'This government needs an enema #alot'. For the many spelling pedants out there, of which I'm one, it's somewhat alarming, but many of us took up the challenge nonetheless. Watching some of the twitterati like @s_bridges come slowly on board made the game all the more fun. <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Eventually, I learned that #alot means Australian Liberals On Twitter. Oh, right, so we weren't just playing with good spellers... culture jamming a wingnut feed made the hashtag that much more amusing. If you look at the #alot page, you'll quickly see it's full of the sort of people who believe universal health care is a threat to freedom. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">And so we continued with our game (many still do). A few weeks ago, a Twitter user who goes by the self-aggrandising (& politically repugnant) handle @MiltonFriedmans (yes, I'm aware the 's' is superfluous, though I gather he isn't), started retweeting me (& @rod3000 & presumably others) & re-hashing it to #KevinPM (I don't even want to know what that page is). First though, he asked me whether there was a reason why we were spamming up their feed. I replied 'yep'. He said he didn't really mind, but could I please change my 'disgusting' avatar (it's my legs in stripey socks, btw). I said, 'lol, nope'. I figured that would be the end of our interactions.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">How wrong I was. I can perfectly well understand a person objecting to others spamming a feed that is intended to be on topic (though there's surely a thesis in what that means on the twitters), and to express this objection by doing his own spamming. Unfortunately, however, this belligerent individual chose to spam me directly through @s. There were a few over the last couple weeks which I mostly ignored, but last night he really went on the attack. It appears he has now had the belated wisdom to delete his stream of harassment, but I can see the @s on Tweetie on my iPhone. He @'d me 16 times in under 2 hours last night. What pearls of wisdom and high intellectual debate were these?</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">There were the personal attacks:</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">MiltonFriedmans: I'm assuming that between HECS debts, FEE-HELP and AUSTUDY, @Tammois shows leadership in the field of taking taxpayer money. #alot</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">MiltonFriedmans: @tammois would fit in well with Stalin & Kim Jong-Il! <a href="http://bit.ly/alUkal">Http://bit.ly/alUkal</a> #alot</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">MiltonFriedmans: @tammois Only a lefty would assume challanging [sic] one's logic 2B being “cyber bullied”. Most people explain their logic, not ask for help #alot</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">And then there was the false attribution RT:</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">MiltonFriedmans: <a href="mailto:RT@Tammois">RT@Tammois</a> How can a 19yr old in their 1<sup>st</sup> degree, often living at home & having never had a career possibly//vote in a Fed election? #alot</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">If he'd had any wit, perhaps I would have bitten, though I suspect not. I don't find that engaging with wingnuts in 140 characters is productive, nor generally remotely interesting. So instead I blocked him, as his badgering was tedious and badly spelt. This morning I glanced at his page to see whether he had laid off, only to discover he was carrying on still, mostly linking to my blog and ranting about VSU, as you can see.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S5maLkY1UFI/AAAAAAAAAVc/a_KnfWah9W8/s1600-h/tammi+lge.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 304px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S5maLkY1UFI/AAAAAAAAAVc/a_KnfWah9W8/s320/tammi+lge.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5447554747818397778" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I actually find this quite annoying still, though I'm choosing to ignore him and his 93 followers (none of whom have joined his attacks, happily, and one who asked him not to RT him in order to support his attacks on us).</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I will respond briefly to what I think were actually some marginally interesting taunts about undergrads representing postgrads. First, it's important to ignore the elision of voting with representing – not everybody is always eligible to run for office in pretty much any form of democracy of which I'm aware (eg age requirements, citizenship...). The rules applying to voters are typically different and more open, as they should be. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">On the question of representation though, I've already spelled out <a href="http://tammijonas.blogspot.com/2010/03/international-students-in-australia.html">my thoughts on the importance of separate and independent representation for undergrads</a>, postgrads and internationals. Su made a great point in the comments about mature age undergrads, even though they are the minority, but I would still argue that it isn't only about age (though that is a significant part of the issue of undergrads representing postgrads), it's also about experience with the academic structures of postgraduate degrees, as well as the associated welfare issues specific to doing these degrees (income support, facilities and resources, etc). </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">So I happily stand by my claim that undergrads should not be representing postgrads. I also stand by my assertion that @MiltonFriedmans was bullying me with his incessant @ing and personal attacks. Culture jamming, in my opinion, which may include tactics such as spamming a hashtag, is not about individual, personal attacks. I guess us lefties can leave that nastiness to the 'Classical Liberals' over on the #alot page, which I've decided not to spam anymore, btw, in order to avoid provoking more bullying.</p>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-76086905370266752602010-03-05T17:22:00.000-08:002010-03-05T18:07:23.437-08:00The importance of independent representationI had my first ever article published on the ABC The Drum site, which they titled <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2834533.htm">A Foreign Despair</a>. It's predominantly a look at the welfare issues facing international students, and points to policy gaps and lack of action, as well as inadequacies in our national infrastructure. I finish by highlighting the importance of an independent, national voice for international students in Australia, something that's been missing since Master Sheng and his crew took over the old NLC in a truly unscrupulous way (and some might argue there's a legal case in it). CAPA has been very active in supporting international students, and has had international student officers for decades on our Council, but we believe this student population needs its own independent national body once again, with whom we will work closely to cover postgrad issues for internationals.<br /><br />This brings me to the importance more broadly of democratic representation, especially where there is taxation (yes, that old phrase). Of course I'm referring to the devastating effects of so-called Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU), whereby universities have had to fund student associations, leading to the closure of many of them across the country where uni administrations have failed to be supportive. Too many that are surviving are doing so by amalgamating the postgrad and undergrad bodies, and sometimes also the overseas student associations (OSAs), leading to the bizarre situation where undergrads are the presidents and typically hold the majority of the elected positions with postgrads usually only having one dedicated spot on these councils.<br /><br />So I made a claim at the Universities Australia conference last week that if there must be amalgamations, there should be a constitutional requirement that the presidents be postgrads. One can imagine the response from undergrads, but even a postgrad campus president asserted that this would be undemocratic and elitist. I argue that it is simply ensuring that representation is done by those best placed to represent their constituents - that is, postgrads by definition all have undergraduate qualifications and so are well able to represent that cohort, but undergrads are clearly not in a position to represent their postgraduate colleagues. How can a 19 or 20 year old in the middle of their first degree, often still living at home and having never had a career possibly represent the average 34-year-old postgrad? How could they represent someone like me - a 39 year old mother of three doing my fourth degree (1 undergrad, 2 postgrad coursework, & now the PhD), having had a couple of careers, including management experience?<br /><br />Now imagine a postgrad officer on the amalgamated bodies, which in all the examples we've seen in Australia consist almost exclusively of undergraduate members. These undergrads make their factional deals about electing office bearers, as they are party political. The postgrads by and large are issues-focused people who got involved in representation because they've seen, heard and experienced firsthand the many things that can go wrong in the academy. They're put off by the intense party political environment of the council, and can't get much support or resources specific to postgrads, as the undergrads don't see the need for such things (eg dedicated postgrad facilities and advocates, postgrad-specific publications, or indeed, in the case of a number of these amalgamated bodies, paying CAPA's annual fees to ensure national representation for postgrads, though they continue to pay their NUS fees).<br /><br />Why do postgrads allow ourselves to play subaltern to undergraduate hegemony? I know some out there will attest to the hegemons' relations with the government... and Imma let you finish. I don't know of any student association that would allow men to serve as women's officers, nor local students as international officers. It's time we insisted that undergrads stop serving as peak representatives on bodies responsible for postgrads. And although postgrads could represent the undergrads, quite honestly, most of us don't want to. We believe that those currently undertaking undergrad degrees are best placed to represent themselves, and we ask for the same recognition in return.<br /><br />In these times of severe resource scarcity due to the disastrous VSU legislation and the Opposition's continued stonewalling on the Student Services and Amenities Bill, we're going to have to speak up for our right to independent representation, advocacy and support. Postgraduate students, both coursework and research, are already important, active members of Australian society, and they've returned to study to increase their value in the knowledge economy. They make the difficult choice to live with financial stress and insecurity through additional study in hopes of a return on that investment later, and for some, simply because engagement with learning and critical thinking is a lifelong passion. As a society, we need to collectively value the contributions made by students during and after their period of study, and one of the many ways we can do this is by insisting on independent representation.<br /><br />Who's going to help me get this #RIOT going?Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-35304319899166520082010-02-28T16:55:00.000-08:002010-02-28T17:51:53.279-08:00All bread is not created equal...If you've been here awhile, you'll know I decided to learn to make good sourdough this year. Well, here we are on the 1st of March, and by golly, I made a bloody good sourdough ciabatta last night. So tasty, with such a lovely crumb and crust that 10 year old Oscar declared, "Mum! This is amazing! And you said you needed all year to learn how, and it's only been what, two months?" Major brownie points for eldest child. :-)<br /><br />But let me caveat last night's loaves - they were indeed sour, with an excellent crusty yet chewy crust and a good crumb, but not as chewy as I think a ciabatta should be. It was really good bread, but still doesn't fit my imaginary endpoint for this year.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sTGljqAtI/AAAAAAAAAVU/zr4P-wFcYo8/s1600-h/IMG_1420.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 256px; height: 192px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sTGljqAtI/AAAAAAAAAVU/zr4P-wFcYo8/s320/IMG_1420.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443465578489184978" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sS9pfJyqI/AAAAAAAAAVM/AGrVL9UpwxI/s1600-h/IMG_1419.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 262px; height: 196px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sS9pfJyqI/AAAAAAAAAVM/AGrVL9UpwxI/s320/IMG_1419.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443465424925215394" border="0" /></a><br />Some detail then. For these ciabatta, I did a series of short kneads of a fairly wet dough, though not so sticky I couldn't handle it, with ever-increasing proving times. So maybe 10 second kneads three times with about 10 minutes in between each, then about a 2-hour rise before splitting the dough, stretching it carefully and allowing another half-hour rise. Into a very hot oven (250C) with a water bath on the top shelf & a quick spray of the loaves at the beginning & one midway through baking. <a href="http://tammijonas.blogspot.com/2010/01/2010-year-my-sourdough-obsession-gets.html">My starter, Fran,</a> is currently mostly organic wholemeal flour, and the flour I added for these was organic unbleached. I didn't add any commercial yeast as I was looking for a flat bread anyway. This was lazy baking at its finest, and the results were lovely.<br /><br />A few nights earlier, I whipped Fran up into some rye dinner rolls to have with our soup.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sSsMLoBZI/AAAAAAAAAU8/Z-S7LgysZbA/s1600-h/IMG_1408.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 219px; height: 164px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sSsMLoBZI/AAAAAAAAAU8/Z-S7LgysZbA/s320/IMG_1408.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443465125000906130" border="0" /></a>They achieved exactly the soft, pliable texture you want from rolls, with crusty crusts. This dough was wetter than the ciabatta, and I added some commercial yeast for a better rise to great effect.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sSkw4Ff_I/AAAAAAAAAU0/rCIq9S8U75M/s1600-h/IMG_1407.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 248px; height: 187px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sSkw4Ff_I/AAAAAAAAAU0/rCIq9S8U75M/s320/IMG_1407.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443464997412110322" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sSz5rwnuI/AAAAAAAAAVE/ZXnHsbqaQBg/s1600-h/IMG_1418.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sSz5rwnuI/AAAAAAAAAVE/ZXnHsbqaQBg/s320/IMG_1418.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443465257474367202" border="0" /></a>I've also embraced the joys of sourdough pizza crust, which goes perfectly with the salty, spicy combination of Stuart's home-cured olives, anchovies, bacon and chilies, plus garden-fresh tomatoes and basil and a thin lashing of homemade passata.<br /><br />So it seems my 'specialty' breads are the winners thus far, as my loaves have often been unwilling to give me a good rise. They do say that sourdough starters are unreliable leaveners, and I'm finding this to be distinctly true. Check out my most hilariously unintentionally flat loaf, which still tasted quite nice, though a bit dry (and hell on the toaster, let me tell you!)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sSZQln9KI/AAAAAAAAAUs/bb1lnz3kRfk/s1600-h/IMG_1389.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sSZQln9KI/AAAAAAAAAUs/bb1lnz3kRfk/s320/IMG_1389.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443464799766181026" border="0" /></a>When I'm looking for a higher loaf, especially for toasting, I'm learning to add commercial yeast. It doesn't affect the flavour, which is invariably sour, but gives the bread the lift that Fran seems unable to offer.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sSQKFBaKI/AAAAAAAAAUk/a1qGp8UDc4c/s1600-h/IMG_1298.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sSQKFBaKI/AAAAAAAAAUk/a1qGp8UDc4c/s320/IMG_1298.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443464643400001698" border="0" /></a>I should add that the sourness is wildly variable as well, though predictably so. If Fran hasn't made some bread for more than a few days, she gets rather sour. If I'm making bread every day or two, she's less sour. The metaphors write themselves, so I won't bother here.<br /><br />This last loaf below was my sourest to date (and by the way, given my California origins, I'm looking for the sourest of the sourdoughs!), and it also had the best crumb, even though it didn't rise much. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sRhq6C-hI/AAAAAAAAAUU/Jn6hUZ_3SvI/s1600-h/IMG_1255.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 160px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sRhq6C-hI/AAAAAAAAAUU/Jn6hUZ_3SvI/s320/IMG_1255.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443463844758485522" border="0" /></a>If you check out the dough below, you'll see I really <a href="http://silverbeet.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/sourdough-bread-part-1/">took Annette's advice</a> to heart on this one and worked a really sticky, wet dough. In fact, it finally inspired me to get a proper dough scraper to assist with this rather messy method.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sSC_kmlCI/AAAAAAAAAUc/JvxJ0f1fJHU/s1600-h/IMG_1285.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 172px; height: 229px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S4sSC_kmlCI/AAAAAAAAAUc/JvxJ0f1fJHU/s320/IMG_1285.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443464417241371682" border="0" /></a><br /><br />I feel almost guilty that for those of you out there looking for a scientific account of breadmaking, I'm just tossing around vague generalities. But these days, I cook by touch, smell, taste and imagination, rather than ratios. There are obviously ratios involved, but given my propensity to constantly adjust them by a smidgen, I'm afraid I can't really offer much insight into quantities of what's in my bread.<br /><br />I think one of the best things about my relaxed approach has been the way it makes breadmaking seem like a simple and lovely thing to do, much like making the children a milkshake rather than mastering a croquembouche. It means I wander into the kitchen, see Fran on the bench and think, 'Hey, I might get some bread started,' and then wander in and out of the kitchen to tend to the dough over the afternoon or evening. The other positive outcome is the exciting array of outcomes - this is no McDonald's where you can expect the same burger every time, no matter where you are - open your palate and be prepared to be surprised at every new loaf of bread. :-)Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-35975789325601741182010-02-18T16:31:00.001-08:002010-02-18T16:33:29.939-08:00Food and the art of representation<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;color:black;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial; color: windowtext;"><a href="http://www.campusreview.com.au/pages/section/article.php?s=News&idArticle=14798">This article appeared this week in Campus Review</a> - an interview with me about the year ahead as CAPA President. :-) <br /></span></span></i></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;color:black;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial; color: windowtext;"><br /></span></span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;color:black;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial; color: windowtext;">Julie Hare</span></span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;color:black;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial; color: windowtext;">February 15, 2010</span></span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><i><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;color:black;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial; color: windowtext;">Campus Review</span></span></i></p><div><br /></div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">I am what I eat. You are what I feed you,” Tammi Jonas’s bio on Twitter asserts. When the new president of the Council of Postgraduate Associations is not cooking – or thinking about, talking about and communicating about food – she’s completing a PhD (with a food focus – of course) and representing the country’s 270,000 postgraduate students. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">Jonas’s blog, called ‘Tammi Tasting Terroir’ and subtitled ‘The infrequent and imperfect yet impassioned musings of a PhD candidate, mother, wife, sister, daughter, friend and would-be cultural commentator with a penchant for food and community ...’ sums it up.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">The blog is a random mix of recipes for sourdough and passionate monologues on the state of higher education.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">Food frames most aspects of Jonas’s life – even the political. Two years ago she held a soup kitchen for University of Melbourne tutors under vice-chancellor Glyn Davis’s office window to draw attention to poor conditions and unpaid work that their lot in life.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">“We got everyone to come down with their fingerless gloves and I made a giant pot of potato and leek soup. I literally fed the tutors,” laughs Jonas.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">More recently, she drew national attention to the issue of casual teaching when she resigned from the University of Melbourne council – and then wrote about it in an article for New Matilda.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">Now her penchant for the big political statement is due to find its fulfilment in her role as president of CAPA – and she hope’s individual branches will follow suit.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">While she likes the publicity, Jonas says her resignation from Melbourne University council was more than just a stunt.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">“I certainly wanted the publicity to keep shining light on the issue [of exploitation of casual staff], otherwise no one will realise we need their sympathy,” she says.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">“It wasn’t so much a stunt as a principled and ethical resignation, because I was no longer willing to be part of a body that wasn’t in my view behaving ethically by leading the way and ensuring all members of the academic community are being treated fairly.”</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">The issue, which Jonas says she had been campaigning on for years (and is itemised on her blog), revolved around postgraduate students being asked to present unpaid “guest lectures”, lack of adequate office and desk space, and unpaid work in other areas such as marking.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">However, she would like it known that Melbourne is not the worst culprit – and can point the finger at any number of the other universities which she considers even more exploitative.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">As Jonas takes up the top gig with CAPA, 2010 might be the year that some of the more pressing issues to do with postgraduate workforce issues get resolved. The government’s research workforce strategy reference group is due to report in the first half of the year.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">“We’ve had the Bradley and Cutler reviews, but there are still many issues around lack of sustainability [of the research workforce] if things don’t change,” says Jonas.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">“We have too many people leaving the sector because it’s not attractive enough. We are particularly interested in seeing conditions improve for research students both as casual labour and also in terms of their own basic minimum resources – computers, desks and so on – when they are doing their study. And then, of course, there are follow on effects of that on coursework postgraduates such as having better funded teaching programs so everyone is getting better quality courses.”</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">Jonas says other key items on her agenda for the year include the welfare of international postgraduate students and the quality of coursework programs on offer.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">Originally from the US, Jonas moved to Australia 18 years ago after meeting her husband Stuart while backpacking around London.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">“Being a migrant explains my interest in national identity,” she says. “My passion for issues around international students I’m sure [is partly inspired] from being a migrant myself – although I’ve never been identified as one because I’m white and sound a lot like the people here.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">“I often assert my migrant status to highlight for people the diversity of what migrants are.”</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">Jonas recently chaired a working group to set up a new national representative body for international students and is hopeful it will be launched later this year.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">The CAPA and National Union of Students initiative came about in the aftermath of the hijacking of the former representative body, the NLC, by a group led by a Chinese businessman Master Shang (CR, 27.04.10 and 11.05.10).</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">“It’s such an important job – they have no independent national voice right now and we would like to see international students representing international students again.”</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">Jonas said the third big ticket item for CAPA is student services and student organisation. CAPA’s finances have been savaged since VSU legislation introduced by the Howard government. With the Student Services and Amenities Bill currently being held up in the Senate, there is uncertainty as to whether the government will get the support necessary to get it passed.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">“CAPA is really struggling to survive. If you look at some of our achievements last year such as making sure that postgraduates got the stimulus funding, the rise in APAs and getting income support for masters students, these are really big achievements. If we didn’t exist, none of these things are likely to have happened.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">“I find it extraordinary that people [politicians] who are in the business of representation themselves don’t understand the importance of the representation we provide.”</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">While Jonas has a big year ahead, she said there is no way her PhD (on multicultural foodways and cosmopolitanism in Melbourne) will get put on ice. With an invitation to submit an article to the Australian Humanities Review and another to present a paper at the international food ethnography conference in Finland in August, Jonas says she will plough on.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">In the meantime, there is also CAPA, the family and food, beautiful food.</span></span></p> <b><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial; font-weight: bold;">Find Jonas’s blog at <a href="http://http/tammijonas.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;"><span style="color: windowtext;">http://tammijonas.blogspot.com</span></span></a></span></span></b>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-80188085305782589332010-02-13T03:29:00.000-08:002010-04-22T23:12:20.165-07:00Do you eat chicken? Could you kill one?The recent story from the UK about <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/feb/12/lamb-school-teaching-andrea-charman">the teacher </a><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/feb/12/lamb-school-teaching-andrea-charman">who was pressured by parents to resign after slaughtering the school's farm lamb</a> because their children were 'traumatised' provoked exactly the outrage you probably expect from me on this topic. The same week, <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html">Jamie Oliver spoke of the importance of teaching children where their food comes from</a>, focusing primarily on health rather than culture, sustainability and competence. <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">So here's the story of the Jonai family raising chooks for eggs, and slaughtering and eating them when they stop laying.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aU3sfpCrI/AAAAAAAAAT8/fssdMAAhKo4/s1600-h/IMG_1159.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 290px; height: 217px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aU3sfpCrI/AAAAAAAAAT8/fssdMAAhKo4/s320/IMG_1159.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437697284654041778" border="0" /></a>A little background: we've had chooks since about 1997, primarily for the eggs, but also because of their contribution to a healthy garden system – they dig, eat insects and weeds, and fertilise extremely well. We move them around the garden, planting out the spot they vacate to great effect. Our system is based on the principles of permaculture, though we are fairly unorthodox in most of our gardening efforts. The one aspect of permaculture to which we are totally committed is to maintain a closed cycle – no organic waste leaves our property, which is an average sized suburban block in Melbourne.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The first few years we had chooks, we lost them occasionally to foxes or disease, and continually replenished the flock with new pullets. Then came the year Antigone brought home nine chicks that her kinder had hatched – our first time raising them from so young. Of course, probability being what it is, we ended up with a few roosters, which you're not allowed to keep in the suburbs. The dilemma of what to do with them had an obvious, if not easy, solution – we would have to slaughter and eat them. Neither of us had ever killed our own meat, though we'd always said we should be willing to do so if we were going to be meat eaters. At last, here was our chance to practice what we preached.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The first time was definitely the hardest, but each time since has not actually been a great deal easier, insofar as it's difficult to take a life. Roosters are truly magnificent creatures, and it seems a shame to cull them so young and glorious. But of course, all those carefully wrapped breasts and thighs in the supermarket were once lovely young (mistreated, usually) creatures, and they're tastiest while they're still young. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aOSYKQkgI/AAAAAAAAAS0/OLLK9GTmUPw/s1600-h/IMG_1267.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aOSYKQkgI/AAAAAAAAAS0/OLLK9GTmUPw/s320/IMG_1267.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437690046470722050" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Stuart slaughters them by laying the chooks gently on a chopping block, patting their head all the while so they remain very calm and content. And then quickly, down comes the cleaver, the chook is beheaded, Stuart holds its wings so the nervous system's reaction doesn't result in that awful sight of a headless chook running around the yard, and then the bird is hung from the monkey bars to drain the blood. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aN8Kjz5II/AAAAAAAAASs/SzNOJKyedVg/s1600-h/IMG_1263.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aN8Kjz5II/AAAAAAAAASs/SzNOJKyedVg/s320/IMG_1263.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437689664862676098" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">We've experimented with both plucking and skinning, and unlike <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/crazybrave/sets/72157612636823600/">the intrepid Zoe's preference</a>, we prefer plucking so that we still have the luscious fatty skin on, which is especially important if you're roasting a younger bird. But even with boilers, we pluck as neither of us really likes the sensation of skinning a still-warm animal.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">We both find the eviscerating quite unpleasant, especially if we're trying to keep a whole bird to roast, which requires that someone reach inside and pull the guts out – it's rather blech. With the boilers, we cheat and cut them open at the breastbone with sharp Chinese scissors and then sort of scoop the organs out. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aOkk_Q9iI/AAAAAAAAAS8/wURbP2L6nHo/s1600-h/IMG_1277.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 170px; height: 227px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aOkk_Q9iI/AAAAAAAAAS8/wURbP2L6nHo/s320/IMG_1277.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437690359151916578" border="0" /></a>The kids are fascinated by sorting the organs and feet on a piece of cardboard, and we either save those bits to feed to the neighbour's dog or compost them, though we have eaten the livers from some of the roosters.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">With the young roosters, I make roast chicken, chicken arrabiata and other such tasty dinners, but the old girls aren't called boilers for nothing. And so Australia Day 2010 was our first experience of culling non-layers and making the most of them. We explained the plan to the children, who were initially a bit sad that we were going to kill the chooks, but after we reiterated the rationale for keeping, slaughtering and eating our own animals, with details they've heard before about the horrors of factory farming, they were back on board with the project. They feel sad about killing the chooks – I do too – but I think it's irresponsible for omnivores to use that sadness as a justification for not exposing children (and ourselves) to the realities of what's behind meat eating. I really think only vegans have a reasonable position from which to oppose exposure to animal slaughter.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The killing went as usual, and this time Atticus was game to help me pluck them, which made a mother proud. :-) The evisceration was interesting as we'd never seen the eggs inside a chook before. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/crazybrave/sets/72157612636823600/">Zoe's got great photos</a>, but you can see in mine that there were some large and small – we worked out that one of the chooks was in fact still laying once or twice a week but had set up a secret nest in a little-seen corner. We were a bit sad about this discovery, but figured she would have stopped completely like the other two soon enough.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aO4Rdis9I/AAAAAAAAATE/bnN8IBwsVTk/s1600-h/IMG_1278.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 291px; height: 218px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aO4Rdis9I/AAAAAAAAATE/bnN8IBwsVTk/s320/IMG_1278.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437690697507582930" border="0" /></a>Three chooks filled my biggest stock pot, and after simmering for about six hours<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aPAwIKLaI/AAAAAAAAATM/eWH0GuEmu04/s1600-h/IMG_1282.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 239px; height: 179px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aPAwIKLaI/AAAAAAAAATM/eWH0GuEmu04/s320/IMG_1282.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437690843178347938" border="0" /></a>, we had a deeply flavoursome 18 litres of clear stock. I pulled all the meat off and finely minced some, mixed it with prosciutto, ricotta and reggiano, and the kids and I made masses of tortellini for that night's dinner & to freeze. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aPmHurnpI/AAAAAAAAATc/3m-wDeRVHHc/s1600-h/IMG_1293.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 159px; height: 213px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aPmHurnpI/AAAAAAAAATc/3m-wDeRVHHc/s320/IMG_1293.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437691485169098386" border="0" /></a>The resulting feast included tortellini en brodo, and a tomato and bread salad made with a variety of cherry tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden and the stale remnants of my last loaf of homemade sourdough, dressed in olive oil pressed from last year's harvest with the Binks. For starters we enjoyed that day's fresh loaf of sourdough with Stuart's olives and a tapenade. The sense of homely virtue and connection to the natural world as we enjoyed this dinner was profound, and I reflected on the fact that it's only fairly recently in our history that we've lost these daily rhythms, skills and ensuing satisfaction.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aPYd_U0XI/AAAAAAAAATU/DFoLHdF036w/s1600-h/IMG_1291.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 178px; height: 237px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aPYd_U0XI/AAAAAAAAATU/DFoLHdF036w/s320/IMG_1291.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437691250626318706" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Our society will almost certainly never go back to the majority of us raising our own meat. However, probably more of us than realise could do the sort of small scale livestock raising that we have in our backyard, and growers could certainly go back to or redevelop sustainable models of production, such as if egg producers were to slaughter unwanted roosters and sell them for the meat, and then sell the old non-layers as boilers, as well as the obvious need to raise chickens (and pigs) in free range environments. In the meanwhile, it's a very simple decision to refuse to buy factory farmed meat of any type, which gives producers the message that these systems will no longer be tolerated by the public.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aQBTvH1KI/AAAAAAAAATs/_BhgYsIQisY/s1600-h/IMG_1297.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 134px; height: 179px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aQBTvH1KI/AAAAAAAAATs/_BhgYsIQisY/s320/IMG_1297.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437691952248640674" border="0" /></a>As for squeamishness about the killing of animals, and especially about children witnessing or taking part in the slaughtering and butchering processes, it's obvious we have this backwards. In the UK case where children witnessed the slaughtering of the lamb, some parents actually claimed their children would need therapy to overcome the trauma. I would argue the high rates of people seeking therapy is rather about <i>not </i><span style="font-style: normal;">witnessing the food chain, it's </span>about our lost connections – to the land, its plants and animals, to each other, and to the past. People who are engaged each day in creating things for their basic needs – by gardening, raising and slaughtering animals, cooking, building, repairing and maintaining a home and its contents – by and large enjoy a strong sense of competence, sometimes mastery. (My interviews to date support this claim across class, culture and generational differences.)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aPz1ir0hI/AAAAAAAAATk/WuR4bGO31h8/s1600-h/IMG_1295.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 197px; height: 148px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aPz1ir0hI/AAAAAAAAATk/WuR4bGO31h8/s320/IMG_1295.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437691720805110290" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">And it's not just a sense of competence that is gained by working for your food in this way. The respect engendered by having to face your dinner and take its life in order to sustain yours cannot be overestimated. Again, my research around frugality has certainly highlighted the strong drive to waste nothing that arises from both a fear of scarcity but also a true understanding of the value of what you've got. And of course my own experience has been precisely that. Understanding and respecting our food sources is a great motivator to reduce our consumption – especially of the high impact foods like most meats.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aQl2rUs3I/AAAAAAAAAT0/eyrxtOX2Jkg/s1600-h/IMG_1301.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S3aQl2rUs3I/AAAAAAAAAT0/eyrxtOX2Jkg/s320/IMG_1301.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437692580103238514" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Yet we've drifted so far from this basic principle of living thoughtfully in the world that too many people think it's reasonable to insist that they should not be exposed to the realities of food production. It is indeed sad to kill animals. But the majority of us choose to eat them, and to eat them we must kill them, and so we must learn to do so in the most humane and sustainable manner. If every omnivore killed a chook even once in their lives, we might not be facing the serious ethical and environmental issues we have today as a result of overconsumption, and we might not be suffering the sense of disconnection and isolation that is the real trauma in our society. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Bring back competence and mastery in the everyday.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: italic;">(This post is a part of </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.foodrenegade.com/fight-back-friday-april-23rd/">Fight Back Friday</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> @ Food Renegade)</span></p>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-2349042068385110292010-02-08T22:58:00.000-08:002010-02-08T23:36:34.106-08:00Our National Dish is a Red HerringGiven that my thesis is on what part engagements with multicultural foodways play in the development of a cosmopolitan society, I'm pretty excited that New Matilda published my article today, which they titled:<a href="http://newmatilda.com/2010/02/09/there-life-beyond-barbie"> <span style="font-style: italic;">Is There Life Beyond the Barbie?</span></a> The article explores Australia's fascination with its national identity via a national dish.<br /><br />Although it's a short article written for an intelligent but non-academic audience, it's given me a lot of ideas, maybe even (gasp!) <span style="font-weight: bold;">chapter</span> ideas. I'm particularly interested in pursuing something I've been working on the past six months, which is about the importance of the maintenance of vernacular food cultures to sustain a lively cosmopolitan society. That is, if Australia's diverse foodways became a) all culinarily Anglicised, or b) hybridised to the point that hybrid becomes the new homogeneous, then we all lose opportunities for 'openness to the Other' that currently exist.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.progressivedinnerparty.net/">Zoe's excellent post, 'On sneaky racism and other culinary horrors'</a>, explores some of these issues, as do the plentiful comments she's received. Zoe's the kind of global citizen I believe we should all strive to be (maybe one day, we won't have to strive, because it will all come so naturally?), one who isn't afraid to engage with others, irrespective of culture or class, even when she's outside her comfort zone. She's not afraid to admit she doesn't understand something and ask for help, and similarly, she's willing to try new things and discover firsthand whether she likes them or not. Her post and the follow-up commentors are all symptomatic of a thriving cosmopolitan community out there (and yes, I recognise they are unlikely to be the majority of Australians, but they do give one hope).<br /><br />And yet, while all of this engagement and diversity is fascinating, and, in my opinion, welcome, it makes it difficult to maintain a 'national imaginary' as per Benedict Anderson (1983). Anderson's argument is that the national imaginary was made possible by a broadly <span style="font-style: italic;">shared</span> vernacular in print capitalism. Until then, nations had been 'unimaginable' due to a sort of Tower of Babel problem. And Anderson rightfully points to a number of benefits of national belonging, arguing that it more often creates something to 'fight for' rather than against - something to which people feel passionately attached that is much larger than themselves, and which is expressed through music, literature, and perhaps, food.<br /><br />As someone who has never felt comfortable with nationalism (given my early exposure to its rabid cousin, patriotism), as I tend to read it more as a mechanism of exclusion than inclusion, I struggle with Anderson's optimism. On the other hand, my entire project is about trying to understand how the diverse population of Australia can find a meaningful sense of belonging to each other and the world, and how we are or aren't using food in that search. So really, I guess I'm a bit of a closet nationalist?<br /><br />But to return to the problem of vernaculars (when there are many) and how they relate to both nationalism and cosmopolitanism. How can people imagine themselves into something collective from such wildly disparate food cultures (and, of course, the many other aspects of culture, but my primary concern is, as you know, food)? If that 'something' to which they are imagining themselves is cosmopolitanism, it makes perfect sense. If it's nationalism, not so much. And yet without the broader recognition of ourselves as Australian, is it really possible to imagine ourselves further into the world?<br /><br />As is appropriate for a PhD candidate halfway through my degree, I will leave these thoughts with those few gestures for now... (that is, I'm not really sure where I'm going with this just yet, and I have formed no conclusions.) heh. pax.Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-31875411214413389362010-01-21T22:03:00.000-08:002010-01-21T22:38:14.660-08:00The University of Melbourne's Response to my Resignation from Council<p><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">I only just discovered this on Crikey from the 10th of December - it's <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/12/10/westpac-a-lovely-bunch-of-bananas/">Melbourne University's response to my resignation</a> from University Council (and paywalled, so full text below) - my responses are in <span style="font-style: italic;">italics</span>:</span><br /></strong></p><p><strong>Melbourne University:</strong></p> <p>Christina Buckridge, Corporate Affairs Manager, University of Melbourne writes: Re. “<a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/12/09/why-i-resigned-from-the-university-of-melbourne-council/" target="_blank">Why I resigned from the University of Melbourne Council</a>” (yesterday, item 15) & “<a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/12/08/leaked-email-teach-for-free-melbourne-uni-councillor-calls-it-quits/" target="_blank">Leaked email: Teach for free? Melbourne uni councillor calls it quits</a>” (Tuesday item 14).It is regrettable that Tammi Jonas has decided to resign from the University Council where, as member elected by graduate students, she could have raised concerns and had them thoroughly and sympathetically considered.</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">How disingenuous to suggest that the Melbourne Graduate Student Association (GSA, formerly UMPA) had not been lobbying on the issue of exploitation of casual labour for YEARS - well before my time as President and certainly during. You can read <a href="http://www.gsa.unimelb.edu.au/president_ponderings/Notes_from_Arts_weary.shtml">blog entries from that period here</a>.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">And as an elected member of Council I had repeatedly raised these issues, as I did on just about every university committee before that. The response usually takes one of two forms: a) we don't know what you're talking about - our policies don't allow such things or b) tutoring is all part of training, so of course it's not going to be that well paid.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">See the uni's response below for proof.</span><br /></p> <p>Ms Jonas is wrong in claiming that the Arts Faculty made a ‘strategic decision’ to stop paying postgraduates.</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">Have a look at this <a href="http://www.gsa.unimelb.edu.au/president_ponderings/Save_our_Arts.shtml">blog entry on what was going on in Arts in 2008</a>.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">To my knowledge, it wasn't official 'policy' to stop paying, but subject coordinators were told not to offer any paid positions guest lecturing, and passed it on to their postgrads, who expressed the quandary it put them in.</span><br /></p> <p>Dean of Arts Professor Mark Considine says it has never been suggested that graduate students should give lectures or tutorials for free. While Schools within the Faculty experiencing straitened circumstances might have cut back on the number of guest lectures, it is not the Faculty’s policy to ask people to give tutorials/lectures without payment. Postgraduate students are an important — and paid — part of the Faculty’s tutorial program which rolls on as usual.</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">Again, the company line simply doesn't match the reality. See <a href="http://tammijonas.blogspot.com/2009/12/recap-on-state-of-higher-education-in.html">my earlier blog post with stories</a> from real postgrads, some of whom had been asked and were giving guest lectures for free. Is the University suggesting these people are LYING?</span><br /></p> <p>Of course, some guest lecturers — retired honorary staff, for instance - may elect to present a lecture pro bono.</p> <p>The email inviting Ms Jonas to take part in the Melbourne School of Graduate Research (MSGR) 2010 programs should not have been sent; no other postgraduate students have been invited by MSGR to teach into 2010 MSGR programs without payment. MSGR does not condone requiring postgraduate students to work without payment. However, some staff, and very rarely postgraduate students, may volunteer to take part in MSGR student enhancement programs but that is their decision alone — there is no compulsion.</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">My word. Compulsion is interesting, don't you think? Of course nobody is strong-armed into working for free, but they're not employed if they don't work for too little, or in some cases, don't agree/offer to guest lecture for free. And for those who believe that tutoring is important to developing their career as an academic, surely such exploitative practices amount to compulsion.</span><br /></p> <p>The University’s position is that if people are in employment, they are required to be paid in line with University policy.</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">Can somebody PLEASE pass that information on to the lecturers who are simply grateful when someone will teach for free since they will otherwise need to fund them out of their already limited grant money (if they even have any)?</span><br /></p> <p>Current rates for casual tutors at Melbourne are $104.84 ($125.37 with a PhD) an hour for the initial tutorial and $69.90 ($83.57 with a PhD) for repeat tutorials. These are standard for the industry and comparable to other countries. The hourly rate is way above average wages.</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">NB: $104.84 is for three hours work, not one - preparation, contemporaneous marking, student consultation & delivery. That is, it's the same as the pay for marking at $34.94/hour, and some tutors are not paid for marking. Here's the text from the <a href="http://www.unimelb.edu.au/ppp/docs/16.html#L239231">University's Personnel and Procedures Manual:</a> </span></p><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><p>'Tutorial' means any education delivery described as a tutorial in a course or unit outline, or in an official timetable issued by the University. A casual staff member required to deliver or present a tutorial (or equivalent delivery through other than face to face teaching mode) of a specified duration and relatedly provide directly associated non contact duties in the nature of <span style="font-weight: bold;">preparation, reasonably contemporaneous marking and student consultation</span>...</p></blockquote><p></p> <p>However it is important to note that postgraduate study is usually a full-time occupation and tutoring should not be used as a prime source of income.</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">And yet if you're fortunate enough to have a scholarship, you'll be living below the poverty line, and if not, you'll certainly need to work, preferably in your field... a conundrum? I have heard sympathetic senior academics make the argument to pay tutors better to management: "We don't want them to have to work in petrol stations, do we?"</span><br /></p> <p>In recent negotiations towards a new enterprise agreement, the University has agreed to increase the casual loading, ensure that all casual marking is paid at a separate marking rate (currently $34.94 per hour) and that casual academics have access to University facilities over semester breaks. The University is committed to improving conditions for casual staff during this round of bargaining.</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">This is good news, of course, though insufficient. What about paying casual academics when they continue to respond to students out of semester? Or attend student academic misconduct hearings?</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Or respond to online forums on the uni's Learning Management System?</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Or attend meetings?</span><br /></p> <p>Also where there is evidence that a casual staff member, or any staff member for that matter, is not being paid in accordance with University policy or that there is a mismatch of expectations about the work they are required to do, the University acts to correct it.</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">It seems to me that the only action the University usually takes is to quickly deny there was ever a problem. If you believe their official responses, whether at Council, on committees, or in the media, academics (both casual and permanent) are just prone to whinging and are seriously misguided about the 'reality of the situation'. How patronising, insulting and wrong. Until they stop denying there is a problem, what hope is there that conditions will improve? Analogies with national denialists abound here.</span><br /></p>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-55196333574819434032010-01-14T17:31:00.000-08:002010-01-14T17:41:19.545-08:002010: The Year My Sourdough Obsession Gets PersonalMany years ago I made a feeble attempt to bake bread, and the results were sufficiently disappointing to keep the local bakeries in business. A decade or so later, inspired by <a href="http://www.thatjessho.com/?p=397">Jess Ho's regular breadmaking success</a>, I decided to try again. <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a href="http://tammijonas.blogspot.com/2010/01/on-cooking-and-feasting-merrily.html">On our trip up country over the holidays</a>, I read a simple recipe from an early Stephanie Alexander cookbook, in which she instructed me to put the yeast, sugar, water and flour all together and let it rise. Having left my critical faculties at home that day, I literally piled the ingredients together, stirred a bit, and waited. Of course, since I hadn't got the yeast active with the sugar and water before adding the flour, the resulting sponge was rather firm and somewhat dry, but I persevered with my obtuse instruction following and left it t<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0_GKxnIW6I/AAAAAAAAAR0/LY7DHdNTjc8/s1600-h/IMG_0950.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 257px; height: 193px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0_GKxnIW6I/AAAAAAAAAR0/LY7DHdNTjc8/s320/IMG_0950.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426773964423191458" border="0" /></a>o catch some wild yeast. Each day I simply re-wet a cloth and put it back over the s<img src="file:///Users/tammois/Pictures/iPhoto%20Library/Originals/2010/06:01:2010/IMG_0951.JPG" alt="" />tarter. It gained a bit of that beery smell, but was a bit of a lump – not that exciting, though I was, in fact, still excited. After three days, I added starter to a new dough, let it rise, punched it down and formed loaves, let it rise, and baked some beautiful looking but rather boring tasting bread. It was still better than supermarket bread, but let down by poor-quality flour from the local country Woolies and poor process, it was ye olde white bread incarnate. But then we came home...</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">After a trip to Whole Earth in Smith Street Fitzroy, I had plenty of flour to play with. I also happen to already have a number of great references on this topic, all of which I spent a few days reading in preparation for the challenge of making good sourdough bread. I should also explain that as I am formerly from the west coast of the US, I have a strong predilection for very sour sourdough, which is the first bread I intend to master. And I'm determined to do it with wild yeasts, hence the need to commence my own sourdough starter with just flour, water and a plum plucked from our tree.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0_GWLCNg3I/AAAAAAAAAR8/T3wUk5Z6BOU/s1600-h/IMG_1155.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0_GWLCNg3I/AAAAAAAAAR8/T3wUk5Z6BOU/s320/IMG_1155.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426774160226222962" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">So the starter was simply equal parts flour and water (I did 2 cups water, 1 cup rye flour and 1 cup unbleached, all organic) and a plum, which will help introduce wild yeasts more quickly. Stir, cover with a muslin cloth, and wait. O_o</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0_Gnjye73I/AAAAAAAAASE/x6qxejlw44Q/s1600-h/IMG_1176.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 275px; height: 206px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0_Gnjye73I/AAAAAAAAASE/x6qxejlw44Q/s320/IMG_1176.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426774458928918386" border="0" /></a>Next morning, Fran (I've named her with a nod to my favourite San Francisco sourdoughs, and in the tradition of @thatjessho's 'Rusty') was bubbling merrily, and had filled the house with the smell of a football team on the pints. I moved her closer to the back door, fed her a little more flour and water, stirred eagerly, and left her alone to get wild. Which she did. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0_G7CfQrPI/AAAAAAAAASM/5qvjuqyrlJQ/s1600-h/IMG_1191.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 190px; height: 254px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0_G7CfQrPI/AAAAAAAAASM/5qvjuqyrlJQ/s320/IMG_1191.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426774793587305714" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Next, to be honest, I went to Brisbane for two days, then came back to a bunch of office work, so poor neglected Fran (Stuart was feeding her, but by now she really wanted to make bread) got a bit lonely. I popped her in the fridge for two days, and then pulled her out yesterday afternoon to reactivate the yeast, and a couple of hours later mixed her with some more flour and water, kneaded for about 10 minutes, and then left her to rise overnight. (Remind me to write a poem about the deep, visceral pleasure of kneading...)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0_HN-bKkOI/AAAAAAAAASU/gkLTIe9-4hw/s1600-h/IMG_1196.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0_HN-bKkOI/AAAAAAAAASU/gkLTIe9-4hw/s320/IMG_1196.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426775118913900770" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">As I wanted Stuart to taste Fran's first loaves, we were up at 6:30am to divide her into two loaves, knead them briefly and then allow to rise on a lightly floured pan for about half an hour. Finally, into a hot oven (200C) for about 40 minutes, tapped the bottom to check for the hollow sound, and out she came to finish cooking and cooling on the rack. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0_HdQJyLdI/AAAAAAAAASc/f30q4YQl0uc/s1600-h/IMG_1197.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 288px; height: 216px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0_HdQJyLdI/AAAAAAAAASc/f30q4YQl0uc/s320/IMG_1197.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426775381370875346" border="0" /></a>10 minutes later, we sat down to a delectable brekky of scrambled eggs, fresh rye sourdough, with sea salt and cracked pepper. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">In terms of the results, I reckon the loaves wanted another five minutes in the oven and five cooling as they were a little too dense and moist for my palate, though very tasty. I look forward to making one that has all of those lovely chewy well-aerated holes throughout. I hope to post regularly on Fran's loaves this year until I perfect the art, so stay tuned...</p>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-50429049314273329052010-01-06T22:26:00.000-08:002010-01-06T22:55:11.936-08:00On Cooking and Feasting, Merrily<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WBqQOSgKI/AAAAAAAAARM/3WkdIGcrW3M/s1600-h/IMG_0991.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WBqQOSgKI/AAAAAAAAARM/3WkdIGcrW3M/s320/IMG_0991.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423883889147019426" border="0" /></a>People who know me know that I cook for the pleasure of it, and that I am perhaps more of a feeder than an eater – I am compelled to cook for others, to nurture, love, entertain and delight friends and family with copious amounts of delicious food (well, usually delicious, sometimes ordinary and occasionally woeful). This is not to say I don't like to indulge in sumptuous eating myself, but my focus is often more on the production and distribution side of the equation. And I love to cook with others who are as passionate about cooking as I am, especially when their motivations are similar. <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The world is full of people cooking, but their drives to do so can be wildly disparate. Folks cook because they have to, for the pleasure of the creativity and results, to nurture community, to show off, and to accrue cultural capital, amongst other rationale (many subconscious). I suspect most of the time our motivations are complicated. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WAkMfk-9I/AAAAAAAAAQk/QSBT87y395A/s1600-h/IMG_0944.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WAkMfk-9I/AAAAAAAAAQk/QSBT87y395A/s320/IMG_0944.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423882685554949074" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">As a keen cook, I have many friends who are also passionate cooks, as well as many reluctant or aspiring cook friends. I love having opportunities to cook with friends and family, especially when our motivations are aligned, as that makes for the most comfortable sort of communal cooking. Those inclined to regale me with the expense of their ingredients, or to dictate to me a 'better' way to do something (though thoughts and advice are very welcome, controlling my creative process is not), or to rabbit on about how 'there is only ONE extra virgin olive oil to use, and it must be Italian' (etc ad nauseaum) are the ones I find to be kitchen killjoys, frankly. Admittedly, sometimes we will all comment on the high cost of a much-coveted item we are delighted to have, or go through a phase (it's always a phase) where we will only buy a particular variety of something from a special place of origin, but for those in the market for more cultural capital, it's a modus operandi. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">And so it happened that the beautiful gift economy of the Twitterverse brought me a new friend who matched me fantastically in the kitchen these holidays. I met <a href="http://crazybrave.net/">Zoe</a> (@crazybrave, who also <a href="http://www.progressivedinnerparty.net/">blogs here</a>) in real life a few months back in Canberra (where she lives with her partner & two adorable children). That day she showed me her garden full of artichokes and chooks, the bathtubs housing the newly planted water chestnuts, and her copious shelves of a droolworthy cookbook collection, then made us a lovely impromptu lunch of grilled chicken and white bean salad before giving me a lift to the airport. A friendship was struck, and it was obvious to us both that fruits would be born of it.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0V_7A8YjYI/AAAAAAAAAQE/nfpk7AzqA38/s1600-h/IMG_0905.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 192px; height: 144px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0V_7A8YjYI/AAAAAAAAAQE/nfpk7AzqA38/s320/IMG_0905.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423881978079907202" border="0" /></a>Which brings us to our recent holiday near Crookwell in southern New South Wales. A trip that should have taken the Jonai about eight hours in the Volvster in fact lasted two days, due to a blowout just over an hour into the trip. Of course, we were travelling on the Sunday after Christmas, so nobody was open to sell us a new tyre. We limped at 80km/hr the 200km up to Albury, where the kids at least got to have a lovely swim in the Murray, intending to buy a new tyre the next morning for the final 400km. Alas, Monday was the Boxing Day holiday – everything was still closed – and even the cafe where we broke our fast added a 10% surcharge for the pleasure of serving us on a public holiday (think insult to injury). Twitter was consulted, then mostly <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WAGN3AbAI/AAAAAAAAAQM/_X9kem2Duxc/s1600-h/IMG_0898.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 245px; height: 183px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WAGN3AbAI/AAAAAAAAAQM/_X9kem2Duxc/s320/IMG_0898.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423882170525576194" border="0" /></a>ignored. The Jonai were unstoppable. Wild horses would not keep us in Albury for another night. And so we hit the road, at the zen-like speed of 80km/hr, and drove all the way to Mark and Antonia's gorgeous country retreat, Hillview, wondering whether intrepid would at any moment become just plain stupid. It didn't, we made it, and the feasting began.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The peace of Hillview cannot be overstated. Some years ago Mark accidentally cut the phone line, and they decided that suited them very well, thank you. And so it does. There's no mobile reception for the most part either, so it's kind of like camping, but in a really beautiful old Edwardian house, in beds, with a toilet and a shower. And electricity. Okay, it's not at all like camping except that you disconnect from all social media, and just plain socialise with loved ones. And read lots of books. Lots and lots of books. Oh, and there's an oven...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WAaz8PBvI/AAAAAAAAAQc/i3x0MqZUZ4Q/s1600-h/IMG_0909.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 278px; height: 209px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WAaz8PBvI/AAAAAAAAAQc/i3x0MqZUZ4Q/s320/IMG_0909.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423882524345435890" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Before Zoe and the kids arrived (her partner Owen came up two days later), we feasted on such diversities as lamb marinated in yoghurt, garlic, lemon and salt, cooked out on the brazier, and Gado Gado another night, but things really got going with the new arrivals. Digging through Mark and Antonia's awesome collection of cookbooks old and new, I found a Marcella Hazan recipe for a sort of baked risotto with layers of eggplant, sugo and parmigiana. I had a frozen ratatouille with me, so we improvised a Risotto Ratatouille Parmigiana that was out of this world. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WA5M2OnuI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/iciS3YZ5IcY/s1600-h/IMG_0952.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WA5M2OnuI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/iciS3YZ5IcY/s320/IMG_0952.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423883046427205346" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The next night, we worked out our menu around the enormous t-bone steaks Zoe had brought from her sister's farm near Bombala, complemented beautifully with a fresh horseradish sauce from the garden. As Zoe moved to prepare some green beans with cashews, I whipped up a garlicky cheesy pasta for the kids and some roast potatoes to go with our steaks. All of this was achieved with such ease and camaraderie you'd think we'd been cooking together for years, not a day. There were tastings, suggestions and questions, advice sought, notes compared on our usual techniques, and plenty of chatter about all things Twitter, food and family.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Did I mention we both brought the same knives? Each of us brought our ten-inch chef's knife and our Chinese cleavers. Zoe's was sharper than mine (for shame, tammois), but we managed to find a sharpener that was 'not a gadget' and rectify the situation.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The day of Owen's arrival, we decided to roast the Wessex Saddleback pork shoulder the ever-generous Zoe had brought along, taking inspiration from the beautiful big horseradish leaves. So Zoe laid the leaves in the roasting dish, studded the pork with garlic and fennel flowers plucked from the roadside, rubbe<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WAvffCXbI/AAAAAAAAAQs/z-i9GdKdvEM/s1600-h/IMG_0951.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 277px; height: 208px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WAvffCXbI/AAAAAAAAAQs/z-i9GdKdvEM/s320/IMG_0951.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423882879631515058" border="0" /></a>d it with lemon and salt and poured a bit o' bubbly over the top. It marinated for a couple of hours and then we roasted it for about an hour and a half. Meanwhile, I stuffed tomatoes with garlicky breadcrumbs made from the end of my homemade bread (I got a starter going the first day and subsequently baked fresh bread every second day – this is a new thing for me, but watch this space!), as well as some fresh pecorino and lovely reggiano, and the basil we brought in a pot with us from Melbourne. Next, I threw together a potato gratin, steeping the milk with herbs from the garden before straining it onto the 'taters, along with plenty of mozzarella, reggiano and Stuart's home-cured olives. It was a spectacular dinner out on the patio with its marvellous views of the surrounding hills.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WBPGexVOI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/0yizVuBjIYM/s1600-h/IMG_0985.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WBPGexVOI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/0yizVuBjIYM/s320/IMG_0985.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423883422675326178" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WBbM-FwFI/AAAAAAAAARE/RpRAg52t9p4/s1600-h/IMG_0988.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WBbM-FwFI/AAAAAAAAARE/RpRAg52t9p4/s320/IMG_0988.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423883630575730770" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WB7KTgFCI/AAAAAAAAARU/-iBfBOeUQcc/s1600-h/IMG_1017.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WB7KTgFCI/AAAAAAAAARU/-iBfBOeUQcc/s320/IMG_1017.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423884179616044066" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The final night we were all together, ravioli was on the menu. I figured I'd do a simple spinach and ricotta filling (Oscar's favourite) and an even simpler burnt sage butter sauce with a little garlic thrown in ('cause it just ain't a Jonai dinner without plenty o' garlic). Simple, right? Sure, except that I left my brain elsewhere when I didn't suggest we let the frozen spinach thaw and then strain it, resulting in a very watery filling that did its utmost to destroy the integrity of the pasta. When we realised where we were going so horribly wrong (much later than I should have recognised the problem), Zoe tried making pasta band-aids for the ill affected and I tried straining the filling through a clean chux. This helped, but the difficulties continued. Stuart even came in and did a big manly squeezing of the filling through a linen tea towel, after which I made the final tray of picture perfect ravioli. The earliest ones by this stage, we were referring to as the 'crapioli'. Those that were clearly not going to survive a rolling boil I popped into a baking tray with water and put in the oven to cook, then served to the children first – to my surprise, they were highly acclaimed!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WCCv6E4HI/AAAAAAAAARc/gPAUgFIpcBE/s1600-h/IMG_1026.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WCCv6E4HI/AAAAAAAAARc/gPAUgFIpcBE/s320/IMG_1026.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423884309969035378" border="0" /></a> And so were the many more that followed. The lesson? Well, aside from start cooking earlier (we didn't eat until 8:30pm, which is a wee bit late for the kiddles), make sure your filling isn't too wet, and be resigned to chaos if you want a bunch of kids to help, the main lesson Zoe and I took was that we all make mistakes, and in most cases, they're salvageable. Sometimes, even delicious.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WCMJk8H9I/AAAAAAAAARk/0h4DkZ7fGoE/s1600-h/IMG_1036.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WCMJk8H9I/AAAAAAAAARk/0h4DkZ7fGoE/s320/IMG_1036.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423884471478525906" border="0" /></a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Of course there was more food than just the dinners, like the garlicky, basily, lemony hollandaise on mushies one morning, many pancakes, Zoe's magnificent salad of air-dried beef, white beans, roast capsicum, pine nuts, baby spinach, olive oil, balsamic and mustard, Stuart's delectable roast garlicky baba ganoush, endless loaves of fresh bread and the final quiche/pastie/pie making extravaganza to use up leftovers and dregs of ingredients. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WCWZrQvWI/AAAAAAAAARs/BsWxmKFgNcc/s1600-h/IMG_1060.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/S0WCWZrQvWI/AAAAAAAAARs/BsWxmKFgNcc/s320/IMG_1060.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423884647598701922" border="0" /></a>And although a lot of time was spent on the labour, it felt quite effortless, and often seamless. What a treat and a pleasure to cook together in this way, without competition or posturing, just for the love of it. All nine of us felt nurtured and nourished, bodily, emotionally and certainly for me, spiritually. Such is the joy anyone can have if they choose to cook with passion and pleasure, and to do so with others who take the same approach. </p>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-9262006467468751062009-12-21T15:25:00.000-08:002009-12-21T16:39:01.886-08:00A Recap on the State of Higher Education in AustraliaIt's time to pull a number of disparate pieces on issues facing the academy into one place, so why not do it here on my nuts eclectic blog?<br /><br /><ul><li>In case you missed it, <a href="http://newmatilda.com/2009/12/16/crisis-education-isnt-looming-its-here">my last contribution was an article on the problems with university governance in the wonderful New Matilda</a>. Thanks again to New Matilda for giving so many of us an important platform to publicly debate our concerns.<br /></li><li>A few weeks earlier I spoke at the <a href="http://www.uq.edu.au/crn/industry/index.html">State of the Industry conference</a> in Sydney, where a panel of us made the claims about <a href="http://tammijonas.blogspot.com/2009/11/ten-things-postgrads-want-manifesto.html">10 Things Postgrads Want</a>.</li><li>In the lead-up to the State of the Industry conference, <a href="http://homecookedtheory.com/">Mel Gregg</a> wrote <a href="http://newmatilda.com/2009/11/24/academia-no-longer-smart-choice">an excellent piece for New Matilda on why the academy is no longer such an attractive option.</a> On Mel's blog, you can also see the notes from our panel and people's responses.</li><li>Important background reading includes the <a href="http://homecookedtheory.com/wp-content/uploads/grants_sessionalteachers_report_june08.pdf">RED Report: The contribution of sessional teachers to higher education</a> by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, and <a href="http://www.educationalpolicy.org/pdf/CAP_Australian_briefing_paper.pdf">The attractiveness of the Australian academic profession: A comparative analysis</a>. Both reports make it very clear that the situation is fairly dire and getting worse. We need real leadership, especially if Australia wants its emerging academics to remain in the workforce at all.<br /></li><li>See the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2009/2718734.htm">ABC's Background Briefing</a> on Gillard's University Reforms.</li><li><a href="http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9808&page=2">The Corporate Univer</a><a href="http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9808&page=2">sity</a> by Dilan Thampapillai on Online Opinion: Australia's e-journal of social and political debate is an interesting analysis of the various levels of university management and governance, making points with which I do and don't agree. Dilan writes:<br /><blockquote><p>If we can fix the corporate governance system at all our universities, then the corporate mindset won’t be such a problem. This is because a properly run corporation would focus on excelling in its core business and maintaining its long term profitability.</p> <p>This means hanging onto and nurturing staff who create value in the core business.</p></blockquote></li><li>And to remind us that these problems didn't commence in 2008, here's Gideon Polya on Radio National in 2001 talking about the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s347931.htm">Crisis in our Universities</a>.</li></ul>Finally, I'd like to finish b<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SzAU8nns2cI/AAAAAAAAAP8/TJniwOddfb0/s1600-h/Soup+Kitchen.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SzAU8nns2cI/AAAAAAAAAP8/TJniwOddfb0/s320/Soup+Kitchen.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417853383386913218" border="0" /></a>y pasting in the feedback I received to an email I sent out to a number of sessionals (all postgrads or ECRs, mostly from Arts) at Melbourne University. I asked them: 1) are they paid for guest lecturing, 2) are they provided with office space, and 3) are there other issues with underpayment or unpaid work? Here are their responses in full, with identifying details removed:<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><b>December 2009</b></span> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b>1</b></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I have done guest lectures this semester at Melbourne and was paid for them- they were repeats from the year before. I also did some at Deakin and was amazed by how little I was paid as they didn't seem to have a rate for new lectures (i.e. that you have to write the whole damn thing up and spend about 10 hours on it if you're never given it before). In this regard, Melbourne seems to be taking into account the work required to generate a new lecture.<br /><br />At Deakin there is no office space per tutor, but you can apply for a room throughout the semester at a specific time so you can set up a regular consultation time or work before or after classes. I've never taken advantage of this, but it's a nice gesture. You would know the score in Culture and Communication where there is little provision even for sessional coordinators. I'm sure Melbourne would want to at least meet what Deakin is offering.<br /><br />The biggie in terms of unpaid work at Deakin is the online components of subjects. They have many off-campus students and the students in general seem to use the online sites (the equivalent of the LMS) much more than I've ever seen at Melbourne. We don't ordinarily get paid for this time, but I would always spend maybe 8-10 hours per week on there.<br /><br />The biggest problem is using sessionals year-in, year-out. In the study I did at Deakin, I found that there were people who had been sessional tutors for 5-10 years, many of whom wanted an ongoing position. One guy at Deakin just got an award for 14 years service or something similar. People should not be sessionals for this long and there needs to be "stepping stone" positions that have a little more job security, but may not have all the trappings of tenure.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b>2</b></span></p> <ol><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I have given a 25 minute lecture (there were three of us making up the entire lecture with 25-minute talks) and no one was paid -- as far as I can tell.<br /><br />2) we don't get space as a casual tutor, but I have one as a PhD student, luckily.<br /><br />3) I was tutoring in a subject that required us to post and respond to an LMS question every week. This took up a fair bit of time, with no payment to account for it.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p> </li></ol> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b>3</b></span></p> <ol><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;">1. Yes I am paid to give lectures. But unless lectures are asked for they are not given to postgrads in our department. I only got one lecture this year and I had to literally beg for it. This is not the coordinators' fault, the school has no money!<br />2. We have office space but it is shared. The worst I experienced this year was one desk and computer for 25 tutors!<br />3. I had to mark blogs this semester and I was only paid for 1200 words each while the blogs were supposed to be 2000 words each. It was also made clear to students that they wouldn't be penalised for writing more than the 200 words. I was marking up to 5000 words and being paid for 1200.<br /><br />My main gripe is that there is no way a department (particularly in Arts) can give you any sort of career path or reward long service. I have tutored 10 semesters of classes and will have to apply with everyone else next semester while rationing my money over the summer break with no guarantees.</span></p></ol> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b>4</b></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;">While I was paid an hourly rate for guest lecturing, the figure really didn't represent the work in preparation to give the lecture, so I would say that in my experience guest lecturing is pretty underpaid. Especially if, as a tutor for a subject, you are asked to give multiple guest lectures. Instead of recognition as co-coordinator, or what have you, it seems cheaper and easier to be designated as a guest lecturer...<br /><br />I had office space, but this was only because I'd applied for one as a postgrad through my department, i.e. there was no relation between my work as a tutor and having this office space. Even though I was one of the lucky ones, and I do realise this, the conditions were definitely less than ideal, since students would come for consultations while office mates would be in the room. An uncomfortable inconvenience for all involved - and who's to say which of us had the most right to the room at the time?<br /><br />There is a finite provision for payment for student consultations - you probably know what this is, I've forgotten. Perhaps five hours per semester? Anyway, this is supposed to include all email correspondence, as well as a weekly office hour, which we are obliged to offer. That's right - the school/coordinator creates this expectation in the students that there is a weekly office hour to meet with tutors, but at the same time, tutors are told by admin at the end of semester that they will only be paid for 5, or 8, or whatever the set figure is. Let me say that this is a pretty clear example of pressure to do unpaid work! In any case, students come by outside of this office hour, and email traffic is enormous. QOT forms at the end of the teaching period ask so many questions about whether students felt like their teaching staff were supportive/available if they didn't understand material, etc, so obviously this is a major issue to do with the quality of the school. But not one they are willing to their staff pay for.<br /><br />I'm sure I'm merely one in a large chorus, but hope this helps,<br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b>5</b></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;">1 - Yes, I'm paid to give guest lectures and have never been asked to do so without pay<br /><br />2 - As a casual tutor I share an office - there are two small offices between 20 tutors which is woefully insufficient and despite the timetabling of office hours to try and ensure they don't clash, they often do. It it is very difficult to listen to student concerns when other tutors are coming and going at the same time.<br /><br />3 - I think that casual academics in this particular school are basically treated with respect and fairness. We could always get paid more but more of an issue is the lack of career paths - in other areas (eg natural sciences) there are a lot more research fellow positions that people can move into post PhD before going on to an academic B (academic A appointments seem to have died out) but in the Arts/social sciences these are few and far between. The university should be doing a lot more to create early-career academic positions as they will need these people to take over when the baby-boomers all retire.<br /></span><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b>6</b></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I would love to respond to your questions! I have been employed at the university as a casual lecturer and tutor over the last two years.<br /><br />1) I have always been paid for guest lectures and they are offered as paid work.<br /><br />2) But with no office space. I have been using the communal postgrad office space which can disruptive to others if students wish to discuss anything.<br /><br />3) The main issue i have with payment for work is pay negotiations that are still happening when a job is offered, which holds up a contract being drawn up. Postgrads should have time to be able to consider these details before accepting the job, but unfortunately there have been instances where this has not yet been resolved before teaching begins.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b>7</b></span></p> <ol><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;">We are not paid to give guest lectures, but we are told in advance that<br />they will be unpaid. So far I have successfully negotiated with individual<br />course coordinators that I be paid out of their teaching relief fund. I<br />cannot speak for others.<br /><br />2. The school offers casual tutors use of two shared rooms with shared<br />pcs, but tutors can only use them temporarily (i.e. to the best of my<br />knowledge there is no lockable space )<br /><br />3. Tutors are not paid to attend lectures, although many do, especially in<br />their first year of teaching a subject. More alarmingly, tutors are<br />expected to attend meetings with their course coordinators but are not<br />paid to do this. I have managed to wrangle pay out of one coordinator,<br />declined to meet AT ALL with another for the entire semester of teaching<br />(to the course's detriment) and had to pay one of my own tutors out of my<br />own pocket when I was the coordinator for a course.</span></p> </li></ol> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b>8</b></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The issue I have with sessional teaching at Melbourne perhaps doesn't easily fit into some of the questions you've asked - even the last one.<br /><br />Tutorial and lecture preparation time is underpaid. The simple rule here is to only work for the hours you get cash for. However, it's completely unrealistic, and prone to cases of self-exploitation from dedicated sessionals with a commitment to high standards. The University knows this, and it's a difficult issue maintain an argument on - for one thing, it gets caught up in the differing perspectives on the quantity and quality of 'knowledge work' measurable within a particular time frame. This is different from a set period of delivering material to a class.<br /><br />Semester bleed is another issue I'm sure that you've heard about already: cases of late work, plagiarism and administrative commitments drag on well beyond the last paycheck.<br /><br />Something else that bothers me is the inflexibility of coordination of course materials, subject descriptions and course design. To some extent, this covers both sessional and tenured staff - for cutting-edge programs to be developed there needs to be some modification of the massive lead-in to subject proposals (two years advance for the structure of assessment criteria in some cases) - nevertheless it impacts more on the quality of teaching from sessional coordinators since they often cannot deliver material effectively within an outdated framework and have little authority or recourse to adapt structures or the security to take risks (or even the paid hours to manage innovating subjects). This affects labour practices in the sense of morale and quality of teaching, paid or otherwise.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Oh, and also - don't get me started on new media and labour! The celebrated blogging software from University of Melbourne is a time-sink and massive case of exploitative teaching practice. Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b>9</b></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I've just finished up as a sessional lecturer/tutor/course co-ordinator this semester, and wanted to give some feedback.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Overall, I think I had things comparitively good - office space, good admin support etc - but there were a couple of points I think it's worth raising. The main issue I encountered was the assumption that teaching stopped with the final lecture. Given that both the major essay and the exam were after this date, I was effectively not paid at all for the fairly extensive consultation I felt obliged to give students in those weeks. More importantly, from both mine and the students' perspectives, I think there's a problem with the assumption that casuals will always be available both during holidays and well into the following semester. When a student has, say, special consideration and is submitting after the due date, there may actually be no one connected with the course around to mark it. Hope this of some help!</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b>10</b></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">No i have never been paid to give a guest lecture - I'm always just told that it will look good on my CV but it doesn't really to put down a whole lot of separate guest lectures when i have also had an actual lecturing position.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Usually there is one space offered for all the tutors but cause so many people use it i often had to find another space for tutor consults outside of my allocated hour.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0.5cm;">The extra assignments or short answer questions that some of the subjects have on a weekly basis take up a lot of time and are mostly unpaid for tutors.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0.5cm;"><b>11</b></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0.5cm; font-weight: normal;">1) did not have an office<br /><br />2) did more work than the hours I was paid for. That was mainly preparation and marking.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.5cm; font-weight: normal;">Now - what's your experience? We need as many voices as possible if we ever hope to have an impact! Collectively, we have power to see real sectoral change - individually, we might be able to fight for ourselves, but we won't see institutional and national improvements.<br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0.5cm; font-weight: normal;"></p>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-61394319096988661892009-12-10T16:17:00.000-08:002009-12-10T16:22:20.374-08:00Why I resigned from the University of Melbourne Council<p style="padding: 12px 11px 0pt; font-family: georgia,'times new roman',serif; font-size: 24px;"><a href="http://media.crikey.com.au/dm/newsletter/dailymail_ad4e320b3de7a96308fba3444de90910.html#article_544"></a><a><span style="font-size:100%;">Here's the article I had published in Crikey on Wednesday 9 December 2009.</span></a><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></p> <p><i><a href="http://media.crikey.com.au/dm/newsletter/www.crikey.com.au">Melbourne university post grad student Tammi Jonas writes:</a></i></p><p>On Monday, I resigned from the University of Melbourne Council in protest against the University's exploitation of its casual labour force, which is largely made up of postgraduate students. I myself was asked to teach a seminar for free that I had previously been paid to present, and chose to use my own example to fight for the many others who are all too frequently put in this untenable position.</p> <p>You can read my resignation in yesterday's <em>Crikey</em>, or else on <a href="http://tammijonas.blogspot.com/">my blog</a>, as well as the email inviting me to teach for free. The withdrawal of my labour from an exploitative system is a strategic and ideological choice I started to make a few years ago when I opted out of tutoring in the Arts Faculty, where remuneration and conditions are woeful, as they are at so many Australian universities.</p> <p>So a few facts: casual staff are delivering about 50% of the university sector's teaching, Data from DEEWR also shows that there are more women than men employed as casuals, which has particular implications for women with children, who we know are still doing the lion's share of caring for children. Casual staff have no paid leave and no job security, let alone a clear career pathway. As the sector grapples with understanding how it will replenish its ageing workforce, it continues to employ people under casual contracts with no plan to integrate them into the future workforce. Meanwhile, some 60% of Australia's PhD graduates leave the sector entirely, a figure that has been climbing steadily for many years.</p> <p>So what does all of this mean to the average postgrad who thinks, 'great, I'd love to teach!' There is great disparity in wages and conditions between institutions – I'm assured that Melbourne University is by no means the worst offender.</p> <p>Many tutors attend lectures as part of their preparation for tutorials, but at most institutions this is unpaid. The Head of the School of Political and Social Sciences at Melbourne has informed his casual staff that “Tutorials are not designed to go over lecture content – they should be capable of standing alone. Where they are merely going over lecture content, they are not doing what they are designed to do.”</p> <p>This is a total furphy – of course tutorials are designed to support the lecture content, though not to slavishly 'go over' it. Would he be happy if the lecture that week was on racism in the media and the tutorial was on feminism in India? This same head of school also asserts that there is no need for face-to-face meetings between subject coordinators and tutors, and that the “LMS [an online space for learning materials, with discussion forums] seems a suitable format in which staff can communicate with each other.”</p> <p>This is his justification for not paying for meetings – whilst tutors spend MORE UNPAID time on the LMS. Tutors are also often asked to give guest lectures without pay, sometimes 'lucky' to receive a bottle of wine. A lecture can take up to a week to prepare when you're doing it for the first time, so even when it is paid at the rate of 3 hours per hour of delivery, it's totally insufficient.</p> <p>Many tutors are not provided with any office space in which to work or consult with students, and those who are must share an office, which can be very awkward if meeting with a distressed student. Those without offices meet with students in cafes or other public places, which is even more awkward with a distressed student.</p> <p>Many casual staff talk about 'semester bleed', whereby they must attend to issues around academic misconduct and students contesting their marks well after their contract has finished. And a number of universities don't even pay for end of semester marking, which can take dozens of hours to complete. It is unconscionable that institutions whose very <em>raison d'etre</em> is to contribute to the global public good are exploiting their least powerful members. The old 'we don't do it for the money' argument has worn thin.</p> <p>I say no matter WHY we do it, they're going to have to pay us.</p>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-77408795712446244442009-12-07T20:33:00.000-08:002009-12-07T20:57:09.359-08:00Stop the Exploitation of Casual Labour in Universities!<span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#0000ff;"><span style="color:#000000;">At the recent <a href="http://www.uq.edu.au/crn/industry/">State of the Industry</a> conference in Sydney, there was a great deal of talk about the exploitation of casual labour in universities, especially that provided by postgraduate students. The very next week, I was invited to teach a seminar for free that I have been paid to deliver for nearly two years. In outrage and out of solidarity with others in similar situations, I decided to resign immediately from my position on Melbourne University Council and use the example to reinvigorate the long-standing campaign to improve remuneration and conditions for casual academics. I somewhat naively thought that I would send my email to the University Council, receive a dismayed response, and continue with the campaign in my role next year as President of the <a href="http://capa.edu.au/">Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA</a>). I say naive, because somebody <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/12/08/leaked-email-teach-for-free-melbourne-uni-councillor-calls-it-quits/">immediately leaked the email to Crikey</a>. Since it's now public, but behind a paywall, here is the email, with two minor omissions to attempt to protect the privacy of staff members who are not willingly complicit in this system of exploitation, and who should not be placed in such a position as to have to ask postgrads for free labour.<br /><br />CAPA will be very active next year in attempting to secure better remuneration and conditions and improved career pathways for casual academics, as well as more access to resources and collegial cultures, and we hope to work closely with the <a href="http://www.unicasual.com.au/">NTEU</a> on this. I urge all casual academics to make your voices heard, and to withdraw your labour if it is not being appropriately rewarded, if you are in a position to do so. For those in better circumstances, I urge you to show your support for the others!<br /><br />The email in question:<br /><br />Dear Chancellor and fellow Councillors,<br /><br />It is with disappointment that I submit my immediate resignation as a member of the Melbourne University Council.<br /><br />Below is an email I received from a staff member at the Melbourne School of Graduate Research inviting me to teach a seminar for which I have been paid these past two years for free, due to lack of funding. (The staff member, by the way, was mortified to be put in this position, and has always been a great proponent for paying the presenters, as well as an excellent coordinator.) As most of you will know, I have been campaigning against the exploitation of casual labour, especially that of our postgraduate students, at both the campus level as President of UMPA (now the GSA) last year and nationally as VP for the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) this year. I was elected 2010 President of CAPA last week, and intend to continue advocating for casuals in that role.<br /><br />You may or may not know that the Arts Faculty made a 'strategic decision' to stop paying for guest lectures last year, which has put countless postgraduate students in the position of offering or agreeing to teach the lectures for free in the belief that it will be good for their careers - never mind the many unpaid hours it takes them to prepare and teach, which is often in addition to paid work elsewhere. The GSA and CAPA believe this situation is absolutely outrageous and indefensible.<br /><br />I will not be teaching any of this or other universities' subjects for free, and nor do I encourage any other students to do so. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have a scholarship are, as CAPA publicised last year, living just below the Henderson Poverty Line. The small increase in APAs won by CAPA for next year will nudge the scholarship just above the poverty line. And yet a university with a billion dollar budget has the gall to tell us that it does not have the resources to pay for our labour. I for one am responding by withdrawing my labour entirely from this system of exploitation, and strongly encourage others who can to do the same. We can all at least agree not to teach for free, but also where possible, not to teach under the appalling remuneration and conditions facing casual tutors.<br /><br />As a Councillor, I am clearly not in a position to speak out about the outrageous, unethical management decisions being made by Melbourne University, and so I would like my resignation to be accepted immediately. It is also against my own ethical position to remain on a governance body that will allow the University to continue to move in this direction, where its least powerful members are so desperately undervalued. I would also bring to the Council's attention that across the sector, sessionals are doing over 50% of the teaching, and postgraduates make up 57% of the sector's research and development output. What is strategic about disenfranchising this labour force?<br /><br />I wish you all well as you endeavour to govern an unmanageable state of affairs.<br /><br />Sincerely,<br /><br />Tammi<br /><br /><br /></span><br />Dear <span>Tammi</span>,<br /></span><span style="font-family:Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span style="color:#0000ff;"><span>Many thanks </span>for your participation in the eResearch training program for graduate students in 200<span>9</span>. <span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">I have really appreciated your enthusiastic participation and f</span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;">eedback from participants <span>for your </span><em>Web 2.0 & Social Media for Research Students: Wikis, Blogs and Beyond</em><span> </span>has been <span>very </span>positive<span>. The University of Melbourne seems to be leading the pack with this type of training and [there was a presentation by Melbourne] at the eResearch Australasia conference earlier in November. [We] believe that the program has been instrumental in raising <span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">awareness across the university of the importance of equipping our research students with eResearch skills and tools. <span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span style="color:#0000ff;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;color:#0000ff;">At <span>the </span><em>e-Volution <span>eResearch </span>Symposium</em><span> at the University </span><span>in </span>Sept<span>ember, </span>the DVC-R, Professor Peter Rathjen, highlighted the need for a University-wide strategy to educate and train RHD candidates in eResearch. He identified the need for all RHDs to be aware of<span> </span><span>and </span>to incorporate into their daily practice, elements of University policy on data research management, including data access and integrity, and to develop <span>their </span>eResearch skills. </span></span></span></span></span></span>The program also features in the draft eResearch strategy for the University.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span> <div><span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span style="color:#0000ff;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;color:#0000ff;"><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </div> <div><span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span style="color:#0000ff;">Planning is underway for 20<span>10. <span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span style="color:#0000ff;"><span>I am hoping that you will be able to participate in the program next year. However I need to tell you that MSGR are unable to pay presenters next year. So I understand that this and /or study demands may be a barrier...or any other reasons.... Please let me know at your earliest convenience if you can participate and if the nominated date suits. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div> <div><span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span style="color:#0000ff;"><span><span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span style="color:#0000ff;"><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </div> <div><span style="font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span style="color:#0000ff;"><span>Face-to-face classes will continue – and we are planning to expand, adding some new topics, e.g. Video collaboration: EVO & other collaboration tools; <span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="color:#0000ff;">Overview of HPC and Visualisation Services; and </span></span><span style="color:#0000ff;">Digitization. In addition MSGR and Learning Environments will develop an eResearch 'toolkit' in the newly launched Graduate Research Portal on Sakai. All research students will have access to the portal in 2010.</span></span></span></span></span></span></div></div><br />--<br />Tammi Jonas<br />PhD Candidate, Cultural Studies<br />University of Melbourne<br />Vice President (National Operations), Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA)<br /><a href="mailto:tjonas@unimelb.edu.au" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://www.tammijonas.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">www.tammijonas.blogspot.com</a><br /><br />"I awake each morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savour the world. This makes it hard to plan my day." E. B. WhiteTammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-22327293775661665992009-11-23T21:21:00.000-08:002010-02-03T17:05:23.097-08:00Ten Things Postgrads Want: An Ironic Manifesto<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;">A panel of four will deliver a version of the following ironic manifesto on Thursday at the <a href="http://www.uq.edu.au/crn/industry/">Cultural Research Network's State of the Industry conference</a> in Sydney. We would be delighted to hear your thoughts on these demands in advance.<br /></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;">Research students account for 57% of Australia's university-based research and development. Around 50% of the teaching in universities is done by sessionals, many of whom are postgrads. Our average age is 35. We are emerging academics in our own right, and we would like that to be recognised and supported in the following ways:<span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><br /></span></span></p><ol><li><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;">Match scholarships to candidature (4 years) and make part-time scholarships tax exempt. </span></span></li></ol><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-weight: normal;"> </p> <ol start="2"><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Increase flexibility in </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;">visa conditions for international postgraduates.</span></span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p> </li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;">Ensure postgrads have access to adequate facilities and resources, such as office space, printers and meeting rooms.</span></span></span></span></p> </li></ol> <ol start="4"><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Provide sufficient funding over the course of candidature for each RHD student to cover costs associated with the production & dissemination of our research.</span></span></span></p> </li></ol> <ol start="5"><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;">Improve collegiality within our departments, with both emerging and established academics, through regular disciplinary seminars and social gatherings.</span></span></p> </li></ol> <ol start="6"><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;">Provide discipline-specific and 'generic skills' professional training programs.</span></span></p> </li></ol> <ol start="7"><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;">Provide institutional support and guidance for pursuing non-academic careers.</span></span></p> </li></ol> <ol start="8"><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;">Offer all RHD students university-funded programs to develop teaching credentials.</span></span></p> </li></ol> <ol start="9"><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;">Establish national standards for sessional teaching, with fair and transparent remuneration.</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p> </li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;">Establish short-term ‘Early Career Fellowships’ (available 0-5 years post-PhD) to bridge the gap between PhD submission and first appointment/postdoc.</span></span></p> </li></ol><br />What do you want?Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-80016114205012782212009-11-18T21:45:00.000-08:002009-11-18T21:55:12.531-08:00The 17th Symposium of Australian GastronomyWhen I say I'm doing a PhD on food and identity in Melbourne, I get some fairly extreme responses from people (like the political advisor in Canberra who nearly dropped his files, spluttered and kind of shouted, “FFS! Well, then, so am I! I eat out a lot in Melbourne!”). Many people ask me how I got such a great topic, and so I point out that we choose our own topics, and I just happened to choose exceptionally well. <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">In fact, if you're interested, I chose mine because I had been working on spectacular performances of national identity in my previous degree, and wanted to bring my interest in identity home, so to speak. If I was going to embark on a number of years focusing on a research topic, it felt important for it to relate to my home/family life. I didn't want a topic that took my entire intellectual life outside the familial headspace, nor too frequently away from our suburban bliss. And so it dawned on me... food is central to my identity, as a cook, a migrant, a mother... and it clearly is to many others in Melbourne and beyond. And I'm tired of people insisting, “Aren't we lucky in Melbourne? We're so multicultural, just look at all our restaurants!” Sure, I thought, but how cosmopolitan are we? And can I do a PhD and keep cooking with a passion? <i>Et voilà</i>. A beautiful research project was born.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Given people's responses when I tell them my topic, you can imagine their faces when I said I was off to the <a href="http://www.gastronomers.org/index.html">Symposium of Australian Gastronomy</a>. “Oh, what a terrible PhD you have. Off to eat and drink, are you?” Well, yes. Yes, there was definitely some excellent eating and drinking to do (though the Saturday night dinner at Ming's was a let-down that I won't bore you with here, and picnic lunches on 40C days were challenging). There is certainly no shame in eating excellent quality sustainable and ethical food, which we did a fair bit of in Adelaide. And while we enjoyed some lovely food and wine, we talked about everything from food security to frugality to food and wine festivals. As it says on the website, “More than any conference, the Symposia of Australian Gastronomy embrace participatory gastronomy in a way that nourishes the intellectual component of these events.” </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">One of the crucial strengths of the Symposium is the diversity of its participants, who are academics, chef and other food industry professionals, and many food 'enthusiasts'. It seems that everyone who attends, whether they are professionally or academically involved with food or not, is deeply engaged with food as cooks, gardeners and crusaders for sustainable, ethical and delicious foodstuffs. Melbourne Uni's 'Knowledge Transfer' team could learn a bit from this organic and dynamic 25-year-old Symposium. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">You can see <a href="http://www.gastronomers.org/program.html">this year's program here</a>, and the proceedings will be published (though I've no idea how long this takes). </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I was the first paper up on Saturday morning, and the Symposium is like Meredith – it's a single stage event (no parallel sessions), so the house was packed. My paper was on practices of frugality between different generations and cultures in Melbourne. In my interviews, what I've found so far is that there seem to be as many similarities in these practices as there are differences, and they're not easily split along cultural or generational lines. I argue that those who are most skilled at 'doing-cooking' (Giard 1998), who are expert at 'good housekeeping' (in the kitchen, at least), seem to be most likely to be contributing to 'global good housekeeping'. I also argue that those who are good at being frugal express a sense of competence, of mastery, which gives them a remarkable sense of their own agency, which in turn enables them to further contribute to global good housekeeping. My paper was well received, with a lot of positive and interesting feedback over the ensuing two days, and I'm still basking in the praise I received from the warm and passionate Maggie Beer.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Some highlights from the other papers:</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Felicity Newman spoke on 'God or Greed? The Business of Keeping Kosher', with some remarkable ethnographic data on the difficulties of truly keeping kosher, including a video of a woman who has two kitchens so that one can be reserved for the stringent requirements of Passover. Felicity ended with concerns about what happens to Jewish communities when they give up their kosher food cultures. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Julie McIntyre gave a great paper on 'Wine and Political Economy in Colonial Australia', very amusingly debunking Governor Phillip's attempts to sober up the local population by turning their efforts to growing wine (inspired by Adam Smith). I think we can all agree more than 200 years later that more wine has not made Australians more sober...</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Polly McGee wins the rock star status for the conference. Her paper, 'Donna Hay's Newie—the Narrative Economy of Celebrity Chefs' was a compelling romp through the three primary modes of celebrity chefs: sex, ethnicity and/or salvation. You can imagine which of the celebs she claims are selling through sex (and the innuendo during her analysis of Nigella was priceless, leaving the audience in slightly hysterical laughter), which are selling 'authentic' ethnic identities (Kylie Kwong, Luke Nguyen...) and which can give you salvation through sustainable, healthy and ethical food choices (Jamie Oliver, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingtall...). </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Bernadette Hince took us on a deeply personal journey of a life of frugality. Belittled by her sisters for 'meanness', 'miserliness' and allegations of keeping food until it's not safe, Bernadette chose a sympathetic audience to despair of their 'profligate waste'. A final question to the audience was about 'chuckers' and 'keepers' – are those who buy bottled water statistically more likely to be the 'chuckers' of our society? An interesting methodology to explore...</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The final highlight amongst the papers was Christian Reynolds, who has just completed his Honours at the University of Adelaide. Christian gave a fantastically engaging paper entitled 'Towards an Understanding of Food's Economic and Cultural Power in the Political Sphere', full of entertaining asides and moments of amusing self-deprecation. His paper detailed theories of hard and soft power, applying them to the use of food as a tool for coercion, whether by proffering it or withdrawing access to it. “Who sat next to the President at the G20 Summit?” was a great question to explore the broader cultural context of meals where power is exerted, and left everyone a little unsettled about who we'd be sitting next to at that night's banquet.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The banquet was the sumptuous affair you might have expected, prepared by Sharon Romeo and David Swain of Fino, who just won <a href="http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26359852-5006301,00.html">Restaurant of the Year in Adelaide's Food Awards</a>. Unfortunately, we didn't get copies of the menu (unless you were quick enough to grab one of the few on each table, which I wasn't) and I was too caught up in a stimulating conversation with Ross Kelly, who has convened two of the previous Symposia with his wife Maria, to make good notes. Hence I won't detail the meal here for fear of misrepresenting it...<br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The Symposium did have its inevitable moments of tension between the so-called 'town' and 'gown' – I was asked by one food industry professional, “but do you cook?” as she claimed that academics are often too far removed from reality (and unfortunately she didn't give me the opportunity to reassure her that I am a devoted and passionate cook, etc...). In fact, a couple of people mentioned the tired theme of academics who are too narrow and out of touch, though the academics I met over the weekend were all deeply involved in food – in their kitchens, their gardens, their children's schools, and their offices. I hope this Symposium (and the 16 before it) has contributed to breaking down some of the assumptions people carry about those inside or outside the academy, which I believe has been one of its intentions for a long time. Those who started the Symposium in 1984 must be commended for their vision, and for their continued commitment to ethical, sustainable and delicious food, which is so essential to us all.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">In the end, we were really just a room full of intelligent and passionate people who care about what we and the rest of the world grow, cook and eat. To echo this year's organiser Roger Haden, long live the Symposium of Australian Gastronomy!</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-80986475129322585752009-11-17T20:07:00.000-08:002009-11-17T20:13:22.194-08:00Food and Community at Church St EnotecaChurch St Enoteca<br />527 Church St, Richmond VIC<br />(03) 9428 7898<div id="TixyyLink" style="border: medium none ; overflow: hidden; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br /></div>As I've claimed before, the Twitterverse runs on a gift economy, and so last week Stuart and I found ourselves the grateful and delighted guests of the charming Ron O'Bryan (@ronobryan) at <a href="http://www.churchstenoteca.com.au/">Church St Enoteca</a>, along with <a href="http://myfoodtrail.blogspot.com/">@myfoodtrail</a>, <a href="http://www.melhotornot.com/2009/11/16/hot-tour-obsure-church-street-enoteca-571-church-st-richmond/">@jetsettingjoyce</a>, <a href="http://www.melbournegastronome.com/">@mutemonkey</a> and <a href="http://cookingwithgoths.com/">@cookingwithgoths</a>. It was Ron's last regional dinner of the year, the Tour of the Obscure, designed around six obscure Italian wines which were complimented by food from the region of the grapes. <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I don't carry a particularly good camera, and these days I rely on the iPhone almost entirely (which has a terrible camera), so if you want to see great photos, check out <a href="http://myfoodtrail.blogspot.com/">My Food Trail</a> or <a href="http://www.melhotornot.com/2009/11/16/hot-tour-obsure-church-street-enoteca-571-church-st-richmond/">MEL: Hot or Not</a>. These lovely bloggers also gave a detailed description of our meal, which was delicious start to finish, so I won't give such detail here. Highlights for me were definitely the Prosecco di Valdobbiadene upon arrival, the divine salad of prosciutto with shavings of raw artichoke and fennel, and broad beans, almond and lemon, and the rabbit, fennel and cotechino brodo with rabbit cappelletti. These two dishes were totally heavenly combinations, and fed my current obsessions with rabbit, filled pastas, and cotechino very nicely.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">But now it's time for me to digress, or rather return to what are really my central interests in our dinner at Church Street Enoteca...</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">First of all, a quick word about social media, food and community. I've never been a regular reader of any particular blogs, though I usually enjoy reading casually when I have the time. Predictably, most of the blogs I look at are food blogs, though I do love a dose of a good feminist or political blog. Since Twitter, however, I now follow many dozens (dare I say hundreds?) of food bloggers, food enthusiasts, chefs, and food scholars (yes, we're a real category), as well as people representative of my other interests in social media, politics, and feminism. On Twitter I have very rapidly expanded my 'communities of interest', and have had opportunities to meet many of the people I follow, such as at Enoteca last week. I've followed Ron for awhile, and have really enjoyed his tweets about sourcing sustainable and ethical ingredients. We've even had a couple of exchanges over the questions of what people are looking for and will pay for when eating out, where I shared some of the findings from my own interviews. And so what a pleasure to then be invited to join the other bloggers to taste his delectable food, followed by a great discussion with him about his upcoming new venture in St Kilda, where he will be showcasing local, seasonal and where possible, organic and biodynamic foods.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Ron is clearly passionate about his cooking and the quality of his ingredients. This passion extends to the ways that food supports community, and his educational dinners that focus on regional cuisine see all sorts of people sitting side by side learning, tasting and conversing. Our dinner was served <i>a la famiglia</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, with big share plates down the middle of the tables. As Ron said when he was introducing the meal, he served us family style in order to bring people together, and he even suggested that people would probably eat something they hadn't tried before, which would give us more to talk about. Of course he was right, and our table was abuzz with conversation about what ingredients we were seeing and tasting, and comparing notes on flavour and texture. In fact, it was nearly midnight before we all left, a late hour we had chattered our way to without noticing. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">So in terms of creating a congenial environment, Ron's really nailed it at Church Street Enoteca, where quality ingredients are transformed into truly delicious regional Italian dishes, and interesting individuals connect to form rich and diverse communities. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Thanks, Ron! We look forward to checking out the new venture soon!</span></p>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-23558318572389824472009-10-22T17:14:00.000-07:002009-10-22T18:37:07.764-07:00Palak Paneer KoftaThe first time I went to India in 1998, I fell deeply in love with the food. As a vegetarian at the time, I delighted in the lengthy menus with a small 'non-veg' section at the back, and couldn't get enough of all things <i>palak</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> (spinach). Two particular favourites were </span><i>palak paneer</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> and </span><i>alu palak</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. </span><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">In the middle of our month's travel through the north, we found ourselves stuck in Agra for an unexpected extra night (due to thick fog and a malfunctioning ILS at the Agra airport). Exhausted from long bus rides, insouciant touts, and endless transport delays, we splurged and stayed the night at a family-run guest house near the airport called New Bakshi House (and it really was a splurge at $42 for the two of us, including breakfast and a hot shower, when we were used to paying around $10 a night). The main treat at Bakshi House, however, was not the comfortable beds or hot water, nor even the delicious home style food, but the lovely hostess, Rani, who shared her recipes with me. As I banged on about my love of </span><i>palak</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> and </span><i>paneer</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, Rani assured me this Indian cheese was very simple to make, and gave me her recipe, as well as others for </span><i>kuku</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, </span><i>alu palak</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, </span><i>malai kofta</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, </span><i>ghobi</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, yoghurt, and another I wrote down as 'a Chinese dish'. Although she was adamant that </span><i>paneer</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> was very simple to make, I perhaps simply wasn't a confident enough</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> cook yet to believe her. It in fact took me nearly a decade before I attempted to make my own. Here is Rani's recipe:</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>Paneer</i></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Boil 1 litre half & half (her sister-in-law Tina had lived in America for 17 years, so perhaps she introduced the half & half idea?). Add 2 tspn lemon juice. As soon as milk curdles, remove from heat. Put cheesecloth in sieve. Pour milk mixture through & cover lightly. Leave 1 ½ hours or more (you may rinse the curd at this stage if you've added too much lemon juice).</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I think that for many years I simply didn't trust the simplicity of this operation. Surely the </span><i>paneer</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> wouldn't form? Trust me, it does every time, just like that. I now use ordinary full cream milk, and for a family of five I find I need to do about 3L to make enough </span><i>paneer</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> for a meal (it makes about 500g). I also usually press mine as it rests in the sieve, unless I'm making </span><i>paneer koftas</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, since I'll be crumbling the </span><i>paneer</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> anyway. I also save the whey, which </span><span style="font-style: normal;">you can use if you're making chapatis or parathas. If not, as per @crazybrave's suggestion recently, I simply add it to the chook scraps.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Here's what I did with my most recent </span><i>paneer</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, which I will usually make before lunch if I want it for dinner. This recipe is adapted from my favourite Indian cookbook, bought in Calcutta, “Desi Khana: The Best of Indian Vegetarian Cooking” by Tarla Dalal.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>Palak Paneer Kofta</i></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i>Koftas</i><span style="font-style: normal;">: for 500g </span><i>paneer</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, I add about 4T plain flour, chopped coriander to taste (loads!), chopped chilies to taste, pinch of bi-carb soda and salt to taste. Form into balls and deep fry until golden brown. Rest on paper towels. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Paste: bash up loads of garlic, pistachios, poppy seeds (not too many as they're bitter), ginger & chili (if no children will share this meal) – all to taste, which means lots of garli</span><span style="font-style: normal;">c especially in our house. Tarla adds grated coconut, but when I was short of any, I actually used coconut cream & just add it after the other ingredients fried for a bit. She also uses cashews, which would be equally delicious I'm sure!</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Chop up a giant bunch of spinach and cook it lightly with about ½ cup of water until it's fully wilted. Blend the spinach to a puree and set aside.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Heat ghee in a cast iron frypan and cook the paste for 3-5 minutes, until </span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SuEIZow5PaI/AAAAAAAAAPw/eMLf7MXJZsQ/s1600-h/IMG_0677.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SuEIZow5PaI/AAAAAAAAAPw/eMLf7MXJZsQ/s320/IMG_0677.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5395603065098812834" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: normal;">the garlic loses its acerbity. Add a couple of tablespoons of coconut cream and cook for anot</span><span style="font-style: normal;">h</span><span style="font-style: normal;">er minute or two. Add about a cup of full cream natural yoghurt and cook on lower heat for another minute or so. Add the spinach puree, 1T raw sugar or jaggery, salt to taste and cook for another 3 to 4 minutes. Add the koftas to heat back through and serve. :-)</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">My kids adore this dish, as do adults. You can serve it with rice and naan or pa</span><span style="font-style: normal;">ppadums. If you make it spicy, it's worth serving a raita as well. As for the </span><i>paneer</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, it's also delicious simply on its own – I have to hide it from the kids while I'm cooking or there's never enough...</span></p>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-72551598430890521742009-10-11T18:41:00.000-07:002009-10-11T18:53:00.939-07:00Wild Oak (Olinda) needs to focus on the kitchen<span style="font-style: italic;">Bring your wallet, but leave your palate at home...</span> seemed to be the theme of Dandenong ranges dining...<br /><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I generally prefer not to write scathing reviews of restaurants, on the theory that everyone has a bad night, and if it happens to have been the night I came, well, bad luck for me, but it would be unfair to slam the place on one tasting. I am about to break that tradition, because the food we were served at <a href="http://www.wildoak.com.au/">Wild Oak</a> in Olinda was so bad it had absolutely no place being served. To ask a diner to pay for what was on the plates in front of us was the height of egregious poor form. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">From the beginning then. When researching places to eat in the Dandenong ranges, I came across a number of recommendations for Wild Oak. The chef, Ben Higgs, seems to be highly regarded (though I later realised that a lot of my opinion was formed <a href="http://www.benhiggs.com.au/">from his own PR</a>), and promotes himself and his restaurant as showcasing the best of seasonal, regional produce. Excellent, we said, and had a look at the website. I saw that Ben runs <a href="http://www.wildoak.com.au/cooking/classdates">cooking classes</a>, and had a browse through the offerings: Moroccan Made Easy, Vietnamese Master Class, Sushi Master Class, Tapas and Pasta Class were just a few on the extensive list. Wow, apparently this guy can teach you how to cook the whole world, I joked, and decided against checking availability. I wonder what his actual speciality is, I wondered...</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/StKLyeN4q5I/AAAAAAAAAPo/sZlAIMfhUCk/s1600-h/DSC06297.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 112px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/StKLyeN4q5I/AAAAAAAAAPo/sZlAIMfhUCk/s200/DSC06297.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391525403136928658" border="0" /></a>After a gentle stroll from <a href="http://www.follyfarm.com.au/">our lovely B&B</a> to the restaurant, we arrived excited to see what the hills had to offer. As we approached the building, I noted that the cooking class kitchen is in a sort of fishbowl at the front of the restaurant, and the word 'ego' came to mind. I quashed those thoughts in anticipation of a nice meal of local ingredients. The restaurant was busy, and staff were very attentive. Not only were we seated quickly, the second our bottoms hit the seat a waitress appeared with a complimentary starter. Lucky us, we thought, until I looked at the plate...</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Two slices of tuna and pumpkin nori roll, served on a mango and red onion salsa, on top of what we think was a balsamic reduction (the waitress didn't know). It looked like con-fusion on the plate, exacerbated by a) only having a knife and fork, and b) the fact that the rice appeared to be a solid mass. Ah, I thought, he's being clever, and that white stuff is not actually rice. Reluctantly prodding at the roll with my fork, I managed to separate a grain of rice from the rest of the glutinous mass. Good lord, it's rice. (Reminder: Ben teaches a Sushi Master Class.) I don't believe you should criticise food you you haven't tasted or books you haven't read, so I took the plunge, and promptly wished I had a different rule about criticism. It was not just as bad as it looked, but worse, with its gluey mass of starch, tasteless filling, inappropriate mango and red onion, and totally unnecessary balsamic (?). Oh, and somewhere in there was some more starch in the form of individual corn kernels. Yuck.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I cautioned Stuart to order conservatively now that we had insight into what was on offer. A waitress took our wine order and told us she was exhausted as they had catered a 60<sup>th</sup> that day for 90 guests. We commiserated, ordered a bottle of wine, and made quiet jokes about the menus in front of us, mine splattered with the detritus of someone else's meal. <i>I haven't even complained yet, and they're already spitting in my food, ha ha.</i></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">For entree, we decided to go with the special on offer, a tapas plate (reminder: Ben also teaches a Tapas class), though I did mention to Stuart that the titles of the dishes weren't promising: Atlantic salmon rillette</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> (we're pretty far from the Atlantic...), duck liver pate encroute, warm marinated olives (what sort? Marinated with what? Why warm?), wild mushroom and bas</span><span style="font-style: normal;">il frittata, and Spanish chorizo sausage with aiolili [sic]. Hoping that Ben wasn't the one writing the menu with such poor descriptors, typos, and splatters, we soldiered on, thinking he may want to work on his PR at this stage...</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/StKK5m4K37I/AAAAAAAAAPY/WWdvt4N6Gfk/s1600-h/IMG_0657.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/StKK5m4K37I/AAAAAAAAAPY/WWdvt4N6Gfk/s200/IMG_0657.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391524426209222578" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: normal;">And so the tapas arrived. We gazed at the plate, trying at first to discern which was the rillette and which the frittata in the dim light. Poking what was in fact the rillette with my knife, I discovered it was very difficult to actually cut through the butter on top, and insisted that Stuart experience this misery. We then proceeded to taste each item, discussing our newfound intention to simply leave, but wanting to be fair and taste the tapas. The rillette, served without any little toasts or bread, was indescribably bad. It tasted of tinned salmon, and appeared to have been sitting in a fridge for quite some time. It dawned on us that we were probably eating the leftovers from today's function, which wo</span><span style="font-style: normal;">uld explain the disastrous 'complimentary starter'. The frittata similarly did not taste at all fresh, was cold, and was apparently devoid of seasoning. The pitted olives appeared to have come from a jar, been tossed in a mild vinaigrette and then warmed in the microwave. The pate tasted fine, but was not so much 'en croute' as 'on a fluffy bit of foccacia' & doused in a sickly sweet sauce, and the mild chorizo was okay, but served with a huge blob of rather bland aioli the texture of Miracle Whip.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Time to go. I appealed to our friendly young waitress, and told her I was very sorry to put her on the spot, but that we wanted to leave without our mains. The poor thing looked politely horrified, and asked what the matter was. I gently explained that the food was awful, but that we were happy to pay for our bottle of wine and take it with us. She spoke to Ben, who all the while was working hard directly in front of me in the open kitchen. He glanced at us, after which the waitress returned and</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> said they wouldn't charge us for the entree, and that she was sorry. Ben didn't come over to speak to us, nor was there an apology from the kitchen. We paid, left, and got a takeaway pizza from around the corner, which we took back to our cottage and had with our very expensive bottle of wine (it's one thing to pay $36 for a bottle in a restaurant, another to take it away...). The pizza was pretty good. </span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/StKLK-glxDI/AAAAAAAAAPg/MkcCj5ZcsCo/s1600-h/IMG_0659.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 150px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/StKLK-glxDI/AAAAAAAAAPg/MkcCj5ZcsCo/s200/IMG_0659.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391524724610548786" border="0" /></a> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I like to think that had we waited for our mains, which would have been cooked by Ben, that they would have made up for the earlier dishes. But unfortunately, he's allowing things to come out of his kitchen that are bad enough to drive people away without waiting to see. The extensive PR work Ben's done on his website, with the classes, tours, speaking </span><span style="font-style: normal;">engagements, etc, </span><i>ad nauseum</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> won't make up for dropping the ball in the kitchen, which is where it really counts.<br /></span></p>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-49836030390122455832009-07-04T23:53:00.000-07:002009-07-05T00:59:52.274-07:00A Mongolian Feast!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SlBRnkJddBI/AAAAAAAAAOk/M9iTSAQuupI/s1600-h/DSC06072.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 112px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SlBRnkJddBI/AAAAAAAAAOk/M9iTSAQuupI/s200/DSC06072.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5354869697103623186" border="0" /></a>Yet another wonderful opportunity to revel in developing community around food arose yesterday. My lovely mate <a href="http://www.mongolianbling.com/">Benj, who is working on a doco on Mongolian hip hop</a>, invited us to join a night of feasting at his place. He invited some of his Mongolian friends, who invited their friends, plus his other mates who've spent time there and/or worked on the film with him – and us, the ring-ins because of our shared passion for food and community. :-) It was quite an interesting social experiment, really – put a bunch of strangers in a room together with food, get one group to teach the other how to make something from their culture, and add vodka. Trust me, it was a raving success!<br /><br />The evening began with some of the predictable stilted moments as we all sought to find common ground. Mostly, the Aussies were busy asking the Mongolians questions about the current political situation as they've just had a change of government (and I won't tell you who asked 'does China appoint your leader?' - duffer), as well as learning more about what brought them to Melbourne (all are students, and all intend to return to Mongolia when they finish). I realised how little I really know about their country, including how much closer the Mongolian language seems to be to Russian than it is to Chinese. Most had brought a plate to share, so after recovering from an earlier outing to yum cha with Billy, we tucked in to a variety of pickled salads, a beef noodle dish, kim chee and khuushuur (deep fried large beef dumplings). And of <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SlBR_j6piBI/AAAAAAAAAO0/DvEvchHkodo/s1600-h/DSC06050.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 112px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SlBR_j6piBI/AAAAAAAAAO0/DvEvchHkodo/s200/DSC06050.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5354870109358360594" border="0" /></a>course, that gave us plenty more to discuss.<br /><br />One interesting observation by Zula, who is studying finance at Melbourne Uni, was that the beef tastes quite different here in Australia. Upon further reflection, we agreed that it might be due to the large scale farming methods used here and the relatively unvaried diet of the animals, as opposed to the free ranging of herds in Mongolia and the diversity of grasses in their diet. Zula reckons the beef in Mongolia is gamier and, essentially, tastier. I know it made me want to taste some!<br /><br />Most of us were drinking vodka, though a number of people did enjoy Stuart's homebrew and I noted that a couple of the Australians who had lived in Mongolia stuck to wine. I should really have taken better note of that, as I suspect they had learned a lesson up there. What I understand today is that our drinking habits, usually restricted to wine and beer, are totally unsuitable when drinking vodka. One should really sip small glasses of the stuff if you're going to have it at all, but I know I for one was impressed at how smooth it was (especially the delightful Mongolian Chinggis) and drank it rather like I do water. Ahem.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SlBSKZnVNpI/AAAAAAAAAO8/HvIpGldVytw/s1600-h/DSC06061.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 112px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SlBSKZnVNpI/AAAAAAAAAO8/HvIpGldVytw/s200/DSC06061.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5354870295571543698" border="0" /></a><br /><br />After a couple of drinks and a bit to eat, it was time to make the buuz, which are steamed dumplings. We made three fillings: beef with red onion & garlic, lamb with red onion, garlic & coriander, and another lamb with the same fillings, but with kim chee added as well. To salt the mince, Zula dissolved salt in hot water and we mixed that through, which also made the mixture more moist. At one stage, we forgot which bowl had the beef and which the lamb, and I think because it was quite cold from the fridge, it was difficult to smell the difference. I suddenly remembered that a cook should taste everything as you go along, even crazy raw stuff (thanks to Masterchef!), and that actually there is nothing crazy about raw beef anyway (and so presumably lamb, too?), so tasted for the difference. I love those visceral moments when you feel like you're inhabiting your 'real cook' disposition.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SlBSzu8sADI/AAAAAAAAAPM/6KPVOj6OvkI/s1600-h/DSC06056.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 112px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SlBSzu8sADI/AAAAAAAAAPM/6KPVOj6OvkI/s200/DSC06056.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5354871005672898610" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The dough for the wrappers was equally straightforward, made simply of flour and water. It was then rolled into long cylinders, chopped into smallish pieces, slightly flattened and tossed into a bowl with more flour to dust it well. Next each piece is rolled quickly from the edges to make a circle, leaving the centre slightly thicker than the edges. A scoop of filling, and then to quickly fold each dumpling closed in a pretty (sometimes) little flower-like shape. Some were folded more like gyoza, which was meant to identify them as the ones with kim chee, until people got confused and just rolled them however they wanted. Fortunately, I don't think any kids ended up with a kim chee buuz! The girls told me that one's grandmother would usually teach you to make buuz, and the shape would be according to her habit, so would vary from family to family. This is exactly what Masa taught me years ago about Japanese dumplings, and what I lear<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SlBSlOC7i5I/AAAAAAAAAPE/uNnnFkOKuj8/s1600-h/DSC06064.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 112px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SlBSlOC7i5I/AAAAAAAAAPE/uNnnFkOKuj8/s200/DSC06064.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5354870756322544530" border="0" /></a>ned in Vietnam about spring rolls. Standing there in the warmth of Benj's kitchen, chatting, cooking, learning and tasting, really epitomised what I love about food – it's such a conduit for engaging with people and their histories, and even in an unfamiliar place, it's ultimately such a homely experience.<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxxkfHNdGtEvZBjujZlpSOArHZGmgw3FqBj1SDY7lLtHpUmr5cG9_iU_3NS1Ue00qC8lGObszUUbTs' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Once the buuz were made, they were steamed for about 15 minutes and then served. They <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SlBRMg2AUzI/AAAAAAAAAOc/oy9YNyuKVGk/s1600-h/DSC06067.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 112px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SlBRMg2AUzI/AAAAAAAAAOc/oy9YNyuKVGk/s200/DSC06067.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5354869232360248114" border="0" /></a>were all very delicious, and I discovered the pleasure of adding a little pinch of kim chee or pickled cabbage and carrot to each bite rather than dipping them in a sauce. We made dozens of them, but they still disappeared very quickly.<br /><br />After the buuz, the Mongolians sang some traditional songs, with a haunting sound reminiscent of throat singing, though it wasn't actually. In response, the Aussies sang Waltzing Matilda and Botany Bay, though our mastery of the lyrics was somewhat wanting. Throughout the feasting and cooking, our three children and the three Mongolian children present ran madly around the house, stopping to grab a fistful of lollies each time they passed through the lounge room. And perhaps inspired by Benj's filmmaking talents, they spent quite awhile 'making a film', but needed a camera with night vision, so moved on to finding ghosts.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">I've often compared food with music in terms of its cultural significance, issues of authenticity, and capacity to bring people together. Last night was a brilliant example of exactly that, just as the weekends we spend with Benj and the Binks in Violet Town harvesting olives are particularly joyful as they're centred around food and music. I'm sure I'm not the only one who had a really lovely time, learned a great deal, made new friends and tasted new horizons last night.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SlBQzmeauTI/AAAAAAAAAOM/nJLImu4qjDU/s1600-h/DSC06075.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 112px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_p7qQETnKgYw/SlBQzmeauTI/AAAAAAAAAOM/nJLImu4qjDU/s200/DSC06075.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5354868804375198002" border="0" /></a></div>Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36972982.post-2096360978143978022009-06-23T18:49:00.001-07:002009-06-23T19:17:50.998-07:00The fragility of the scholarly identity, or 'what the hell is my PhD about?'So there I was, with 12,000 words I had poured out over a few weeks, after months of deepening my understanding of the literature on cosmopolitanism. When I commenced this PhD, many moons ago, I wanted to understand how our interactions with many cultures' foodways disrupt and transform our identities. I wanted to hold 'authenticity' under a bare, swinging lightbulb and interrogate it until it confessed its sins, including false ones. I thought I'd start to understand why some people are heavily invested in food as community and nurturing, while others are motivated by a desire to distinguish themselves as sophisticated, knowledgeable and gourmet. I wondered how in the world I could find out what 'really' motivates those who are interested in food. This led me to delve into the huge body of (mostly 'white') cosmopolitan theory, which fortunately led me further until I discovered the wonderful diversity of writing on cosmopolitanism by those from the 'centre' and the 'periphery', men and women, across a multitude of disciplines.<br /><br />And that's where I went astray. I am undisciplined and easily influenced, so what should have been a foray became a mission which turned into a thesis plan. Cosmopolitan theory is important to my thesis, but it is not my thesis. In reviewing the literature in that one area of import, I got lost, and one of the things I most lost was my own sense of authority. As I filled my empty-pitcher head with expert theory, I totally lost my mojo. As much of the writings are sociological and anthropological, I also started to worry about my 'sample size', and suddenly proposed to interview dozens of households multiple times across Melbourne. Grasping for a piece of masculine authority to 'say something important' (and general) about Melbourne, I forgot that I began with a much more modest yet complex proposition, to map narratives of situated identity negotiations around food and foodways.<br /><br />Fortunately, Ken threw me a lifeline back to the boat of me. Admittedly, his toss was forceful and I might have drowned before I could catch hold, but I'm now safely back on board. And what lovely sailing there is ahead. I love my PhD. It's about people, and food, and stories. It resists generalising. It argues that there isn't a simple, normative identity that either resists or replicates itself around certain foodways. Rather our interactions, our engagements with food and foodways are always a negotiation, a transformation. Sometimes we are accruing cultural capital and not much else, others we might only be accruing calories and still others we might be feeding ourselves and the world, one meal at a time. I don't want to 'test cosmopolitanism' like it's a competition (thanks, Jean, for reminding me of that). I want to map its banal instantiations, absences and desires. I certainly don't want to speak with the cold authority of the good empiricist, but rather with the dreamy confidence of... well, me. Thank goodness I'm back. :-)Tammoishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06964566196107658056noreply@blogger.com1