50 By Holly & David Jones
Food & Drink Sustainability
A
s sustainability is such a big issue nowadays, I thought I’d better see what it really means. It’s one of those terms that is bandied around,
becoming something you think you should know what it means but aren’t quite sure of, especially when it’s used so frequently in so many contexts. So this is what the dictionary says –
“the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level” “the sustainability of economic growth” “avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance”. “the pursuit of global environmental sustainability”
Excellent – that’s all clear then. Especially when they use the word you want defined in the definition, not once but twice. Is it me?? Ah well. Here’s what I think it means – using stuff that
you’ve got and not wasting it. Think that’s about right; let me know if I’m barking up the wrong yet sustainable tree. Whenever we have been on our foodie travels it’s
really interesting for us to see what people use either to eat or to provide fuel. This is because it’s what they’ve got locally and have always used as it’s easily accessible and cheap – • In Vietnam, we saw a leaf used in cooking and salads almost everywhere and at every meal. Picked daily from the jungle on the shores of the Mekong, it was called “the leaf with no name” maybe because it was so prolific nobody had thought to give it one. Not
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“Here’s what I think it means – using stuff that you’ve got and not wasting it.”
something the UK supermarkets will be importing I think. • In South Carolina in the USA, we met a barbecue legend Rodney Scott who still cooked from the shack his parents built in the 70s. He used hickory, cherry and macadamia woods for charcoal and smoking. Not be- cause it was super trendy and imported for smoking on your barbeques in small packs wrapped up with string and costing £12 each but because it’s what grew readily outside the back of the shack. • In Spain, we’ve just been to see a woodfired bakery oven which had an unusual hopper on the side by the door. We’ve never seen an oven with something like that but when we had a look inside, we could see some charred almond shells and that’s what they would have been using for fuel. We’ve seen lots of ladies shelling almonds in the autumn on our trips to the Alpujarras and what you do with the shells is (now) obviously burn them. A ready supply that otherwise would have been thrown away. • We’ve just been to see a sherry bodega in Sanlucar in the south west of Spain. Some of their sherry barrels are more than a hundred years old and looking old, damp and yes, a little mouldy. You might think it’s time to invest in a few new ones but in fact these old barrels are crucial in sherry production and to make a “new” barrel they cobble together one from others that really are beyond their use-by date. • In Japan, where they eat more fish than anyone else on the planet, they literally would eat every bit of each fish. Not just the lovely white flesh which we so prize but the offal, skin, bones and yes, eye balls. Truly nose to tail eating. The array in shops and at fishmongers was aston- ishing and the wastage of fish carcasses practically zero. • In this country, coffee grounds from cafés and restaurants are being collected to use as a mushroom growing medium and are also being compressed into logs that you can use on your fires. • In Rajasthan in northern India the most surprising fuel, as there was little to no firewood, was sundried rings of cow dung. No shortage of cows in the streets and no shortage consequently of dung. The young women of the household were sent out to find the dung and shape them into discs
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