Podcasts

Exploring Kazakhstan’s apple forests Some wild apples need no improvement

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:58 — 23.9MB)

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ben-readeKazakhstan stretches across Central Asia from the Caspian Sea in the east to China in the west. The country is famous for many things – it is the largest landlocked country in the world, says Wikipedia – but among food and plant people it is most important as the home of the apple. The name of the former capital, Almaty, is often translated as Father of Apples, and it was to Almaty that Ben Reade, today’s guest, recently went with a botanist friend in search of good wild apples. He found them, and much else besides.

It is worth pointing out that the now common wisdom – that the domestic apple Malus domesticus was selected from a wild relative Malus sieversii, rather than being a hybrid – has only recently been accepted. Barrie Juniper, of Oxford University, brought all manner of evidence to bear on the question, including some of the first DNA studies of crops. His book, The Story of the Apple is a great read, and some of his knowledge has clearly found its way to his daughter Sarah, The Apple Factor.

I also spent a little time looking into Ben’s throwaway remark about “lightly fermented carrot salad”. The New York Times, no less, avers that “Korean carrot salad, morkovcha koreyska, … is a legacy of Stalin’s mass deportations of ethnic Koreans from the far eastern Soviet Union to its western frontiers.” I found a couple of recipes here and here, and although I haven’t tried either, I plan to do so soon. Neither seems to be “authentic,” not least because I’m not sure they would ferment at all. I’d be interested to know more.

Notes

  1. I Went to the Fatherland of All Modern Apples is Ben Reade’s own account of his trip.
  2. The first ever Eat this Podcast consisted of Ben talking about bog butter. The guy gets around.
  3. Photos on this page from Ben, and there are lots more in his article.
Extra Matter, Podcasts

Bears and apples

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:15 — 1.9MB)

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Ben Reade recently got back from a trip to Kazakhstan, in search of the original wild apples. Last time we spoke, he was sharing bog butter. This time, bears, and how they may have helped to domesticate those apples.

The whole show will be published next week.

Extra Matter

An explanation

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For more than eighteen months now, Eat This Podcast has been chugging along nicely, proving to myself that I can keep it fed and, I hope, keep listeners entertained. In that time, I’ve done very little to promote it, and although I’d prefer word of mouth to work its magic, I also recognise that I have to put my own mouth to use, as it were. In addition, all that has ever appeared on this website have been the actual podcasts and the show notes associated with each of them.

That’ll keep things pure, I thought.

Actually, though, it has been a bit of a straitjacket. I want to be able to point to other interesting podcasts about food. And, something that was brought home to me forcefully while I was editing a recording a few weeks ago, I want a way to share snippets that don’t fit in the main show, because they are worth hearing in their own right and also as little trailers for the longer shows.

The site’s design, however, made that a bit difficult. Now, after a bit of code-wrangling on my own account and with a lot of help from my friends, I think I’ve cracked it. There’s a new section, called Extra Matter, which houses trailers and posts, like this one, that don’t have any audio.

If you subscribe via iTunes or a podcatcher app, then the trailers will pop up automagically. No further action required. Subscribers to the email news might not get notice of trailers. I’m weighing the options. Is it worth a short email for a short piece of audio? Probably …

If you’re not already a subscriber, this will take you straight to iTunes and this will take you to the newsletter sign-up.

If you are, how about a little of that word of mouth stuff? Feel free to share with a friend.

Finally, another change that will keep you in touch: a Twitter account. Traffic will be low, so come along and follow me there.

That’ll do for now. As ever, I’d be delighted to receive any feedback you wish to offer. Details at the Get in Touch page.

Podcasts

A novel approach to food security Is fiction the way to engage people?

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:33 — 27.2MB)

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book coverIt is so easy to forget that very few people know anything about plant breeding and how vital it is to having enough to eat. The time it takes, and the resources it needs — financial, genetic, human — are just not something most people know about. No wonder, then, that many people don’t quite grasp the urgency with which we need to get cracking now to breed crops adapted to predicted climate conditions.

Susan Dworkin’s new book The Commons sidesteps that by hurling us 150 years into the future, to a world in which the failure to respond almost doomed our species to extinction. I thought it might be fun to talk to Susan and she agreed, but first I had to read the book. It turned out to be a rollicking good read, full of interesting characters and strange plot twists. All our old familiar friends are there. Large parts of the world have become very inhospitable, thanks to climate change. There’s an all-knowing Corporation that owns just about everything, including 85% of all humans in its domain. And the humans are shareholders in the whole enterprise. It all seems rather wonderful, except that there’s a problem: a new stem rust of wheat threatens a reprise of the famines and hardship of 100 years before. To say much more would be to give too much away. Let’s just say that the search for a solution is what drives the story forward.

Of course, I’m not the intended audience, so I have absolutely no idea how The Commons will be received by anyone else. I’m not even sure what the author would like us to be doing now to avoid the future she depicts. That was just one of the topics we talked about in a discussion that could have gone on a lot longer.

Notes

  1. The Commons is available from Amazon as an e-book and a paperback.
  2. If you are in the Washington DC area on 24 October, Susan Dworkin will be lecturing on “The Weather in the Supermarket: Climate Change, Seed Banks and Tomorrow’s Food” at the US Botanic Garden.
  3. I “borrowed” the music — Mavis Staples singing Hard Times Come Again No More — from Beautiful Dreamer, a wonderful tribute album to Stephen Foster. Buy it if you don’t already have it (and if you like that kind of thing).
  4. The banner photograph is my own.
Extra Matter

Ch ch ch changes

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I’ve been making a few changes around here to offer a little more. Unfortunately I ran out of time over the weekend so there may be some untidiness for a little while, especially in the iTunes feed, but I hope to have it all cleaned up quickly, with a proper explanation of what’s going on.