FoodieGreenie's Profile

When we get around to buying a place, we're having 'tall' work-surfaces in the kitchen, and I don't care how much it costs.

I'm 5'9", doing the washing up makes my back hurt (and it's not just from the standing - I can stand & cook for longer than I spend washing up and not wind up feeling completely broken), but I do it all because my fiance is 6'6", and washing up REALLY makes his back hurt. The quid pro quo is that he cleans the toilet because he can't smell it at all.

The average height has increased, the average height of people likely to be in the kitchen has also increased (since more men are more likely to be in there now, rather than it being a women-only zone), and all salesmen who assure you "but it's ergonomically designed!" thinking that this means you should love it regardless of your size, and not actually understanding what "ergonomically designed" means should be made to do all of my washing up for a month. So there!

I have oaked Chardonnays in the 'cellar' at the moment. I also have unoaked Chardonnays, as well as Marsannes, Viogniers, Rieslings, Pinot Grigio, and probably a whole host of other whites. Then there's Cab Savs, a particularly delicious Cab Shiraz, straight Shirazs, Shiraz Viogniers, Merlots, Sangioveses, Durifs, Moscatos (pre and post dinner styles), the fantastic Wood Park Wines Brut Rose (big favourite), some white sparklings, various bottles of fortifieds and etc. I've probably only listed half of the varieties in there. I do know that there's currently no Pinot Noir though, which is a problem - need to get some but keep going to the wrong regions!

When it comes down to it, I'm with whichever wine writer it was who described the two Y scale of scoring wines: they're yum, or they're yuck - if I don't like it, I don't care how "good" or "in" it is, I'm not drinking it. If I do like it, I'm more than happy for others to turn up their noses - all the more for me :-)

This is why we're getting into as many green habits now as possible, several years before thinking about kids - means we'll be more likely to be able to cope with things like reuseable nappies, rather than trying to go green all in one hit...

Region comes first - I drink local (ish!) - when I was in the UK this meant French/Spanish/Italian; when in Italy, whatever the speciality of the region (often the house wine too - frequently rough as guts, but somehow suited the food!).

I'm currently living in Australia, so the vast majority of wines that I drink come from Aus (the odd exceptions being at restaurants of certain cuisines, if they have something good from the country of the cuisine). In fact, a great deal of them come from no more than a five hour drive away, and of those, a lot are fetched ourselves on tasting weekends - these wines are $20-35, with the odd super special $60-70 bottle, and we know for a fact that we like them because we try them all the day before buying. Others in the $20-35 range are from winery schemes that we're part of, where the winery sends packs that they choose several times a year (currently doing this with two wineries, one we've requested a 'red' box, they send six wines quarterly, with a mix of drink now and keepers; the other winery I usually call and have a chat with, to make sure we get a mix we like, again mostly red, they make a fantastic vintage Brut rose too - champagne style, as opposed to sweet sparkling rose).

Day to day & cooking wines we buy cleanskins, which are usually in the $5-12 range, and bought by the case. Cleanskins here are pretty good value - basically any winery that has a glut of grapes can sell them to a cleanskin company, who then sell them as generically labelled, e.g. "South Australia Cab Sav 2004", so you know roughly what you're getting. The $15 cleanskins from our favourite shop are actually pretty damn good wines - we're not going to cellar them, but happy to pull them out for a casual dinner.

We also go to as many tastings as we can, to gain familiarity with the different regions, and to try different grapes - a Coonawarra shiraz is a vastly different beast to a Yarra Valley one (Yarra Valley good for whites, not reds; Coonawarra fantastic for *big* reds!). And if we're caught out needing to grab a bottle to take somewhere, we'll usually go with a winery we know.

Green-ness isn't a major consideration yet - many wineries here in Aus are smart with water because they have to be - other issues such as pesticide use and etc we're starting to ask about when we have the chance.

Freshly grated nutmeg too. I had a similar dish in Italy (Modena in fact, so not far from anaelisa in Bologna!), and I've been meaning to figure out a recreation since...

Shop at markets / farmers' markets if the option is there.

Granted, the meat I buy at the farmers' market is dearer than that at my local supermarket, but the supermarket is selling intensively farmed tasteless cr@p, whereas the farmers' market sells fully free range super-tasty heritage breeds. And with the savings made on everything else, we're still working out cheaper than a 100% supermarket shop, for higher quality items.

And look out for in-store specials such as 2-4-1 deals and so on - I buy them when the specials are on goods that I use anyway, and in quantities that allow me to use them before they perish (if applicable - toilet roll on special leads to an interesting sight given it doesn't always fit in my bicycle panniers).

Sean P: I thought it was the other way around actually, that tawny ports didn't change once bottled, and ruby ports are the ones with vintage dates on.

The tawny that I have at the moment (a Grand tawny from All Saints in Rutherglen, VIC, Aus) certainly doesn't have any sort of date on it, ditto the rest of the tawny available in Rutherglen. As compared to the vintage port that they sell there, which is made from shiraz, bottled with a vintage on the label, and is FANTASTIC after a good bit of aging (2006 saw the opening of a 1979 Stanton & Killeen - oh yum I say).

My "other" response is a combination of the first two: I buy from bulk bins at the market (Queen Victoria Market / South Melbourne Market) when I need beans, lentils, nuts, dried fruit, salt, seeds (e.g. sunflower seeds), dried coconut, rolled oats, and coffee, meaning bringing my own reuseable packaging (often the container they'll be stored in).

I also do a mini stockpile of certain things when they're on special at the supermarket. This doesn't reduce the overall packaging, since if I get two packets of chocolate for the price of one, it's still two packets, but it's a cost saving thing.

And we do buy large packages of some items (e.g. 12 pack of toilet roll rather than 3 pack; giant tins of tomatoes) when it's something that either won't go off (the toilet roll), or we will use in that quantity (giant tin of toms = one batch of chilli). Other things are dals and spices from the Indian shop - the large packets mean a little less packaging, and they're cheaper.

For Christmas I bought my fiance the Encyclopedia of Pasta by Zanini De Vita Oretta - it's a beautiful red, 'novel' sized book. It was originally written in Italian, has now been translated into English, and is basically a research summary of over two hundred different kinds of pasta, with notes on where their names came from, what they're traditionally served with, which area of the country you find them in and etc.

I mention it because the drawings are very similar to these ones - definitely bookmarking that site too!

More vegetarian dishes, because I want to go partial-vego, with at least two meat/fish free days a week (at the moment I eat vego breakfast and lunch virtually every day, say 29 days a month, and meat/fish at dinner six days a week, sometimes every day), and because it gives me an excuse to finally cave in and buy Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian cookbook. I love Madhur Jaffrey, and "Indian Cookery" is one of my favourite books of all time - that's where the other recipes I want to try come from, but I want to try all of them!