Blog

Bright pinks and dark greens, vibrant yellows and bold purples, fiery oranges and vivid reds are just some of the colours from the rainbow that when combined, make even your least favourite vegetables look wildly appetising. Not a bad idea for the children’s lunchboxes I hear you say?

It’s conch season in Cayman. And it doesn’t matter what mode of transport you have; boat, kayak or paddleboard, you can forage for these large edible sea snails if you know where to look.

Ask a child where milk comes from and they’re likely to say “cows”, but would know little about the workings of the dairy industry. Ask a child where flour comes from and they might say “wheat” or “corn”, but ask them how it gets from the field to the supermarket shelf and they’d likely come up blank.

A mountain of “thrown out” bread is piled in the corner of the recycling factory instead of making its usual route to landfill. The squashed rolls and leftover loaves from bakeries, supermarkets and fast food chains are tipped into the specially designed “do want don’t want” machine, plastic wrapping and all. The end result? Breadcrumbs for the cattle and recycled plastic for garbage bags.

How many different types of berries have you eaten? Have you ever tasted an elderberry, a loganberry, a cloudberry, a dewberry, a huckleberry or a mulberry? What about a berry that has been grown, processed and frozen completely in Australia? That’s what we’re tasting today as part of our next From Paddock to Plate production.

Have you ever considered working in the grains industry? Did you know that there are hundreds of careers that you can choose from? A rural news reporter, nutritionist, soil scientist, food microbiologist, plant breeder, lawyer, marketing manager, nurse, environmental biologist, farmer or a bioprocessing engineer if that’s what you’re interested in!

You could be mistaken for thinking this is Mars with its dramatic landscape of volcanoes and lava fields, green fireworks dancing across the night sky and complete vastness (“people only live on the crust of the pizza”), except for the many waterfalls that give the Iceland game away. Geothermal spas are among the main attractions for the two million tourists coming to Iceland each year, who drink the mineral-rich water perhaps unaware that it has just come up from the ground in which it has been for over 16 million years.

After eating a delicious pastilla in the hidden labyrinth of the medina in Fes, buying bunches of mint in Casablanca, learning how to cook cous cous in Moulay Idriss, cracking Argan nuts to make the nutritious oil on the road to Marrakech (“the city of palms”) and riding camels into the sunset and almost over the Algerian border, there’s nothing better than sitting down to a “Moroccan whiskey” with ice – green tea with fresh mint and a cube of sugar.

Nick requires 40 to 55 kilograms of kale a week, 20 to 30 kilograms of purslane (a tasty, easy-to-grow “weed” and a rich source of omega-3s), four bundles of fresh moringa, over 90 kilograms of ripe banana and plantain (a more savoury variety of banana), 45 kilograms of mango as well as ginger and turmeric to make enough smoothies to meet the growing demand.

Farmer Clarence grabs a machete and starts peeling back layers of coconut, making an indent small enough for me to poke my straw through and drink the refreshing water inside. He then hands me a wedge of coconut skin to use as a spoon and shows me how to peel out the young gel-like flesh inside.