Tag Archives: provenance

Rapeseed, a golden oil from yellow fields

By Nick Saltmarsh | Published: April 12, 2007

The intense gold of cold-pressed rapeseed oil (otherwise known as canola oil) reflects the yellowing spring fields of oilseed rape. A few farmers are now producing distinctive cold-pressed rapeseed oil, with clear provenance, from their oilseed crops, but the oil itself deserves more attention.

Posted in food in the UK | Also tagged British, crops, fish, fruit, oil, rapeseed, Suffolk | 9 Comments

The yellowing countryside

By Nick Saltmarsh | Published: April 5, 2007

No crop dominates the British arable landscape quite like rapeseed (Brassica napus, also known as oilseed rape, the edible variety as canola). From the very beginning of April, previously mundane green fields of this member of the cabbage and turnip family suddenly erupt into luminous flower. Across lowland England, great swathes of countryside are painted [...]

Posted in food from the farm | Also tagged British, crops, england, food in season, landscape, norfolk, oil, rapeseed, Suffolk | 12 Comments

Understanding identification marks

By Nick Saltmarsh | Published: April 2, 2007

To decode your food, use The Tracing Paper’s Food Tracer – a searchable list of all UK identification codes. What are those oval codes? If you buy meat – or fish, milk, cheese or any food produced from or by an animal – in the European Union, you should find an oval symbol like this [...]

Posted in food from where? | Also tagged abattoir, apples, dairy, fish, food from where?, identification, meat, milk, number | 8 Comments

Books, eggs and the illusion of provenance

By Nick Saltmarsh | Published: March 29, 2007

Philip Pullman once wrote that books are not eggs, his point being that every book is different whereas we expect every egg we buy to be the same. Agreed, books should not be treated as a commodity, but nor should eggs. Every egg is an individual creation, laid by a hen of some particular variety, fed and kept in a particular way, in a particular location.

Posted in food from the farm, food in the shops | Also tagged food from where?, livestock, meat, supermarkets | Leave a comment

Why does it matter where our food is from?

By Nick Saltmarsh | Published: March 20, 2007

Each of us has to eat every day to provide the energy for our daily lives and to maintain our health and the substance of our bodies. But eating is more than a mere biological necessity, but something worth living for.

Posted in food matters | Also tagged British, environment, food from the farm, landscape | 1 Comment