Cups and Cakes: Sugardough

A few Saturdays ago, my wife Lily and I headed down to Sugardough on Lygon St in East Brunswick.

When we first moved into Brunswick about a year and a half ago we dropped in one morning and had breakfast there, and hadn’t gone back until the aforementioned jaunt. We must have been in a bad mood, because for some reason we came away unhappy. I now know that it had to have been us, because the place is quite incredible.

Sugardough is a patisserie, bakery and café. It’s pretty much always busy on the weekend (and reasonably busy on weekdays), so you might want to head down early if you want the good stuff. As it’s a bakery, items can sell out quickly as they’re all baked in house daily. I went down this past Saturday at 9:30 am to snafu some Custard and Sultana, and Chocolate Brioches for our friends, and some items were already starting to sell out.

So now for the reason you’re all here, the ethical facts:

Sugardough uses the cleverly named free-range Green Eggs in all breakfast items, cakes and breads. You can eat any one of the wonderful cakes, pies, pastries etc without worrying about the fact you might be eating cage eggs, as opposed to some cafes where only the fresh cooked eggs are definitely free range. They also sell the eggs they use at the front of the store, as well as some specialty honeys (and I may have seen jams, I’m not sure).

Additionally, all bacon and ham is provided by Western Plains Pork. As I mentioned in my Coles sow-stall post, Western Plains provides ham and bacon to KR Castlemaine for their free-range products. This is one of the few instances I have found of a café using both ethical eggs and ham (another notable exception is the recently opened Pope Joan, where the waitress assured me their bacon was “like, massively free range”), and it’s great to see consistency like this. It means the business is actually serious about free range, ethical farming, and is not just pandering to hippies like Kim and I to win our egg purchase on a Saturday brunch.

While the source of the eggs is proudly announced around the store (the aforementioned Greens Eggs), the bacon didn’t receive the same fan-fare. The brand of ham/pork was listed, which meant I could give it a google search and find out more. I suppose it could be a good thing, showing that they’re willing to source their meat ethically without blowing their own trumpet, but why not celebrate it?

In any case, it made me very happy to know I could eat the wonderfully light and tasty, but very filling, breakfast pie without guilt. The pictures probably don’t do it, or the Red Velvet cake that Lily had (literally covered in icing from every given angle), justice.

The cakes, too, are magnificent and tasty. And as you can see, everything is very fairly priced:

Breakfast pie (see ingredients in photo above): $8.90

Red velvet cake: Approx $5

Salad: $5

Soy Flat White: $3.50 (X 2)

Tea: $3

Total: Approx $28.90

That’s a very cheap breakfast and way more than we’d generally have eaten. Lily took a lot of her cake slice home uneaten, and snaffled it a few days later. We could have probably eaten for under $20 had we not been starving on the day.

The service was great, the waitress who helped us was very happy to let us take photos after checking with her manager. We had a great conversation about the blog, and they seemed very supportive of the concept.

Well, if it can help direct people to wonderful cafes (/bakeries/patisseries) like Sugardough, then I think this blog will serve its purpose! It’s great that such good food is also ethically good, and is so affordable. It puts a lie to the idea that you have to spend big to eat ethical.

It’s well worth dropping in for breakfast or to grab some pastries, or bread, for a special event (or, maybe, just because you’re partial to pastries and are looking forward to stuffing your face). And it's all ethical!

P.S. If you want to have the best marshmallows ever made, grab some of their raspberry marshmallows. They're made with real raspberries (complete with raspberry seeds), and are wonderfully sweet and flavourful!

Some more brief animal killing news

Hi kids,

Another quick one from me just alerting you to this story about how we kill chickens in Australia.

And also this one about peeps who kill their own meat.

I'm really excited that more of these stories are popping up about the place. Having conversations about where our food comes from, how it's killed, and what taboos surround it is half the battle.

Lastly, a quick apology, I have a proper post about my foie gras and fancy restaurant adventures in the works but a bout of horrible illness put me behind the eight ball. This week I promise!

Love and smoochies to all,
Kimbo

Black Beauty Vs Daisy*

A quickie from me (mind out of the gutters thanks) about this story .

A Perth butcher has been given to sell horse meat in Australia - he has been exporting the meat for some time.

It might surprise people to learn that I have no problem with the eating of horse as long as it's ethically farmed and killed. In fact, I ate raw horse on my trip to Japan *awaits death threats*.

I want to chat about sentiment and our understanding of the intelligence and awareness down the track but it seems pretty hypocritical to me to be happy to eat a very smart and cute animal like the pig and then send death threats to the guy selling horse meat. If you don't want to eat it, hey that's cool, but death threats? Really?

I think our environment and economy can only benefit from examining some of these prejudices. Congrats to the WA Food and Agriculture Minister.

*That's a cow's name, pig's names are harder.

Coles to make purses from sow's ears: sow stall free from 2014

This is just a short post to commend Coles on their decision to phase out their sales of sow stall pork from 2014 onwards.

The fact that it's a set date in the future, with a timeline to allow industry to improve processes to shift to a more ethical solution should make the decision sustainable in the long term.

It will also give those industries that have not begun to make the shift already a much need kick in the butt. For the meantime, Coles does stock KR Castlemaine Free Range Ham in both its delis and sandwich meat fridge, which is provided by Western Plains Pork, which means it is much easier to get free range ham when your local deli is closed.

Oh yes, and the backlash from industry has already commenced.

I should note, this is definitely not a paid post and there's much more that supermarkets like Coles could do to encourage ethical meat consumption, but it's important to commend companies when they take big, important steps such as these in the right direction.

Know Your Product: Spotless Food Services

I often buy my lunch from the work “bistro” (I use the inverted comas there because it more closely resembles a cafeteria, but no one is apparently comfortable using that word anymore), so in aid of the blog, and my own decision making process, I decided to investigate what ingredients they’re using.

Since making the undertaking to eat more ethically, I’ve generally been sticking to their vegetarian selections, figuring it was a safe bet that any meat they are sourcing would not be free range. I couldn’t bet on the eggs, so I have also been avoiding these. As you can appreciate, in a commercial “filling foods = happy people” setting, this doesn’t leave much choice (ie. generally one meal a day, providing that meal doesn’t rely on eggs).

Like most people in Melbourne (perhaps Australia), my work’s catering is provided by Spotless, more specifically Alliance Catering, Spotless’ recently rebranded entry-level catering service (previously all their food services were simply referred to as Spotless).

Spotless’ three food service brands (Alliance, Epicure and Mustard Catering) provide catering services to schools, hospitals, aged care facilities, function and convention centres, prisons, airports and a variety of events. There is no doubt I’m forgetting some other facility or industry they cater for. Their own website states that their 14,000+ employees serve over 77 million customers every year, at 1,800 service facilities.

According to Spotless’ own “Quick Facts”, $2 Million per week is apparently budgeted to their 2,000+ chefs weekly for “fresh produce”. So, I’m figuring, some kind of free-range policy – eggs at least, given their comparable pricing to the cage alternative nowadays – would be in place. It’s more and more common for restaurants, cafes etc. to use free range eggs (at a minimum). That this is becoming the standard is a good thing, obviously.

It would be naïve to assume that Spotless (or Alliance, as their subsidiary), sources all of their produce ethically. As a large catering company, their objective is efficiency, consistency and maintaining low-costs, and the current cost of free-range pork products (for instance) is probably prohibitively expensive for these purposes. However, as above, the cost of free range eggs is not.

I jumped on Alliance’s website, hoping from some kind of clarity. Sadly, as you can see, it was not going to be that easy.

So, it was with some trepidation, and my middle-class eastern suburbs politeness gland working overdrive, that I drafted an e-mail to Alliance:

From: Wesley Mountain
Sent: Monday, 5 July 2010 11:18 AM
To: Alliance
Catering Info
Subject: Re: Free-range products

Hi,

I’m just writing to ask whether Alliance sources any of the animal products (eggs,
chicken meat, ham, pork etc.) used in catering from free-range farms?

I ask this as a consumer myself, but also because I am currently working on an
article investigating the use of free-range produce, particularly in cafes,
restaurants and bistros/cafeterias for an ethical eating blog.

I couldn’t find any details of the produce used on your website, so any help you
could provide would be really appreciated.

Thanks,

Wes Mountain

I received this response:

Sent: Friday, 9 July 2010 1:40 PM
To: Wesley Mountain
Subject: RE: Free-range products

Good afternoon in answer to your question yes we do currently use some products which are free-range whilst we don’t buy the products direct from the farm we use our suppliers to source the products.

Our menus change on regular basis so it is not easy to give you a list of products used.

As a company we are also looking at a number of initiatives lowering food miles by buying local products, incorporating free range and purchasing cage free eggs and using environmental packaging.

Alliance catering is part of the Spotless business so some projects take time to implement we also have issues with supply of the products.

Cindy (surname removed)
Brands & Standards Manager
Alliance Catering

My response was thus:


So, having received little clarity on the issue I decided to press further. I replied, with vigour. Okay, it was with a polite tone, and my stern “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed” boots on.

From: Wesley Mountain
Sent: Friday, 9 July 2010 4:30 PM
To: Cindy
Subject: RE: Free-range products

Hi Cindy,

Thanks for your response.

I think it’s great that Alliance, as a company, is looking to reduce food miles and source more produce from local producers, particularly if there is an intention to ensure that that produce is ethically farmed. I understand that for such a large
company, a project like this will take some time, and an immense amount of planning.

Can I ask a few further questions, for clarification?

With regard to the intentions of your future initiatives, I am interested to know whether minimum targets for ethically farmed animal products will be set, or whether a more cost-based approach (ie. if it costs more than a
capped amount to purchase free-range eggs, this option will not be pursued) will
be the basis of decision making process. I understand that this may not be a
question you can answer at this moment, but as a consumer decisions like these
do affect the way I shop and eat, and any transparency you can offer on this
would be greatly appreciated.

In the short term, based on what I know of dealing with Spotless/Alliance in various places I’ve worked, events I’ve attended etc, it would seem that a lot of Alliance’s facilities are semi-autonomous, ie. the resident cook/chef would create the menu and then order produce in conjunction with the manager, presumably through a contracted preferred supplier.

In this instance, would you direct customers to ask staff at their work cafes, bistros, etc about whether their food contains free-range produce? Would staff be able to provide this information definitively, at present?

Thanks again for your previous response, and I
look forward to hearing from you.

Healthy
Regards,

Wes
Mountain

This response came much quicker.

From: Cindy
Sent: Friday, 9 July 2010 5:00 PM
To: Wesley Mountain
Subject: RE: Free-range products

Hi Wes,

In regards to the intentions of supply of the products it does come down to both cost and supply our procurement department are currently negotiating with a number of suppliers to see if we can get some better deals on price if we purchase as a whole for example cage free eggs whilst we understand it will inevitably cost us more we still hope to achieve this. So in answer to your question it may be a case that we use them in some contracts but not all.

We also have locked in prices with our contracts so this means we must wear the extra cost as a business, so yes price is an issue, we may however be able to negotiate a slight price increase with our customers given the fact we are giving a better product.

With the menus it is normally the higher end sites that have these products and are normally advertised on the menu.

Cindy
Brands & Standards Manager
Alliance Catering

My reaction was a little less puzzled this time, perhaps more defeated.

So… basically, while there’s a (very small) nod to ethical concerns
here, it’s not a considered policy. It’s not publicly stated, and thus not
transparent. There are no clear targets (at least stated), and the brand manager
is not really able to answer my questions fully.

But… we do have a real
answer here, in a way: No, Spotless does not have a policy with regards to free
range products, and there is no guarantee that what you’re eating is free range
in this kind of business, unless it’s clearly stated on the menu.

I will admit, it angers me that such a large company isn’t using their leverage to
support ethical produce, especially given the support of a large company could
reduce the cost of ethically farmed products for both the company and retail
consumers. But, it would probably be a significant cost for them in the short
term, and I understand that that may not seem worthwhile. They’re not paying
actuaries to work out these kinds of decisions, it’s simply about sourcing cheap
supply. But $2 Million nationwide is a lot of money to throw at a problem.

So… this is me now:


You win some, you lose some. You all have
the clarity you need to know that you can’t buy anything containing eggs, pork
or chicken from Spotless food services if you want to be sure it’s ethically
sourced.

Kim has been doing some interesting investigation herself into
high-end restaurants and their produce sources, but I’ll leave that to her.

This little piggy went to market

This weekend was our first official Meating People special outing since launching the blog. In reality we’ve eased into the market shopping and trying new ethical restaurant slowly over the last few weeks, and let’s face it, every meal is really blog fodder at this point. But I digress, this Saturday the Meating People team – and our various associates – trundled off to the farmers market at the Collingwood Children’s Farm, which happens on the second Saturday of every month.

A little side goal of mine, as well as eating ethically and locally farmed goodies, is to try to cook more and be healthier. Let’s face it; it’s pretty easy to only eat ethically farmed meat when your diet consists of Twisties, Lindt chocolate, brie and two-minute noodles. I was shocked to discover that the farmers market didn’t even sell Twisties – WTF?

It was a slightly drizzly day but the market was still pretty popular. I arrived at about 11.45am, which is much too late. It’s important to get to the markets fairly early. My tardy arrival was the first problem – the produce at a small farmers market is already fairly limited, arrive 3 or 4 hours after it opens and it’s REALLY limited. Free range turkey – sold out. Free-range pork and bacon – almost sold out. Sweet tarts – sold out. You see the pattern. That said, I was actually pretty impressed by the number of stalls and by the range. There were outlets selling chicken, beef, venison, turkey and pork. Wes, do you recall if anyone was selling lamb? There was a lady selling pies and sausages of mutton and beef. There was also the full range of fruit and veg. I steered clear of the gourmet cheese stalls – my kryptonite. And, oh dear, there was a micro-brewery and a gourmet chocolate seller.

I take away from the market a few key lessons. Firstly, as above, be early. You don’t want to limit your choices. Secondly, have a plan. I ended up with apples, oranges, apple and lemon juice, some streaky belly bacon, beef ‘savvy dog’ sausages, a cauliflower, a broccoli and caramel roasted almond chocolate (words cannot describe). These ingredients, though wonderful, do not form a meal. Or even the basics for a meal. They’re single ingredients for about three meals. With a plan I might have had something more useful. The next lesson is talk to people. Wes is much better at this than me. Next time I will be less shy about asking the farmers about their produce – it’ll make this a better read I assume. The final lesson is that fruit bought at the farmers market is HUGE – apples and oranges the size of your head.

I’ve also come away with some questions. I assumed, naively perhaps, that since I was dealing with family farmers, not factory farmers, I didn’t have to worry so much about their practices. I figured, even where it wasn’t signed as such – though a lot were – that most of the meat was, if not free-range, then at least better treated than the supermarket stuff. Is this fair? Can I trust if farmers tell me their animals are beloved and pampered? Or do I need to be so strict as to only buy free-range?

I’ve used a few of my purchases already – I used the sausages in a pasta dish and they were sweet and delish. I ate the chocolate quickly and unattractively. But most importantly, you recall the carbonara of last week’s post? Carbonara is my favourite meal ever. So with my streaky free-range old style bacon I had the wonderful Nick make carbonara. It was out of this world. The sweet smoky flavour of the bacon filled the whole dish. That my friends is having your cake and eating it too.

Want to go to farmers markets? There are A LOT.
http://www.vicfarmersmarkets.org.au/

Budget (approximate since I didn’t get receipts)
Bacon - $10 (the priciest item but no regrets)
Basket of head sized oranges - $5
3 giant golden delicious apples - $3
2l Apple & Lemon juice - $6
Two large ‘savvy dog’ sausages - $4
Caramel roasted almond chocolate - $5
Cauliflower & broccoli - $5

Soon I’ll be talking fancy restaurants and foie gras – don’t judge me, it’s all in the name of science!

Meating people is easy

If you live in the Brunswick area, and you frequent Barkly Square (or Sparkly Bear, as we’ve taken to calling it) Shopping Centre, you’ve probably seen me. I’m the guy standing in front of the rows and rows of food at Coles trying to work out what politically correct impulse to pay lip service to.

Okay, before I get ahead of myself, I should probably take a leaf out of Kim’s book and introduce myself. That guy, standing in the aisle, that’s me: I’m Wes Mountain. I work a boring day job, where I ostensibly tell people what they do wrong in their job for cash money. I should note that it’s not big cash money, heck it’s not even cash. It’s a salary. I am also in a band called Little Bones, and draw a political cartoon blog called Dickhead Frenzy. I draw a lot, actually, and I’m sure that’ll creep into this blog at some stage.

So anyway, back to the topic at heart. I too recently read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals. I thoroughly enjoyed it; at least to the extent one can enjoy being told uncomfortable truths about their eating practices. While I found it very informative, I think it suffered with the same condition a lot of seemingly universal modern texts suffer from – it was very US-centric.

Australia, much as we like to pretend otherwise, is not America. We’re a much smaller country. Things like free-range eggs, chicken and pork-products (bacon, ham etc.) are much more readily available in Australia than in the US. Our relatively small population, and particular penchant for the coast, means that the distance from the agricultural process to the plate is much shorter, both literally and figuratively. As far as I’m aware, our animal welfare standards are much stricter, and regulation of the environmental impacts of meat production, as well as the use of hormones and antibiotics in farmed animals, is government audited.

But it’s that qualifier, “as far as I’m aware,” that worries me. I mean I hear all of these good things, and until recently (I’m getting better) I’ve paid lip service to the process of improvement by only buying free-range eggs and mostly buying free-range ham, but what about the uncomfortable things people occasionally say about our supposedly ethical Australian meat industry?

Things like how there’s apparently not enough free range eggs to service the Australian population at our current rate of consumption, or that the amount of eggs labelled “free range” can’t possibly all be “free range” given the small amount of farms producing said eggs. Or the fact that “free range” itself is a term that can be self-appointed, and that the RSPCA or industry funded groups are the only organisations that provide accreditation (and, like the Heart Foundation, they both seem to have commercial interests in who they grant accreditation to). Or the idea that, despite the fact that on paper beef seems to be relatively fine to eat, I can’t seem to find much information in lay-terms about ethical standards for the beef industry in Australia.

I don’t think vegetarianism is a viable option. I don’t begrudge vegetarians their position, but I think that for most people their argument doesn’t hold water. I include myself in this. Humans evolved to eat meat, and despite the fact it can be healthy to live without meat, we are fundamentally built to be omnivores. There are nutrients available in meat that are not found in equal, accessible abundance in any other (edible) form. I also don’t believe that one person wholesale removing themselves from the machinations of a colossal industry is going to do anything to better animal welfare in meat production, nor close the industry down.

On the flip side, I think there’re few things worse than a squeamish meat eater. If you can’t hack the idea of watching an animal being slaughtered, bled, skinned and butchered, I don’t know if you’ve earned the right to eat that meat. You don’t need to be a part of the process, but you need to be aware of it, and comfortable with its implications.

So that’s why I’m here. I want to be comfortable, ethically, with what I’m eating. I don’t think anyone should ever be in a position where they can look at their plate and not be able to answer where their meat came from, or what ethical compromises they are making to eat said meat.

I want to know that what I’m eating is ethically produced and, ideally, sustainable. I also want to support businesses that support my decision. Kim and I will use this blog to investigate options, hopefully answer some big questions around meat production and slaughter in Australia (I’m looking forward to visiting a farm too, Kim), and point you in the direction of restaurants, butchers and grocers, who can fulfil our needs. Maybe we can come up with some recipes too? I think that could be good. Add that to the list.

I don’t want to be that guy paying lip service to some vague idea of free range anymore.

So, let’s see if we can do this thing.

Lovely to Meat You*

So…err…is this thing on? I’m feeling very shy on my return to the blog world after a long absence. As in the public service, let’s start with the who, what, where, when, why. So as for the what, to be brief, Wes and I want to talk about trying to eat free range, trying to shop free range, go to free range serving restaurants and cook free range of course. I want to chat about recipes, awkward social situations, snazzy restaurants, great markets and maybe even visit some farms! It’s about just another choice in the wide variety of ways to fuel your body. And I want to make clear from the outset that this isn’t about conversion – I admire vegetarians and I understand completely if you don’t really give a rats about where your food comes from. But I do care; I’m fascinated by food and where it comes from and the place it plays in my life. I expect to fall off this hastily constructed wagon a few times and run into some problems, but I think it’s going to be fun.

The when and where go without saying. The who is me, and Wes (Hi Wes!) but I’m sure he’ll tell you his vital stats. I’m a public servant and student here in Melbourne, renting in Brunswick – I mention the renting because I think budgets will come up a little in the blog; we’re trying to do this little experiment without bucketloads of cash. Maybe the whole thing will work out cheaper, maybe budget issues will win out over our ethical concerns and it will be back to KFC for us. There are two other important things to mention about who I am. Firstly, I LOVE food, really love it. I eat a lot. Bad food, good food, whatever. Secondly, I have almost no will power (you see where I’m going with this don’t you?) – so I want some serious kudos for trying anything that means dietary restrictions. It might also be worth mentioning that I don’t like conflict and putting people out, again I think you’ll see where I’m going with that. Food plays a pretty big part in my social life; my group of friends is forever going out for dinner to new places and old favourites, cooking each other dinner and talking food almost as much as we talk TV and politics. My best school friend and I have a years long tradition of baking goodies or comfort food when we’re together. I often take photos of my food when particularly excited. Did I mention that food is important to me?

And so we come most importantly to the why. This is something I find hard to articulate. Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals definitely has a lot to do with why now, but these are ideas that have been floating around in my head for a long time. I’ve toyed with the idea of becoming a vegetarian before but I really lack the conviction, I’ve experienced a vague feeling that something was wrong, but I’ve never been convinced that eating animals is, in itself, the problem. The whole ‘well you wouldn’t eat your pet dog’ argument doesn’t hold that much water with me. ‘Cos you know what, if times were tough enough, maybe I would eat my beloved pet. Different cultures revere different animals for different reasons, just because – as Safran Foer points out – these aren’t based on cold logic like intelligence and receptiveness to pain doesn’t mean they don’t have worth. Culture and tradition are flimsy notions, we should question and consider them but you’re allowed to decide that you’re okay with eating pigs but not cats based on sentiment. I feel like that’s okay. I can reconcile myself to the idea that living creatures are sacrificed to create my food, I think humans are superior in intelligence and self-awareness, and given the massive impact our lives have on the lives of all the other creatures on the planet in a myriad of other ways, drawing the line eating them doesn’t seem like the logical solution to me.

So why the vague bad feeling? I think a lot of us sense that the way our food gets to us might not be quite right somehow, we dismiss the claims of PETA and ‘crazy’ hippies but maybe something resonates with a few of us. You’ve decided to kill a living creature to feed you so why care how it lives and is killed, you say? Well why wouldn’t you care? If it’s better for you in terms of taste and health, better for the animal and better for the environment then why not show a little kindness? To be blunt, I don’t have a problem with the killing, but the torturing bothers me. I’m going to investigate factory farming a bit more over the course of this adventure but from what I’ve learned it is so cruel as to rob us of some of our humanity; not producing meat that is of the best quality in terms of taste and nutrition; and not environmentally sustainable.

Phew, that was a little ranty and preachy eh? Here is an anecdote that demonstrates another point borrowed from Safran Foer, which points to why I’m doing this: Last week I went out for dinner and I was pretty tired and worn out from work. I knew I should probably order the Bolognese because beef tends to be more ethically farmed but I really wanted that carbonara, I knew it would sooth my troubled soul. I knew that the bacon was likely to be factory/cage farmed but I’d had a rough day. I chose a meal where an animal was possibly tortured over one where the animal enjoyed a natural outdoorsy life because I’d HAD A ROUGH DAY? I pride myself on being a person of convictions and rational arguments and yet that’s the decision I came to. Sentiment won out over convictions. I want to do this blog, and this experiment, to see if I can make better choices. There is already a groundswell of support for free range and ethically farmed meat and I want to see how easy it is for your average person to make what I think are better food choices.

*Okay, I confess, this whole thing is just a competition between Wes and I to see how many puns we can come up with using the word 'meat'.