Television

chillidude · **Posted:** Fri Jan 15, 2010 1:16 am

I hope everybody on this forum watched Gourmet Farmer on TV tonight - what a good show - hadn't seen it before but someone gave me a heads up so I made sure I caught it. Well worth the effort.

earthbound · **Posted:** Fri Jan 15, 2010 2:42 am

Damn... Saw it advertised but forgot all about it. Still probably a good thing because I see they are up to episode 3. I love modern technology, you can view the first three episodes online here : http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/gourmetfarm ... /Episodes/

For those who know nothing about it, here's a bit of the blurb.

Gourmet Farmer

Australia’s toughest food critic, Matthew Evans, has chucked in his city life for a taste of some small farm living in Tasmania; that heart shaped island somewhere down the bottom of Australia.

This series plots the new trajectory of Matthew’s life: from living in Australia’s biggest and busiest city to a country life in an isolated part of the island state. He’s eager to seriously put to the test his primary belief that we should all be directly connected with our food: either by growing it or rearing it ourselves, or sourcing it from local producers.

chillidude · **Posted:** Fri Jan 15, 2010 11:01 am

Would love to make ham and prosciutto like that myself - be a lot easier here if the max temperature was 25ºC instead of 45ºC

earthbound · **Posted:** Fri Jan 15, 2010 6:10 pm

While on the subject of television, has anyone seen any of the shows "World's Greenest Homes"?

I watched some last night and was really disappointed. I have seen it before a couple of times and I think there's only been one or two houses I thought were being "green" as such.

Last night they had a house in Brisbane that had 8 or 9 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms right on the Brisbane river. A big suspended swimming pool that had a glass side facing out to the street, with underwater coloured lights. Anyway, I forget half of the houses features but to me it just seemed like such a farce, they had 3-4 frizzy bantams in a little enclosed chook pen, but apart from that it was pretty much your average big mansion, except they had 4 chooks and an underground water tank to supply water for the pool. Oh and in the wifes bathroom they had a huge two person hand made bath, that was so big, with Brisbane's water restrictions and all, they have only used the bath a couple of times since they built the house....

Can this honestly be considered a green house? Are we really loosing the plot? :crazy:

chillidude · **Posted:** Fri Jan 15, 2010 10:21 pm

Yeah - I watched the first couple of those and they were pretty average. Everyone saying their bar was made out of recycled timber, their glass brick wall recycled from some old music hall that got knocked down, and so on. None of which could be proved. Some nice architecture, but that was not meant to be the focus.

chillidude · **Posted:** Mon Jan 25, 2010 10:40 am

Did anybody watch the Jamie Oliver show called Saving Your Bacon - was about pigs, pork and the European industry behind it all. Basically he was raising awareness of how a significant number of pig farms keep there pigs in much the same way as battery hens, and just how wrong that is. And, of course, some of the very cool things you can do with pork.

Don't usually like Jamie, even a little bit, but I'll give him credit for this - it was a good show. I even managed to get the kids to sit down and watch it with me as I'd just come in from working on the AP setup 15mins after the show started.

Yes it was a little sensationalised for TV and yes, some of his motivation is he can make a buck out of it, but everything he said was basically correct and it was very well done over all.

Recommend it to everyone on this forum: http://www.jamieoliver.com/bacon/

dufflight · **Posted:** Mon Jan 25, 2010 8:49 pm

I don't watch regular TV. Not for the last five or more years. Catch it every now and then and watch the new ad's :shock:

. Must plug the antenna back in.

earthbound · **Posted:** Tue Jan 26, 2010 1:37 pm

Damn missed it... I quite like Jaymie, he reaches the masses with simple straightforward cooking, and he actively goes out trying to get people cooking for them selves, trying to connect people with their food. I saw one of his shows a few weeks back where he was trying to get a "pass it on " thing happening where he teaches a few simple recipes, then gets them to pass on recipes to their friends. These were people in poor areas where they were eating crap food.

He even went to a local football match where he was Boo'd off, but managed to get a lot of the crowd back the next week to try cooking. Most of the people were coal miners and had never cooked.

One guy who had never cooked in his life, was so amazed that he had managed to cook something himself that tasted really good, he had a revelation about food and cooking. He started cooking 5 nights a week for his wife and kids when he got home from work. He got his miner mates interested and had them sitting around in the mine at lunch time discussing recipes.. The guy was just beaming, couldn't wipe the smile from his face, he'd always thought cooking must have been a chore.

Jaymie · **Posted:** Tue Jan 26, 2010 1:44 pm

earthbound wrote:

I quite like Jaymie

why, thank you

earthbound · **Posted:** Tue Jan 26, 2010 1:49 pm

Damn..... hahaha... I can't spell the other Jamie now...., too used to always putting a Y in there..

chillidude · **Posted:** Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:05 am

Maybe Jamie's having an effect already;

NETHERLANDS - Dutch supermarket group Albert Heijn is to source all its pig meat from sustainable and welfare friendly sources from 2011.

The supermarket chain alread has welfare friendly products through its organic and free range pig meat.

But from 2011, all the pig meat sold through the stores will ahve to adhere to strict welfare standards that have been certified by the national Animal Protection organisation.

http://www.themeatsite.com/meatnews/11161/albert-heijn-to-take-only-welfare-friendly-pigs

Lord Viykor · **Posted:** Fri Jan 29, 2010 10:10 pm

This show sounds like an Aussie version of River Cottage, I'll have to put it on my watch list.

edit: link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Cottage
One of my all time favourite series Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is great.

chillidude · **Posted:** Sat Jan 30, 2010 12:51 am

Yep - good analogy - River Cottage is some pretty good TV ! Have missed a number of them, but put the DVDs on the birthday/christmas list !

Lord Viykor · **Posted:** Thu Feb 25, 2010 10:58 am

I never got around to watching Gourmet Farmer on TV, so was pleased to see it's already out on DVD. Went out yesterday and got myself a copy.

chillidude · **Posted:** Thu Feb 25, 2010 11:16 am

Lord Viykor wrote:

I never got around to watching Gourmet Farmer on TV, so was pleased to see it's already out on DVD. Went out yesterday and got myself a copy.

Cool - I've only managed to catch the two episodes that I've mentioned.

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Television

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