Organic carrot

First things first: Happy Birthday MrsB & Kathi! Seems to me that so many special people are born in Aquarius - Blips RedFlash, my son and son-in-law, lovely ex neighbour Heidi .....

Angie took off this morning to the nearby organic shop, well supermarket almost, that I discovered last week. She was impressed but just as 99% of us react, she said you do need a healthy bank balance too.

At the cheese counter she got in to a discussion over Cheddar which they don't stock. The saleslady offered to source some but Angie warned her that although we would buy a substantial amount, we probably couldn't justify them buying a truck load every week. She said she would look in to suppliers and let us know. She suggested Angie try a cheese called "Aurora Gold Carrot". It was fine but not that different or worthy of a "Mmmmh". IFind it difficult to describe the Cheddar experience - it's a combination of taste and possibly more so, texture. Or perhaps its just an ex-Pat yearning. But I have never found a cheese that can get anywhere near to Cheddar in cooking - nothing melts like Cheddar. 

  Aurora is a Dutch based cheese maker using milk from organic farms in Holland and Germany. I assume the "carrot" in the cheese description means they add organic carrot juice to the milk rather than feeding the cows carrots. Their corporate video suggests the cows are held in outdoor herds, only get grass and clover to eat, calves are allowed to spend some time suckling and the girls get to keep their horns. All worthy. I do however worry about some of the things not shown - what happens in winter when there is no grass or fields fit for animals to roam on?

Today the world's largest organic exhibition starts in Nürnberg with some 2600 companies exhibiting. The boom in the consumers interest in organic food, cosmetics, clothing etc is not unnoticed by the big players and they are already moving in to the market which I am afraid will one day have a negative effect. Had a discussion with daughter Kate last night about the egg market which is a wonderful example of this misuse of "Organic". Our well meant purchase of organic happy hen eggs from the supermarket are simply lining the pockets of the battery hen producers - they are one and the same.

Bit like the "convenience food" market. Man has always conserved food whether by drying, salting, freezing, fermenting, later by bottling, tinning, vacuuming  etc. WWII,  the needs of the military for such "emergency foods and the sensible use of surpluses to balance out shortages, has been taken to a level that many think a fresh organic product doesn't taste good because they were only ever exposed to the one out of a plastic wrapper.

My thoughts on convenience food were prompted by Nogbads Blip today on dumplings, including his experiences with dumplings in Bavaria. Munich used to be the home to probably the biggest German conserved potato product manufacturers, Pfanni, who were bought in the 90's by Unilever.
Pfanni nowadays also do bread dumplings which are very popular in Bavaria. I personally can't stand potato dumplings, probably because they are all "manufactured" nowadays as few (including myself) are prepared to take the time to make them from scratch. But I do love bread dumplings and nothing could be easier to make and taste so good with the right gravy/sauce and the bonus it's basically made of stale bread.