Five Mile Meal

Not so long ago, the idea of people from any community in the country, but especially an island community, sitting down to a meal prepared from local produce, would have not only been unexceptional but often a necessity.

By contrast, most of the food eaten on the Isles of Scilly today has travelled many fuel miles, before arriving on the plate.

On Sunday September 26^th, at St Mary’s Hall Hotel, some 33 people, both islanders and visitors, sat down to a ‘Five Mile Meal’. The chefs, Phil (St Mary’s Hall Hotel) and Mark (High Tide, St Agnes), faced the challenge of sourcing their ingredients from local island producers (see below for details).

The diners were treated to a starter, main course and dessert by each chef, making a total of six courses. At the end of each pair of courses, they were asked to rate each dish by marking a score on a card. It certainly was a hard task to decide which dish was better as all were delicious.

After the meal, the overall results were announced and Mark was crowned winner of the day. The champagne flowed to toast both chefs’ success. They had prepared a truly outstanding meal that highlighted the quality of produce available on the isles of Scilly. (See below for details)

Transition Scilly would like to thank Joan Shiles, the manager of St Mary’s Hall Hotel, and the chefs, Phil and Mark, for making this event possible. It is hoped that another Five Mile Meal will take place in March 2011. My taste buds are certainly looking forward to Round Two.

Patrick Brown.

Starters

Vegetable broth, lemon thyme & nettle dumplings (v)

(Ingredients from Parting Carn Farm & Star Castle Garden, St Marys)

Crab salad with organic micro greens with nasturtium

pesto

(Ingredients from Ian Mitchell & Scilly Organics, St Martins.

Tamarisk Farm & Covean Cottage garden, St Agnes)

Main Courses

Pan fried mackerel fillet, crab & lobster ravioli,

aubergine caviar & shellfish foam

(Ingredients from Lee Sandford, St Marys and Tamarisk Farm, St Agnes)

Pollock fillet on buttered courgette ribbons with

lemon & dill hollandaise

(Ingredients from Ian Mitchell & Scilly Organics, St Martins)

Desserts

Vanilla bean panna cotta with fresh raspberries &

a raspberry sauce

(Ingredients from Troytown Farm, St Agnes)

Baba Ani`s blackberry jam & apple crumble, clotted cream

(Ingredients from Parting Carn Farm, St Mary’s. and Troytown Farm, St Agnes)

Update on harvest week

This week has seen the first Scilly Food Festival taking place. It never intended to be a huge event as it was organised with very little time or money, but it certainly seems to have engaged people and brought the concept of local food to the fore again. The intention is to make Scilly Food Festival a significant event in 2011.



















The harvest festival on St Martin's was well attended and had a lovely display of great local produce.





















Many businesses have done local food menus for the week. If they don't normally use much local produce then it's good to see them doing so, and if they do already then it's even better to see them shout about it. Some businesses have really taken it to heart by producing entire menus such as this.

Positive reports have been received about a number of venues offering excellent local produce on their menus.
















Today we pressed apples by St Mary's Church, using windfalls that would probably just have rotted away otherwise. Pressing is a great social event and is a positive process where you get some great drink at the end. In fact the juice will be going straight to the Five Mile Meal at St Mary's Hall Hotel the next day.

There will be another apple pressing on Sunday 10th Oct at the Town Hall - more on that nearer the time.

So far the Food Festival has been positive and there should be a lot of positive follow up work leading on from this event.

Food Festival programme

The Scilly Food Festival happens in the week 20th-26th September and is shaping up to be a good celebration of food from Scilly.

There will be an apple pressing on the grassy area in front of the St Mary's Church Pavilion on Saturday 25th September at 2.00pm. We are encouraging anyone with excess apples to bring them along, plus some empty containers, to turn them in to juice! Even if you don't have fruit come along anyway and have fun.

On Sunday 26th Sept at 12.00pm there will be an extraordinary Five Mile Meal at St Mary's Hall Hotel. Local chefs will compete to produce the best meal from local produce in a unique event. More details on this poster.

Food festival

Transition Scilly and Isles of Scilly Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty are jointly organising a food festival here on Scilly, which will happen in the week 20th to 26th September 2010.

Events will include harvest festivals, local food menus, five meal meal competition and apple juicing. Full details will be released in due course but here's a poster of the food festival.

Events for the autumn

Transition Scilly has been planning and coordinating two major events for this autumn.

In late September there will be a food festival here on the Islands, including harvest festivals, local food menus, apple pressing and more.

Then in mid October will be events to mark the 10:10:10, "a global day of doing", which will range from freeskilling to renewable energy workshops to apple pressing and a whole host of other activities.

Watch this space for more details, but it promises to be good...

The risks of peak oil and climate change spelt out to businesses

Sometimes a report comes out that is so significant it is really worth shouting about. Lloyds of London are one of the oldest and largest insurance companies in the UK and operate all over the world. As insurance is all about managing risks, Lloyds have a team dedicated to predicting trends and risks on global issues, called 360 Risk Insight.

Their latest report is called Suatainable Energy Security, co-authored with think tank Chatham House, and is available to download for free here.

What is so astonishing is that it could have been written by a team from Transition Network. The language used does not beat about the bush, laying down in very stark terms that energy security is an issue that every business needs to be taking very seriously.

In future the effects of depleting fossil fuel reserves will be compounded by rising demand and falling availability.

Businesses can now be under no doubt about the risks posed by both climate change and depleting resources, in particular peak oil.

Community orchard photos

I had a walk around the Community Orchard at Trenoweth yesterday, the first time since planting in March. Here are some photos.

Every tree is in leaf and growing well, despite a cold spring then warm and dry spell. The soil is very dry at the moment but fortunately the trees are not showing signs of drought yet. Back in March there were pools of water on the surface...

As the sward thickens it should reduce the evaporation of water from the soil, and build organic matter which will hold on to any moisture in the soil.

On the ground the grass and clover mix has all come up and is starting to make a good sward. But this corn marigold came in from somewhere and making a lovely show!















Up the Pittsoporum hedge a stand of Honeysuckle smells and looks amazing, providing loads of nectar for insects.












This Thrush is finding food in the orchard to take back to its nest.


















More unusual species I saw include the stunning Common Blue blutterfly and the lovely Yellow Bartsia, which is uncommon on Scilly.



















There will be a program of work for the autumn and winter, and we plan to do a communal apple juicing session in September or October - though sadly not fruit from these trees...yet! More on that nearer the time.

Some thoughts on the Gulf oil spill

As BP's incompetence over their handling of the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico becomes apparent, thoughts have turned to the implications of oil drilling in difficult places.

In the UK we used to be self-sufficient in oil and gas thanks to North Sea reserves, but since 1999 we have become net importers of both fossil fuels that underpin our entire society. This is the point known as "Peak Oil " (and "Peak Gas") , when more than half of reserves are gone; the remainder becomes harder to extract, less pure and so more expensive.

Across the world the picture is getting more critical as more and more countries past their Peak - see on this interesting interactive map on The Last Oil Shock. The International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook states "energy prices [will] follow a rising trend through to 2030" and "oil prices are assumed to rebound with rising demand and supply costs".

As oil exploration delves in to more difficult situations such as deepwater, polar and tar sands, the potential for massive environmental and social disasters increases. How much are people and Governments willing to tolerate such costs?

Interestingly, the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre gathered news that "President Obama appears to be taking advantage of the moment [the Gulf oil spill] to push for a transition away from fossil fuels. In a speech in Pittsburgh on Wednesday he pointed out that the inherent risks will increase the harder oil extraction becomes."

The piece finishes with a very good summation of the urgent need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels - in particular oil:
"The broader meaning of the crisis is clear. The easy oil is gone, and impending peak oil pushes the industry to ever more extreme limits. The moratorium of deepwater drilling in the Gulf will probably hasten and worsen the oil supply crunch widely forecast for the middle of this decade."

Local Food Map

The last Scilly Local Food Directory was produced in 2006 and was very successful in mapping local food outlets on the Islands. Since this went out of date there has been nothing to plug the gap, so Transition Scilly decided to create an online local food map to act as a stop gap until the next published Directory.

This map has been created in Google Maps and is very easy to use. Each green balloon represents a farmer or grower selling food on Scilly - click on the balloon for more information. Click here for a bigger map that's easier to use, where you can view the map in three settings - Earth is particularly good.


View Local Food on Scilly in a larger map

This map will be updated periodically. If you spot or mistake, have questions or suggestions, please e-mail enquiries@transitionscilly.org.uk

Energy Descent

Today's Western industrialised society can be definitely categorised as "energy intensive". We use vast quantities of liquid fuels to get us and our goods from A to B, we consume a lot of electricity and everyone relies (directly or indirectly) on other gas and solid fuels.

But how would society operate without access to vast quantities of cheap fossil fuel energy? This is an interesting question, but one that should be treated more than just a hypothetical question. The signs are that we have passed the point of peak oil, which is the point at which the easiest, purest and cheapest liquid oil is used up. From here on oil gets more expensive and more difficult to extract - all in the context of a rising global demand.

This in essence is what Transition is all about - the transition from today's society to a future society in the context of climate change and peak oil as the main drivers of change. But getting from current situation to future vision needs careful planning. The goal of every Transition initiative is to produce an Energy Descent Action Plan, which is the route map to that vision.

Transition Town Totnes have just produced their Plan, which is a great bit of work and a fascinating read. It's all available online here and is highly recommended.