For those of you who’ve been reading my blog for a while, you all know I love food. The creation of the dish, the visual appeal, the flavour and the glass of wine alongside would have to top my list of food priorities! But I recently met an equally-obsessed foodie friend I’ve not seen in a while to find that his food journey has been in a slightly different direction. Peter Kenyon owns an organic food store here in Sydney. It’s called Granny Smith Natural Food Market and though I don’t normally do plugs, I felt I ought to let you, my readers in on it.
Peter’s food travels, like mine, have also taken him around the world. He’s brought back lots of ideas and his biggest passion is food politics. Now this is not an area I particularly want to go (there’s enough politics about some of my recipes already!) but listening to him talk about the importance of it made me want to visit his store and take some pics. I hope you enjoy them.
You’ll see that it’s not a big place but it has already won some awards, including Best Organic Food Store 2009 in the Sydney Foodies’ Guide. Peter has developed a number of relationships with various farmers in the Sydney region and some of them deliver straight to his door. Talk about fresh and seasonal! Lovely greens and other goodies like eggs and fresh chicken come to the shop each week and he even has some products he brings in from his own back yard nearby. You know how much I love things right from the garden, especially living in this one bedroom apartment!
Take a look at these Halloween pumpkins just harvested from his vegie patch. But Halloween is in November, I hear you say! That’s one of Peter’s issues too, that our food culture in the Southern Hemisphere is derived from Europe and so our seasonal food celebrations don’t fit into our local landscape, climate and seasons. Do we modify our food recipes to adapt to the local areas we live in or do we change the dates we celebrate things to more closely match the original seasonal intent? Lots of food for thought here.
For more information have a look at the website here.
GRANNY SMITH NATURAL FOOD MARKET
6 PRINCES ST
TURRAMURRA NSW 2074
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice feature…show us the bounty you folks Down Under enjoy. It’s your autumn, the produce looks fab (as does the store).
Great write-up Peter. It looks like a great store to visit and your photos are amazing. The fruits and vegetables look so colorful and vibrant. It’s a wonderful produce store to have in a neighborhood.
Looks like a great store, and your photos definitely do it justice. It’s always great to find a fresh, whole food market and even better when the owner shares your food priorities and insights!
What gorgeous products! A wonderful place. These pumpkins look fantastic…
Cheers,
Rosa
You did a great job presenting Granny Smith! (no surprise there
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Peter, I love finding new produce stores! Especially those run by passionate foodies. I’ll definitely be checking it out on my return from London!
i love reading about places like these, especially when there are good pictures to accompany the post. the freshness of food and its origins is a leading issue all over the world, so i think that if you love food in its freshest form, then food politics should be high in your list of priorities, otherwise you just become a foodie who’s obsessed with all the latest food trends, but has no idea how things like coffee get into your percolator or favorite cafe…
(that’s my 2-cents’ worth!)
What gorgeous products! A wonderful place. These pumpkins look fantastic…
Cheers,
Rosa
BTW I love your blog!
I wish I had a store like this near my house. Your pictures look great.
Looks like they have a great range of produce. Autumn pumpkins are so beautiful at the moment. Maybe we should be digging out some Halloween recipes. A spicy pumpkin pie would go down well I think.
Halloween is in October around these parts.
I totally hear you on the influences of Europe on food culture. It hadn’t really sunk in that you in the Southern Hemisphere must cope with the northern-centric seasonality of food, though, and it’s an interesting concept that I’d love to see you explore a bit further. That is, if the politics don’t sully things too much.
One of my favorite treatments of a winter squash is to halve it, roast it until tender and stuff it with chopped apples, nuts and gorgonzola and bake until soft and gooey. Sauteeing the apples in butter with orange juice and bourbon adds a special touch.
Gorgeous photos of a beautiful place Peter. Funny, but I never think about the seasonal difference on your side of the world, but your right… A friend of ours is right now in Australia and is about to go on a snowboarding trip soon (not quite yet, I believe) while we are getting ready for summer!
Great write up, Peter! I love places like this, and like your friend, I have a passion for food politics, although I don’t talk about it much. I think it is great that he is raising awareness about seasonal celebrations and food and whether things should shift based on the growing season (YES!) and not on a date. Very good food for thought indeed!