TASTE PARADISE FOOD & WINE FESTIVAL 2010

 SERVES UP BEST OF TROPICAL FARE for CAIRNS FESTIVAL 2010

Celebrity chef Ben O’Donoghue & Marion Grasby headlines festival featuring 10 days of culinary celebration from this Thursday.

Far North foodies have cause to rejoice, with this week’s launch of Taste Paradise Food & Wine Festival.

Part of Cairns Festival 2010, Taste Paradise boasts a exciting ten-day program of culinary events, with the gourmet action getting underway this  Thursday, August 19.

Taste Paradise welcomes celebrity chef Ben O’Donoghue, of Surfing the Menu, who will incorporate local tropical produce into his own recipes as he presents Tropical Twist, a special cooking demonstration at The Pier Farmgate Market (21 August).

The culinary adventures then head north to Palm Cove, with O’Donoghue’s Seaside Luncheon (21 August), when the guest chef cooks up a lavish four-course luncheon on the beautiful Terrace at Sea Temple, Palm Cove. O’Donoghue is set to create another extraordinary meal for the Celebrity Dinner at Sebel Reef House (22 August), with lucky gourmet lovers to dine on fare to remember as the sun goes down.

Other Palm Cove Festival highlights include the very popular Long Lazy Lunch, relocating this year to the stunning sands of Angsana Resort (20 August) and Taste of Palm Cove (22 August,2010) offering grazing sensations to tantalise the taste buds with “tasting plates” from $10 each from the bevy of beautiful restaurants along the beach.

The Taste Paradise Pier Foodies Extravaganza at The Pier/Shangri-La Hotel (28 August) will feature Marion Grasby former contestant of MasterChef series 2. The all-day Extravaganza features cooking demonstrations by Marion and our local hero chefs, tastings of fresh local produce and gourmet food, while budding cooks learn culinary skills at the Kids in the Kitchen at Cho Gao at The Pier. Word of Mouth will bring a series of foodies chat sessions where tropical culinary discussions with celebrity and local chefs and identities, provoke thought and humour in a fun fill gatherings including a debate with high school students from Gordonvale High & Trinity Anglican School.  There is even a food art exhibition with ‘Menus’ by Julie Poulsen and Palate to Palette; an eclectic display of art on a food theme.

Taste Paradise will also hosting a Signature Dish Competition, with participating restaurants serving up meals sure to set tastebuds alight in their bid to win diners over with an on-line vote at www.tasteparadise.com.au  

Taste Paradise event organiser, Nola Craig, says the Festival’s multi-dimensional program showcases the best of tropical north Queensland’s burgeoning food and wine scene.

“We are thrilled to have secured a celebrity chef who will draw attention to our regional food and its importance to our region as both a visitor destination and a wonderful place to live. From the sea to the Tablelands and in between, we are blessed with a great and growing diversity of food and wine growers,” Ms Craig says.

Cairns Festival is supported and presented by Cairns Regional Council. Now the region’s largest annual cultural celebration, this year’s festival season will run from August 20 to September 5 at venues all over Cairns. The full program, and information about events and activities, is now available from Festival HQ, key venues, cafes and restaurants throughout the city. For more information visit  www.cairnsfest.com.au

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Taste Paradise Signature Dish Competition

Local chefs compete to create Taste Paradise Signature Dish
using top regional produce

 
Cairns, July 27, 2010, With a bounty of exotic flavours at their disposal, the chefs of Tropical North Queensland have a well-deserved reputation for plating up paradise. But what dish from this plethora of palate pleasers truly defines our unique region, where the rainforest meets the Great Barrier Reef?

Cairns Festival’s inaugural Taste Paradise Signature Dish Competition will see the public and industry experts select the dish that best represents the essence of Tropical North Queensland, a region celebrated for its truly diverse array of culinary offerings.

To be in the running for the esteemed title of creating the Taste Paradise Signature Dish, chefs and restaurateurs of the region will create menu masterpieces drawing from the abundance of local produce.

Their dish could feature anything from sensational exotic fruit to the freshest tropical seafood, or locally-sourced gourmet foods including cheese, milk, yoghurt and ice-cream, nuts, meat, poultry and eggs.

“Taste Paradise Signature Dish is open to all restaurants that are passionate about using local produce in their menus. We want chefs and restaurateurs to create and enter recipes from their menus that personify the region  — a dish that captures the very essence of Taste Paradise,” says Taste Paradise consultant Nola Craig.

Taste Paradise Signature Dish items will be judged using criteria including the use of local produce, innovation, presentation and taste, with consideration being given to public feedback through online forums.

The campaign, Taste Paradise — Tropical North Queensland, will be launched at the Food & Wine celebration during Cairns Festival on August 20. The Signature Dish Competition is part of this ongoing project to promote the region as a food tourism destination.

Restaurants have until August 4 to enter a dish in the competition, with public voting to run from August 20 to September 20. Learn more, and place your vote at the official website www.tasteparadise.com.au.

Cairns Festival is supported and presented by Cairns Regional Council. Now the region’s largest annual cultural celebration, this year’s festival season will run from August 20 to September 5 at venues all over Cairns. For information on the complete program, events and activities, www.cairnsfest.com.au

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APC10 Line up of Prominent Speakers

You could spend $50,000 and the rest of your life visiting all these amazing people and seeing their projects, or a hundred dollars now to meet them all in the one place at the same time.”  Sarah-Jane, Star APC10 Volunteer, talking with Cairns locals at the Sustainable Living Expo last weekend.

Only One Month to go!  We are not booked out.  But you must register now!

This is our last APC10 Update before the event, which we have come to realise is likely to be the most important gathering of permaculture minds.  The key themes in this convergence will be transition initiatives, engagement with the mainstream and renewing our networks and movement’s structure.  In our extensive correspondence with permi people world-wide, there is a call for permaculture to move away from the margin to become an effective and credible voice in the future of Australia’s planning and preparations for the changes that will come as a result of climate change, peak oil, economic pertubations, migration shifts etc.

We have summarised our plenary presenters below but we have an impressive line-up of speakers from around the world, in all about 50 people.  Our programme is a conventional conference style programme, but interaction, discussion, round tables and time-out to network are vital to the convergence’s success.  We will be testing our capacity to skype in speakers from around Australia and the globe – doing so on a shoe-string budget with volunteers.  The complete and final programme is on the website:  www.apc10.org

This is not a big-league corporate event with money to burn, yet it has attracted the attention of some of the world’s most influential environmental philanthropists including our own Dick Smith and Sir Richard Branson who was also unable to attend but who is interested in the potential of permaculture.  A couple of the Branson’s family members are coming to do the PDC and attending APC10.  This is a statement about the credibility and reputability of permaculture and its transformational potential.  This comes from the decades of very hard work put in by permaculture educators, business developers, community organisers who have been determined to make the principles and concepts of permacultue work in practice.  We pay tribute to Bill and David, and the generations of people they trained, and feel honoured to be able to carry the mantle onwards.

APC10 would really not be possible if it wasn’t for our sponsors.  We have built genuine personal relationships with each, and we thank them for their involvement in helping APC10 – bringing speakers from overseas, supporting registrations from developing countries, providing IT sevices, catering and staging, advertising and promotions,  and of course, the venue itself.   And also our volunteers and members of Permaculture Cairns who have never doubted what our small group can achieve and have thrown their all into making this a world-class, memorable, celebratory and professional event.  We love each and every one of them.
So if you have not yet registered please do so without delay. Your attendance, at APC10, is vital.

Plenary Guest Speakers:

Major General Michael Jeffery, CEO, Outcomes Australia.  One of the challenges Australia faces in the 21st century is that of making the transformation from old technologies used in our current, predominantly industrial farming, to the new reality that we need to be more ‘in tune’ with nature.  In so doing, we need to recognise the new realities of climate change, such as more erratic rainfall, desertification of the landscape, degradation of our soils, the impact of a burgeoning population, the shrinking of the farm sector and the explosion in costs of petroleum based inputs on sustainable food production.

The philosophy of Permaculture advocates the need to work with nature rather than against it, and this goal complements of Outcomes Australia.  Both recognise that water should be seen as our primary national strategic asset and managed accordingly and that restoration of the health of our soils is fundamental to the sustained productivity of our agricultural landscape.

Sonya Wallace and Janet Millington, Transition Towns.  As part of Australia’s first Transition Initiative, Sonya and Janet delivered Australia’s very first Energy Descent Action Plan.   Since then they’ve been working on a peak oil and climate change policy group for their local government authority, and have presented at national government conferences on Transition Towns, Energy Descent Action Planning and how permaculture can be successfully applied to communities and regions.

Gunter Pauli, ZERI – Skype from Belgium.  Gunter Pauli is a passionate proponent of green development and a clean economy.  In 1994, Mr. Pauli founded the Zero Emissions Research & Initiatives ZERI www.zeri.org/ a network of 100 Universities around the world, developing pilot innovations that could change prevailing economical business models. A worldwide network of business systems and communities could create a hundred million jobs, establish social funds and guide economies and societies toward sustainable zero waste production.

Gunter Pauli’s Blue Economy promotes a business model that speaks to permaculture principles.  In nature the output from every natural process provides an input for another.  There is no waste. A business model that supports less waste and emissions should be established as a global standard. Solutions to problems that are elegant in their simplicity and striking in their effectiveness, demonstrate that a new economic model is feasible and permits innovation and creativity to identify possible paths towards a better future.

Bill Mollison, Co-founder of Permaculture & Geoff Lawton.  Inspiring, authoritive, thoughtful and often ‘off the cuff’, Bill, Geoff and their families are visiting APC for 2 days of our 4 day convergence and will provide the Saturday evening keynote presentations. 

Russ Grayson, Permaculture V3.0.  Russ kicks off the Official Convergence on Sunday 26th encouraging the movement to self-reflect.  He will ask us to consider some key questions about the effectiveness of permaculture as advocates for change and asks how does permaculture need to change to more fully engage in public and enlarge its influence?  How dow we about creating a new Permaculture 3.0?

Daryl Hannah, Environmental Campaigner, actor and permaculturalist, Gala Dinner Keynote Speaker.  Daryl will come to APC fresh from gaining her design certificate with Darren J.Doherty, but she is not a permaculture novice.  Attracted to simple living, sustainable housing design and wholistic management principles in agriculture, Daryl is one of the most down-to-earth celebrities on the planet.  For her environmental activism in North America, she’s rated amongst the top three most influential American actors alongside George Clooney, Leonardo di Caprio and Brad Pitt.  Daryl believes in using media focus on promoting ethical and progressive causes and has used her fame to draw attention to renewable energy, indigenous people’s rights, and food security issues.  She’s humble and honoured to take a place within the permaculture movement and wants to understand how she can help promote, educate and progress its goals.

Mark O’Connor, Can Permaculture survive Population Growth?  Australia is set for a population of 140 million by 2100. High density cities, where most Australians live, will leave little space for gardens and making permaculture a pipe-dream for many.  Mark, co-author of Overloading Australia, shows how this push works, and how we can beat it.  

David Holmgren, Final Keynote Speaker, Permaculture for the future;  understanding the lineage and preparing for surprise (via Skype).  In the final plenary of APC10 David Holmgren co-originator of the permaculture concept, draws on lessons from over three decades of permaculture thinking and activism to distill pointers for using ethics and design principles to surf the energy descent future (without being dumped by king waves).  This will be an upbeat presentation that encapsulates how the next generation of permaculture activists can confidently and creatively face the cascading crises that are unfolding all around the world. In keeping with the theme of creatively adapting to the energy descent future, David will be giving his presentation via Skype from his home, Melliodora in central Victoria.
We’ll see YOU in September!

Warm Tropical Permi Blessings
The APC10 Organising team and volunteers

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Tropical Taste Sensations a Hit

The Cairns Post – Taste.com.au – Skybury Tropical Taste Sensation cookbooks have been a hit!  I have noticed if you don’t get to the newsagent or shop early to secure your daily copy of The Cairns Post, you miss out.

The twelve cookbooks have great simple recipes that feature mainly tropical foods.  If you see berries or something that is not tropical, the recipes can easily be adapted to local fruits and produce.

The success has not just been for the readers, the food companies featured in ‘Meet the Producer’ has reported lots of enquiries and sales.  On the long weekend Skybury was inundated with visitors to the Australian Coffee Centre and produced over 800 meals without a hitch.  This has got to be good news for other food tourism attractions on the Tablelands and it seems local people are venturing out for a tropical food experience.

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Coping with Extremes in Climate Workshop

Produce High Yielding Crops with Low Costs

Friday25^th June 2010 – Hallorans Hill Observation Building,
Atherton  (9:30am – 2:30pm)

Includes Light Lunch

Presentation funded by Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) and Organic Federation of Australia (OFA) to help all producers cope with extremes in climate.

This workshop will teach all producers how to obtain consistent high yields of quality produce through world’s best science and proven practice in organic methods.

Who can attend?

Conventional, organic and biological producers, consumers and interested parties

Where – Halloran’s Hill Observation Building, Atherton

When & Time – Starts 9:30am, finishes 2:30pm, Friday 25^th June 2010

Cost – $40 per person to cover cost of 100 page booklet outlining world best practice international research on organic & biological farm practices – fully referenced.

Presenters – Adam Willson and Greg Paynter, Soil Systems Australia

Benefits to growers

This workshop is a practical presentation to help all producers build soil health and resilience into their farming operation. Includes such practices as;

·         Composting – how do I build the best compost

·         Nutrients – what minerals build healthy soils and better crop production

·         Increasing water use efficiency with soil carbon

·         Green manuring/cover crops – when is the best timing

·         Pasture management – how grazing builds soil carbon

·         Weed and Pest  Management through systems approach

·         Polyculture & biological ameliorants – building buffers in my farm

·         Why monitoring is so important?

·         Water management – avoiding the extremes through farm design

·         Using local resources in preference to branded products

·         Marketing options for growers who grow organically and biologically.

Benefits to the consumer

1. Why quality varies?
2. What things do you look for in buying good food?
3. How good farm management is great for the environment and your health

This is a practical workshop by experienced farmers and consultants. There are well over 100 photographic slides. Bookings are essential;

Further information                                              

            Adam Willson

                                                                        Soil Systems Australia

                                                                        (07) 3162 0701

                                                                        0423 679 110           

                                                                        adam.willson@soilsystems.com.au

                                                                        www.soilsystems.com.au

.

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Innovation Kitchen

Date:           Tuesday 18 May 2010
Time:         3pm-6pm
                     (refreshments included)
Venue:      Cairns Colonial Club
                     Behan St, Manunda

An open forum to generate discussion on business topics including: marketing; international trade; innovative customer service and intellectual property protection.
You and your clients will have the opportunity to participate and discuss ideas, question our guest speakers and network.

Event menu

Entrée: Andrew Griffiths
“Presentation counts”
A taste of marketing inspiration

Main: Paul Loeffler-White, IP Australia
“Who’s restaurant rules?”
Locking up your brand and IP

Dessert: A local business case study
“Cream of the crop!”
A real business’s recipe for success

For more information click here

RSVP:

Renee Chilton
Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research
Ph: (07) 4721 0451 Fax: (07) 4721 0753 Mobile: 0429 000 398
AusIndustry Hotline: 13 28 46
Email: renee.chilton@innovation.gov.au
Internet: http://www.ausindustry.gov.au
Internet: http://www.innovation.gov.au

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2010 Le Cordon Bleu World Media Awards

Australian Tropical Foods (www.australiantropicalfoods.com) has been nominated as  a finalist in the  2010 Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards  in the category of Best Food/Drink Website/Blog. 

The portal for food and wine in Tropical North Queensland is up against giants such as  SBS Food (AUS), Good Food Channel (UKTV) BBC Good Food Worldwide (UK) Amazing Ribs.com (USA), Fresh For Kids by Sydney Markets (AUS), Julie Biuso.com Biuso & Associates (NZ), Fried Chillies – Food Network, Malaysia  & Time Out London Restaurants (UK). 

“This nomination by members of our jury of more than 50 eminent industry professionals around the world represents the belief that your entry is among the highest achievements in this field over the last two-and-a-half years” said Ian Parmenter, Chair, Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards and Festival Director, Tasting Australia.

Nomination will be acknowledged at the Awards Presentation on Monday, May 3, 2010 at the Intercontinental Adelaide, South Australia, where a Gold Ladle will be presented from among nominees.
www.worldfoodmediaawards.com                                                            www.tasting-australia.com.au

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Farmgate Markets

A message from the new Farmgate Campaigner

I love growing, eating and sharing our own home produce and as a mother and a consumer I’m always keen to source the healthiest, local food available to nurture family and friends.

If you are a likeminded shopper or someone looking for seasonal, tropical food come to Farmgate Markets on Saturdays. Meet the local producers who grow your food.
Redclaw and gourmet chocolates are just some of the exciting produce coming soon!

If you are a producer keen to showcase your free pokie games online product please contact me.
Your stall would represent the best in quality, local, fresh produce available in this region. Your market shoppers are gourmet food-lovers, local chefs and health-conscious families. With the growing trend toward creativity in the kitchen and celebrated food personalities visiting the Far North, Farmgate markets are the ideal arena to showcase your produce to a diverse sector of the local, national and international communities

Farmgate Markets operate from The Pier, Cairns on Saturdays from 7.30am-2pm.

Contact Cathie Brett
Farmgate Campaigner
0417938806
www.nsda.org.au

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Food Regulation Stakeholders Forum

Date:  Thursday 29th April 2010

Time:  9:30am to 3:30pm

Venue: The Hotel Cairns, Cnr Abbott & Florence Streets, Cairns QLD

Safe Food Production Queensland (SFPQ) in conjunction with Queensland Health and the Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation (DEEDI) are holding a forum to discuss issues relating to food safety regulation.

Some of the topics that will be explored are food safety programs for vulnerable populations, reducing red tape for food businesses, and where Queensland fits into the national context. We invite you to attend this meeting to share your ideas and suggestions on these important issues.

For more information and bookings:-

cairns_stakeholder_forum_date_claimer

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Tablelands Food Business Requirements

If you are in the food industry or are you considering to enter the food business,  here is some information required by the Tablelands Regional Council
a-guide-to-making-application-for-a-food-business  

application-for-approval-for-design-fit-out-of-food-business-2009-2010

food-fees-2009-10

For further information contact:-

Doris Cooper
Supervisor Environmental Health
Environmental Health Section, Regulatory Services Group Tablelands Regional
Council

Phone: 07 4043 4000 | Direct: 07 4043 4324 | Fax: 07 4091 4300
Email: dorisc@trc.qld.gov.au | Website: www.trc.qld.gov.au
45 Mabel Street, Atherton | PO Box 573, Atherton, Queensland, Australia.

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