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PERMACULTURE SYDNEY NORTH

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PSN Monthly Meeting 16 July 2018 - The Rise of Sugar and the Fall of Honey

  • 16 Jul 2018
  • 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM
  • Lindfield Community Hall, 259 Pacific Highway, Lindfield

The Rise of Sugar and the Fall of Honey
Presented by: Liane Colwell

The Isle of Honey is an ancient name for England, long forgotten even by its modern descendants. Yet honey was critical in the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman periods, both as a food, and in medicine. 


The survival of niches for skeps in garden walls attests to the epicentrality of beekeeping to landscaping; shrewd design being critical to hive survival in freezing northern environments, and to the sustaining of the food supply. But with the dawn of the thirteenth century, ‘honey from a reed’ (sugar) began its slow ascent to supplant honey as the favoured sweetener. Initially consumed as a medicine by the nobility, over the ensuing centuries, sugar eclipsed honey as the preferred sweetener of England. What were the catalysts of this change? And what drivers sustained the trend?

This talk will cover the arrival of sugar in the wake of the Crusades via the nobility’s adoption of Persian foodways, and continues through to sugar’s conquest of the English palate in the Industrial Revolution. Liane Colwell is a Gastronomer, PermaCulture Designer, and retired chef/caterer. Her research interests include health propaganda, functional foods, botanical medicine, phytonutrients, vermiculture, and halography (salt). She has many post-trade qualifications including confectionery and commercial cookery. Her post-graduate degrees include marketing, gastronomy, and communication. She’s been studying and judging honey since 2012. In 2016 she was nominated as a Green Hero at UTS for her promotion of worm farming (vermiculture).

https://www.permaculturenorth.org.au/event-2992073

Free for members, small donation for guests. Doors open at 6:30pm - a good time to check out our members' library and catch up with other PSN members.

Please join us for supper and a chat after the talk.

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