Food for thought
I’ve been reading the book ‘The Edible City’ by John Rensten. It’s a lovely diary narrative as John forages food in our city. There are wonderful recipes and accounts of his memories of the food he eats. He opens his book with, ‘To feed yourself and those you care about with ingredients sourced by your own hands is to rekindle a relationship with nature’, he carries on by explaining how man has been gathering foods forever, but doing this in the 21st century in a city seems like an abstract thought.
Our modern existence of foraging is going to the fridge or larder (if we are lucky to have one) and choosing the food we feel like eating at that time. Notice I say ‘feel like’. There is no ‘what is available’ in our everyday thoughts. We have become a society that feels we can choose what we want when we want it. This delves into a larger issue, which I don’t have the word count to cover. It is an issue which underpins many of my values around food intake.
Reading John Renstens book has inspired and empowered me to embrace the food that exists and grows around our cities. He shares the knowledge with us that there are foods we can forage and eat reassuringly knowing that all is safe. While also following the guide of seasonality foods, he too looks forward to the next year when he can enjoy the tastes of wild garlic. The book reminded me of the times my mother and grandmother would forage (for what I thought was grass growing on the sides on country roads in Australia), for a type of spinach that they would feast on in Italy. I would get so embarrassed by the foraging that I would hide and pretend I didn’t know who they were. How ironic, I now forage for food myself and see my own kids hiding behind the trees.
I remember while I was growing up, my mother cooked with fresh ingredients she had picked from the garden. For a long time as a child I couldn’t understand why when we ate broad beans for weeks on end, and then had to wait almost a whole year before we could eat the next lot of fresh broad beans. This applied to other fruits and vegetables like courgette (Zucchini as we say in Australia), cucumbers, tomatoes, peas, lettuce ( both winter and summer varieties) and grapes. I realised in my twenties that my mother was teaching me a valuable lesson in life- seasonality and the importance of this to balance nature.
A few years ago I was volunteering for a charity that sets up gardens on station platforms. The garden I was closest to, grows vegetables, herbs, potatoes, fruit and hops. I was delighted to see and hear about commuters picking produce on their way to work or coming home from a day’s work and using it in their cooking.
As I explore my business venture further, I realise not all people like being in the kitchen and cooking. But most people like to eat, and like to eat good wholesome food. Food often conjures memories of those they love, or an experience or time from the past. I want my food to allow people to make that connection with nature. When my customers eat my products, I want to inspire memories and a joy for seasonality. I want my products to take you on a journey, where you as the customer might decide to roam around the city (or your fridge) and forage for your next meal.
