Meeting Notes from 26 February

We had a really interesting WEN meeting at the end of February, where the majority of women there had never been to a meeting before. Because of this, some things were left off, and other things were focused on a bit more.

Personal Challenge – Past Month
As for personal challenges, there weren’t many people there to report back on how their attempts to look at the sources of their food went. I can say that I was far too focused on how much everything cost to look at countries of origin, but I will be looking from now on!

Personal Challenge – New One (March)
We didn’t set a new challenge, since we didn’t talk about the old, but I was wondering if perhaps people would be interested in sharing recipes—preferably ones with seasonal ingredients. If anyone wants to take me up on that challenge, bring some recipes to the next meeting—how do you use purple sprouting broccoli, beetroot, and leeks? Please try to bring tried and tested versions so that we don’t all up making the same disaster! If you don’t do much seasonal cooking, now is the time to start!
According to the Good Food Pages (http://www.goodfoodpages.co.uk/), the following are in season:

February Fruit and Vegetables: cabbage, celeriac, chicory, forced rhubarb, leeks, parsnip, shallots, squash
Meat: goose, guinea fowl
Seafood: halibut, lobster, mussels

March Fruit and Vegetables: beetroot, carrots, leeks, mint, purple sprouting broccoli, rhubarb, sorrel
Seafood: lobster, sardines

We did discuss some of the food projects that we would like to see. We talked specifically about urban gardening and cooking evenings.

Urban Gardening
Nina Lambert is going to enquire with Dee Brown of the Ropewalk Community Garden as to the possibility of having some shared edible garden space. This offer was made a few weeks ago to a number of people, however, and Nina was unsure if there was still space. If there is, a number of people in attendance showed an interest in gardening there. Watch this space!

We had three University of Southampton students attend the meeting, and they felt frustrated that by living in rented accommodation (or, even worse, in halls!) their access to gardening is nonexistent. We talked briefly about the idea of finding a way to convince landlords of good intentions, but said this was difficult considering how transient the student population is—a landlord (or university) isn’t going to want to inherit an overgrown plot the following year. We also discussed the desire to have visible gardening space to make people more aware of the environmental and health benefits of growing your own.

As a result, we’ve discussed the possibility that we help students, perhaps through one of the societies at the university, request public space for fruit and veg gardening from the university. If a society took this on as an ongoing project, the fear that students will just leave in a year’s time may be allayed. WEN could help with advice and support on gardening, a public presence, and in publicising events to get students interested.

Cooking Evenings
I mentioned a programme I had found out about in California set up by some friends called Frugal Foodies. Although I don’t know the detailed logistics, the general idea is that people book in advance and pay a small amount towards ingredients. The hosts pick a number of dishes (often in a theme) and buy the ingredients (always vegetarian, usually organic). The guests show up on the day (about 8-15 people, I think) and learn how to cook the dishes by doing.

People seemed really keen to do this project at the meeting, as it would be of interest to a number of people, would link in to environmental issues, and we could focus on vegetarian, organic and seasonal food. If it’s a reasonable price, it’s a further way to show that ethical choices with food isn’t beyond people, and it’s getting people away from heavily-packaged readymeals and sauces.

We said that if we got this going (probably held at a church, school or possibly the uni depending on liability insurance issues) we would want to have a few smaller trials at people’s houses to get a feel for the logistics and how to make it run smoothly.

For both of these events, we felt that it was important to talk about some of the details, but not to make any specific plans. It’s important to have everyone’s thoughts before starting any big projects. People might have other ideas for our food campaign, or think that other issues would make more of an environmental impact or be more popular with the public.

Please let us know, via e-mail, telephone, on the blog (http://wensouthampton.blogspot.com) or in person at a meeting how you feel about both of these as a number of members were absent at this meeting. It’s important that we are all happy to go ahead with these two projects. If you have reservations, criticisms, support, encouragement, or questions, please say something!

If we are happy to go ahead, I suggested that we have separate meetings for those who are interested in organising and planning the projects as different people will want to have different levels of involvement. Updates on the planning and organising for whatever projects would be made for the rest of the group regularly at meetings and by e-mail.

Other events
- I am going to try to find someone who knows a few things about permaculture to either give us a talk or we can plan a day out to the Sustainability Centre in East Meon or another location to see permaculture in action.

- I have informal confirmation that the Southampton Fair Trade Group has been successful in its grant application for £4,000 in funding for two events. WEN offered to partner with them for the organising of these two events, so we’ll need to start a working group soon to plan the first Open Day which needs to happen in early-mid June (because of funding requirements).