Please feel free to comment here to give some ideas about what local food initiatives we should have in Southampton. They could be small or large, even expensive, but please focus on things that we can achieve without relying too heavily on the council/government/NHS at this current time.
I'm eager to get things up and running with some attention-grabbing projects--something that the Daily Echo might want to cover, and something that would look good in photos on our website!
Please give me your ideas!
Tuesday 26 May 2009
Working with our hands
I've read two interesting articles in the New York Times, and I'm wondering if there is a link between them.
The first, based on a research paper called "Paradox of Declining Female Happiness", summarises the case that women's happiness has been declining since 1960s across the globe in developed countries. Apparently it doesn't matter whether it is a working class or wealthy woman, whether in America or in continental Europe, women's average happiness has gone from being slightly above men's in 1960 to several points below men's today. (Note: I have only read the NY Times article, not the paper itself)
The second article is called "The case for working with your hands" and is a fascinating look at manual work. Written by a man with a PhD who has been repairing motorcycles since he was unable to find work after finishing his post-doctorate studies, it looks at the intellect used during manual work and the ethics involved in it. He also discusses happiness, in the guise of job satisfaction, when he talks about middle managers and office work he did after completing his MA. He talks about the ethics of being so far removed from the consequences, success, failure, and risks of your work when in an office. He discusses the pride and problem-solving skills of working with your hands.
Could it be that the two are linked? As women have succeeded at university, made their way up the corporate ladder, and found careers in an office, have we lost the satisfaction of seeing work completed? Dressmaking, quilting, cooking, preserving are all skills that have fallen by the wayside as women have taken up new jobs--they can't afford to continue time-consuming tasks. Chores are still done at home, but a variety of gadgets and services make it faster and easier. I can't imagine that you have the same enjoyment of baking if you are heating up a premade meal or picking up hemmed trousers from the dry cleaner. This could be extended to "working class" women as well--rather than starting and finishing a piece of work, the person behind the till at Waitrose or washing salad leaves in a factory are only cogs in a machine.
Reskilling is something that I think is important for society, especially with peak oil looming and my desire for a lower-energy society. 'Make do and mend' are words I long to live by (although my sewing, electrical and carpentry skills don't always allow for it--yet). Is it more than this? Is reskilling and the taking up of manual labour (by which I don't mean being one step in an assembly line) a woman's issue?
The first, based on a research paper called "Paradox of Declining Female Happiness", summarises the case that women's happiness has been declining since 1960s across the globe in developed countries. Apparently it doesn't matter whether it is a working class or wealthy woman, whether in America or in continental Europe, women's average happiness has gone from being slightly above men's in 1960 to several points below men's today. (Note: I have only read the NY Times article, not the paper itself)
The second article is called "The case for working with your hands" and is a fascinating look at manual work. Written by a man with a PhD who has been repairing motorcycles since he was unable to find work after finishing his post-doctorate studies, it looks at the intellect used during manual work and the ethics involved in it. He also discusses happiness, in the guise of job satisfaction, when he talks about middle managers and office work he did after completing his MA. He talks about the ethics of being so far removed from the consequences, success, failure, and risks of your work when in an office. He discusses the pride and problem-solving skills of working with your hands.
Could it be that the two are linked? As women have succeeded at university, made their way up the corporate ladder, and found careers in an office, have we lost the satisfaction of seeing work completed? Dressmaking, quilting, cooking, preserving are all skills that have fallen by the wayside as women have taken up new jobs--they can't afford to continue time-consuming tasks. Chores are still done at home, but a variety of gadgets and services make it faster and easier. I can't imagine that you have the same enjoyment of baking if you are heating up a premade meal or picking up hemmed trousers from the dry cleaner. This could be extended to "working class" women as well--rather than starting and finishing a piece of work, the person behind the till at Waitrose or washing salad leaves in a factory are only cogs in a machine.
Reskilling is something that I think is important for society, especially with peak oil looming and my desire for a lower-energy society. 'Make do and mend' are words I long to live by (although my sewing, electrical and carpentry skills don't always allow for it--yet). Is it more than this? Is reskilling and the taking up of manual labour (by which I don't mean being one step in an assembly line) a woman's issue?
Friday 27 March 2009
Cooking Evenings
At our last meeting we talked about having cooking evenings. I think we all assumed it would have to take place in a church hall, would be a really big deal, and would take up a lot of time and effort to get started.
I checked out Jamie's Ministry of Food and they have a guide (it's a PDF) for starting a "Pass it on" class. They give some good tips on where to start, but they gloss over issues like public liability insurance, funding, etc. It would be nice if they gave a bit more advice. I'd love to go to their food centre, but it's near Sheffield!! Mac wants to go up to Nottingham, so maybe one day?
Having had a chance to take a look at Frugal Foodies, I've seen that they have it in someone's house, rotate who does most of the work, and have a great relaxing time for the most part. Check out their photos here. That definitely looks like something we could handle.
I had a chance to get some questions answered by Brian from Frugal Foodies in San Jose about how it works there. It actually sounds doable! I'd want to ask more about their logistics (this magical spreadsheet they use, whether they have insurance/hygiene training, if they have paid-for cooking boards, knives, etc, whether they've had any visits from the health department) but I was really heartened by his responses. Read it all here:
How did you start a group in the South Bay? Where did you advertise, were you targeting specific people, how did you plan that first session?
The first round in the south bay was started by some recently graduated SJSU students. I found them via advertisements on Craigslist. We've also been advertised or written up in local paper's events sections, yelp.com, facebook, etc.
We're not targeting specific people, except that we do want relaxed, pleasant people who can enjoy and thrive in the minor chaos that transpires at a frugal foodies cooking night. Some folks are a little OCD (I need my perfect knife, my perfect apple peeling tool, a huge uncrowded kitchen to myself, etc.). We try our best to accommodate everyone, but people who come back again and again tend to self-select to be at least a little social and very adaptable.
As to specific people - we get everyone from college kids to folks in their 60s or older.
Planning the first session was just a matter of picking a theme we'd have fun with (our first was Dominican Republic food), getting all the ingredients, and trying to make sure we'd have enough knives, cutting boards, bowls, and table space.
It sounds from the website that these take place in people's homes. Is that right? How do you all fit? (Maybe I've just become used to British people's kitchens)
We rarely get even half of the attendees in the kitchen at the same time.
Convert your dining room, living room, etc. into "prep areas". Throw tablecloths or sheets over everything, make sure there are lots of cutting boards and knives and bowls, and you'll be set.
You do want to plan your dishes such that you don't have everyone needing to throw something in the oven.
We have four burners ("rings" in england, if I'm not mistaken), and a smallish oven. Occasionally we fire up a camp stove on the back porch for another burner. We'll sometime break out an electric wok and put it in a non-kitchen room for one more cooking area.
We often have the dessert in the oven baking while we eat the main courses.
Check out http://frugalfoodies.oddren.com/recipes/ for the combinations of the dishes we tend to do in each evening with 4-5 burners and one oven.
How is the cooking structured? I would imagine that if it's in a home (or even most churches, etc) there would only be one stove and oven. How do you get everyone to have an active role in cooking?
90% of the work is prep work that doesn't need the stove. We start with whole raw vegetables - pretty much everything is "from scratch".
To keep everyone doing something: some recipes involve parallel steps (dry vs wet stuff, or dish vs sauce, etc.) We don't specify how to divide up the tasks, but people tend to adopt roles or split up the work fine on their own.
Our "teams" tend to be 2-3 people. Since we're feeding 12+ folks, the prep work in terms of chopping and measuring and whatnot keeps folks busy.
Oftentimes the bulk of what is being prepared involves cooking two rounds, two casserole dishes full, etc. If they divide it up that way, it again gives each member a chance to put their own touch on their portion. (al dente vs well-cooked, etc.)
Often towards the end of the evening, some dishes are on a "simmer" or "bake until done" kind of schedule. If someone is idle, they'll usually ask around to see if anyone else needs help with prep work.
If everyone else is on track, idle folks will start cleaning up, or just socialize, or both.
How much does the host act as a cooking teacher? Is it more informal than that?
We generally don't teach at all. The hosts aren't on a team - we float from group to group helping them get started (at the beginning of the evening this occupies all of our time - getting people situated with the gear they need and helping them if they don't know what something is or means on the recipe).
After things are moving smoothly, we'll lend a hand like anyone else - usually gravitating towards whichever dish requires prepping the most fresh vegetables, which is always the big time drain.
We'll tend to wander a bit and check in with groups - we'll try to catch disasters-in-the-making and help people recover with substitutions or re-balancing of the quantities when folks get measurements wrong, etc.
Do you mostly have regulars who come to the evenings, or does it vary?
About 60/40 between regulars and new faces.
Why do theme nights?
1) It's more fun for us hosts.
2) It's a hook/gimmick that gets more people to come. Would you rather attend a "we're going cook stuff together" night or an oddball theme night that grabs your interest? People will pick and choose which nights they come to based on the themes (One attendee said "I'm really busy, but I just *have* to come to Polska night - my grandfather was polish, and I have the most wonderful memories...")
3) Makes for fun conversation topics over the evening
4) Helps push the hosts to pick new recipes we've never tried before.
5) By publishing a theme rather than a menu, it lets us not finalize exactly what dishes we'll cook until the night before; once we know how many people are coming and what ingredients we can get fresh and cheaply.
Are you full for most nights? How do you deal with nights with only a few bookings or letting people know that it's been fully booked?
We've been getting overfull recently - I think we'll have to start turning people away soon. If there are too few RSVPs, we'll cancel one or two days before the night. Folks who pre-paid get a refund or a credit for a future night.
How stressful and time consuming is this (I suppose that's probably two separate questions)?
Depends on the person. I find it relaxing, but I thrive in slight chaos.
We've had hosts who were a little too controlling (wrote vague recipes, then spend the whole night telling people they were doing it wrong and dominating in the kitchen), we've had hosts who were fine during the event but stressed too much leading up to it in terms of preparations (I'm talking spreadsheets for ingredients and shopping lists and resources - dish A needs the stove for 30 minutes, then dish B gets it for 10 minutes, etc.)
If you're comfortable letting other people experiment a bit in your kitchen, and are OK if things don't work out exactly as you planned, you'll do fine.
No matter how relaxed you are, it is time consuming to plan a good set of dishes, and go to the 3-5 different places you need to go to get fresh, sometimes exotic ingredients in bulk. And then clean your house before everyone arrives. (People are good about cleaning before they leave).
No matter how much you prepare, a few things will go wrong on your first night, or even once you're a veteran, something could go wrong on any night. Don't let that uncertainty stress you out - the kinds of people who come to these things will, like you, enjoy the challenge of making it all work together.
It seems like you guys are good about varying whose house it meets at and who are the hosts. Does that help reduce the amount of time required by each person?
Yes. Once a month or so in rotation is quite doable and fun. Once a week would dominate our lives. Besides, it is excellent experience to attend when someone else is hosting, and see what works and what doesn't, and give each other gentle constructive feedback. And since we do enjoy the cooking and the eating more than the planning, we get to relax and just cook and socialize on the nights we're not hosting.
How much admin/running the whole thing do you do compared to buying ingredients and cooking?
Admin is pretty minimal - with email and paypal, organizing is a snap. Buying ingredients and organizing recipes takes maybe 2 or 3 evenings before the night of cooking.
Do you ever talk about the environmental impact of what you're doing, or do you not make that explicit?
It has varied. On some evenings, we've focused on the fact that everything was sourced locally (we subscribe to a CSA box aka "box from a local farm once a week").
On some evenings we're focused more on a particular culture's cuisine. In the bay area, we have imported spices and ingredients from all around the world.
Most everything is vegetarian, fresh, organic. We don't fixate on that, but it's sort of understood, and people who come back and decide to spend 3 hours on a work night cooking all fresh, mostly local stuff in a group tend to self-select for being environmentally conscious and all-around nice folk.
That is probably plenty for now! Sorry if I've asked too much. Don't worry about getting back to me quickly, as I'm sure you have lots and lots else to do. I'm just very interested in how this all works.
No worries. Hope this is a good start for you. Send more questions my way when you digest all of the above.
The first round in the south bay was started by some recently graduated SJSU students. I found them via advertisements on Craigslist. We've also been advertised or written up in local paper's events sections, yelp.com, facebook, etc.
We're not targeting specific people, except that we do want relaxed, pleasant people who can enjoy and thrive in the minor chaos that transpires at a frugal foodies cooking night. Some folks are a little OCD (I need my perfect knife, my perfect apple peeling tool, a huge uncrowded kitchen to myself, etc.). We try our best to accommodate everyone, but people who come back again and again tend to self-select to be at least a little social and very adaptable.
As to specific people - we get everyone from college kids to folks in their 60s or older.
Planning the first session was just a matter of picking a theme we'd have fun with (our first was Dominican Republic food), getting all the ingredients, and trying to make sure we'd have enough knives, cutting boards, bowls, and table space.
It sounds from the website that these take place in people's homes. Is that right? How do you all fit? (Maybe I've just become used to British people's kitchens)
We rarely get even half of the attendees in the kitchen at the same time.
Convert your dining room, living room, etc. into "prep areas". Throw tablecloths or sheets over everything, make sure there are lots of cutting boards and knives and bowls, and you'll be set.
You do want to plan your dishes such that you don't have everyone needing to throw something in the oven.
We have four burners ("rings" in england, if I'm not mistaken), and a smallish oven. Occasionally we fire up a camp stove on the back porch for another burner. We'll sometime break out an electric wok and put it in a non-kitchen room for one more cooking area.
We often have the dessert in the oven baking while we eat the main courses.
Check out http://frugalfoodies.oddren.com/recipes/ for the combinations of the dishes we tend to do in each evening with 4-5 burners and one oven.
How is the cooking structured? I would imagine that if it's in a home (or even most churches, etc) there would only be one stove and oven. How do you get everyone to have an active role in cooking?
90% of the work is prep work that doesn't need the stove. We start with whole raw vegetables - pretty much everything is "from scratch".
To keep everyone doing something: some recipes involve parallel steps (dry vs wet stuff, or dish vs sauce, etc.) We don't specify how to divide up the tasks, but people tend to adopt roles or split up the work fine on their own.
Our "teams" tend to be 2-3 people. Since we're feeding 12+ folks, the prep work in terms of chopping and measuring and whatnot keeps folks busy.
Oftentimes the bulk of what is being prepared involves cooking two rounds, two casserole dishes full, etc. If they divide it up that way, it again gives each member a chance to put their own touch on their portion. (al dente vs well-cooked, etc.)
Often towards the end of the evening, some dishes are on a "simmer" or "bake until done" kind of schedule. If someone is idle, they'll usually ask around to see if anyone else needs help with prep work.
If everyone else is on track, idle folks will start cleaning up, or just socialize, or both.
How much does the host act as a cooking teacher? Is it more informal than that?
We generally don't teach at all. The hosts aren't on a team - we float from group to group helping them get started (at the beginning of the evening this occupies all of our time - getting people situated with the gear they need and helping them if they don't know what something is or means on the recipe).
After things are moving smoothly, we'll lend a hand like anyone else - usually gravitating towards whichever dish requires prepping the most fresh vegetables, which is always the big time drain.
We'll tend to wander a bit and check in with groups - we'll try to catch disasters-in-the-making and help people recover with substitutions or re-balancing of the quantities when folks get measurements wrong, etc.
Do you mostly have regulars who come to the evenings, or does it vary?
About 60/40 between regulars and new faces.
Why do theme nights?
1) It's more fun for us hosts.
2) It's a hook/gimmick that gets more people to come. Would you rather attend a "we're going cook stuff together" night or an oddball theme night that grabs your interest? People will pick and choose which nights they come to based on the themes (One attendee said "I'm really busy, but I just *have* to come to Polska night - my grandfather was polish, and I have the most wonderful memories...")
3) Makes for fun conversation topics over the evening
4) Helps push the hosts to pick new recipes we've never tried before.
5) By publishing a theme rather than a menu, it lets us not finalize exactly what dishes we'll cook until the night before; once we know how many people are coming and what ingredients we can get fresh and cheaply.
Are you full for most nights? How do you deal with nights with only a few bookings or letting people know that it's been fully booked?
We've been getting overfull recently - I think we'll have to start turning people away soon. If there are too few RSVPs, we'll cancel one or two days before the night. Folks who pre-paid get a refund or a credit for a future night.
How stressful and time consuming is this (I suppose that's probably two separate questions)?
Depends on the person. I find it relaxing, but I thrive in slight chaos.
We've had hosts who were a little too controlling (wrote vague recipes, then spend the whole night telling people they were doing it wrong and dominating in the kitchen), we've had hosts who were fine during the event but stressed too much leading up to it in terms of preparations (I'm talking spreadsheets for ingredients and shopping lists and resources - dish A needs the stove for 30 minutes, then dish B gets it for 10 minutes, etc.)
If you're comfortable letting other people experiment a bit in your kitchen, and are OK if things don't work out exactly as you planned, you'll do fine.
No matter how relaxed you are, it is time consuming to plan a good set of dishes, and go to the 3-5 different places you need to go to get fresh, sometimes exotic ingredients in bulk. And then clean your house before everyone arrives. (People are good about cleaning before they leave).
No matter how much you prepare, a few things will go wrong on your first night, or even once you're a veteran, something could go wrong on any night. Don't let that uncertainty stress you out - the kinds of people who come to these things will, like you, enjoy the challenge of making it all work together.
It seems like you guys are good about varying whose house it meets at and who are the hosts. Does that help reduce the amount of time required by each person?
Yes. Once a month or so in rotation is quite doable and fun. Once a week would dominate our lives. Besides, it is excellent experience to attend when someone else is hosting, and see what works and what doesn't, and give each other gentle constructive feedback. And since we do enjoy the cooking and the eating more than the planning, we get to relax and just cook and socialize on the nights we're not hosting.
How much admin/running the whole thing do you do compared to buying ingredients and cooking?
Admin is pretty minimal - with email and paypal, organizing is a snap. Buying ingredients and organizing recipes takes maybe 2 or 3 evenings before the night of cooking.
Do you ever talk about the environmental impact of what you're doing, or do you not make that explicit?
It has varied. On some evenings, we've focused on the fact that everything was sourced locally (we subscribe to a CSA box aka "box from a local farm once a week").
On some evenings we're focused more on a particular culture's cuisine. In the bay area, we have imported spices and ingredients from all around the world.
Most everything is vegetarian, fresh, organic. We don't fixate on that, but it's sort of understood, and people who come back and decide to spend 3 hours on a work night cooking all fresh, mostly local stuff in a group tend to self-select for being environmentally conscious and all-around nice folk.
That is probably plenty for now! Sorry if I've asked too much. Don't worry about getting back to me quickly, as I'm sure you have lots and lots else to do. I'm just very interested in how this all works.
No worries. Hope this is a good start for you. Send more questions my way when you digest all of the above.
Thursday 5 March 2009
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).
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).
Friday 13 February 2009
Urban Growing Day Out!
Hello,
I don't know who might be up for a trip to London, but I would LOVE to go to this conference and would like some company! It's in a few weeks and sounds like a wonderful experience.
Check out this link for more information.
Maybe we can go there and get some ideas for our food campaign!
http://www.wen.org.uk/local_food/Reports/SCF_Invite09.pdf
I don't know who might be up for a trip to London, but I would LOVE to go to this conference and would like some company! It's in a few weeks and sounds like a wonderful experience.
Check out this link for more information.
Maybe we can go there and get some ideas for our food campaign!
http://www.wen.org.uk/local_food/Reports/SCF_Invite09.pdf
Wednesday 4 February 2009
My £2 a day diet challenge
Hello all,
Just to keep you informed, Mac and I have started our £2 a day challenge. The rules and our breakdown for every day can be found at my blog http://lessandlessandmore.blogspot.com/
So far we're on day 3, and it seems to be going well. I made cookies last night (6.5p each) out of half organic ingredients (well, the flour and butter were--and they made up a LOT of the dough!), have had an organic breakfast 2 out of the 3 days (today I had local bakery bread with organic jam) and mostly organic dinners, and we've still managed to stay under our £2 each.
Please share this with anyone you know who has been holding off on buying organic because they think it's too expensive. I'll be posting recipes, price breakdowns, and will hopefully be mentioning which ingredients are organic as I go. It's a month-long challenge, but I'm starting to think we'll be fine! No hunger pangs yet!
If you have kids or know someone with kids who might be up for trying this (I want to see if a family can do it), let me know. I'd be willing to help them do the initial weighing and pricing of things so that it's not such a chore.
Just to keep you informed, Mac and I have started our £2 a day challenge. The rules and our breakdown for every day can be found at my blog http://lessandlessandmore.blogspot.com/
So far we're on day 3, and it seems to be going well. I made cookies last night (6.5p each) out of half organic ingredients (well, the flour and butter were--and they made up a LOT of the dough!), have had an organic breakfast 2 out of the 3 days (today I had local bakery bread with organic jam) and mostly organic dinners, and we've still managed to stay under our £2 each.
Please share this with anyone you know who has been holding off on buying organic because they think it's too expensive. I'll be posting recipes, price breakdowns, and will hopefully be mentioning which ingredients are organic as I go. It's a month-long challenge, but I'm starting to think we'll be fine! No hunger pangs yet!
If you have kids or know someone with kids who might be up for trying this (I want to see if a family can do it), let me know. I'd be willing to help them do the initial weighing and pricing of things so that it's not such a chore.
Tuesday 3 February 2009
Food Campaign
Here are some ideas for the food campaign that we came up with at the meeting. The next step will be to pick some of these and flesh them out into actions, events, or campaigns. Your thoughts are not only appreciated, they are essential!!
Food Campaign
We had a think about what food events/issues we would like to cover during the food campaign, and ideas included:
- learning about permaculture
- focus on local food – Hampshire Fare
- food foraging lessons from an ethnobotanist
- urban gardening – home small space
- sharing an allotment/community urban gardens/garden shares
- WHY food is an environmental issue
- The WI have done a partnership with WRAP for Love Food, Hate Waste and have a workbook and report that groups can use to try to reduce their personal food waste available here or from http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/.
- Encouraging the City Council to include more food gardening space in their Open Spaces
- Environmental benefits of vegetarianism/veganism/eating less meat
- Making a cost per serving recipe book to encourage people who think they can't afford organic or local food to try it.
- How to reduce energy in cooking
Please add more ideas to this and then we can pick a few to start turning into action.
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