Six of us met for our second Cookbook meeting at Christine’s. We had a great cook up with seasonal veg and fruit in Christine's big North African pan and planned out the book, the way gardeners and permaculturists do: by thinking ahead. We decided to map our cooking and growing year beginning today, paying attention to everything that goes into the pot.Afterwards we looked at the ingredients we had brought and their provenance: Erik’s exotic prickly achocha, nasturtium flowers and rainbow chard home-grown in Hethersett, Christine’s garlic and tomatoes from her terrace, leeks from a market garden near Mark, a bunch of fragrant herbs from outside Charlotte's door, apples and blackberries from Bee's orchard in Thorpe St Andrew, Norfolk potatoes, courgettes and flat beans from Norwich market's Folland’s Organics, We shared gifts: out-of-date walnut and avocado oils, cous cous salad from the Green Grocer, sweet chestnuts gathered from Thetford forest. We shared resources: Felicity Lawrence's incisive investigation into supermarket food Not On The Label, documentaries The Power of Community and A Farm for the Future, David Gershon's visionary Social Change 2.0 and Masanobu Fukuoka's no-till agriculture classic The One Straw Revolution.
We talked organic, vegetarian, meat, fish, freegan, industrial! And how we saw The Low Carbon Cookbook taking shape over the coming year, who would focus on what areas. For a full write up of the day see Mark's blog.
If you would like to get involved with this project come to our next meeting! We're planning to write "information boxes" on all aspects of the food production, including a directory of local resources and recipes with ecological footprints. Contact: Charlotte Du Cann rootsshootsandseeds@hotmail.co.uk
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