Suddenly the salads got intense, as the rain finally fell and the conversations shifted from the hungry gap to what am I going to do with all these courgettes? At our monthly meeting we discussed the lowest carbon ways to store the upcoming harvests from runner beans to gooseberries. Top of the glut preservation methods was lacto-fermentation (see Olivia’s blog on this subject) as as we sat down to our customary feast of local, home-grown, organic, freegan, fair-trade food. Erik’s jar of fermented parsnips added a zip to the new season’s potatoes, broad beans, sugarsnap peas, radishes, sea beet, French beans, asparagus (last of), artichokes (first of), eggs and raspberries. Mark's 14-herb medicine jelly refreshed our palates (and our systems).
Our other hot topic was rocket stoves: I’d just returned from the Sunrise Festival (see next week's Gatherings on the blog) and worked at the (totally off-grid) Tin Village making pizza in a wood-fired earth-oven. All our food was cooked on these extraordinarily simple and effective low-fuel stoves. Christine also talked about her super-efficient wood oven in the cottage she shares in the Thetford Forest. Community and field kitchens are a key way to share resources, swap skills and focus on the earthy, essential nature of food and cooking in a way that is hard to access with the batterie of the modern consumer kitchen - all its decadent recipes, techno-gadgets and supermarket-wrapped produce.For low-carbon cooks the downshift is not just in the what, it’s also in the how. Charlotte Du Cann
For more info about the Low Carbon Cookbook or to join the group email Charlotte on theseakaleproject@hotmail.co.uk.
Local fruit: dessert and Morello cherries from Paul Jackson's and Bungay Library Community Garden; home-grown gooseberries and blackcurrents; whitecurrants from neighbours; home-made jam from Norman;s's gooseberries and Malcolm's strawberries: small rocket stove by Wild Stoves at the Sunrise Festival, Bruton, Someset.
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