Feeding Cardiff - A blogger's perspective
An insight into the events at Feed Cardiff this weekend (9th October 2010)
6.30am The alarm buzzes into life and I drag my butt out of bed and into the shower. It's 7am I'm washed, dressed and packing my apron into my rucksack and selecting some appropriate tunes to ease me gently into the day
At 7.30am I'm on a bus and heading to The Salvation Army in Grangetown that would be our kitchen base for the day. I arrive at 8am and am met by Joyce from The Salvation Army who lets me into the building and shows me down to the kitchen. I'm shortly joined by Helen, another volunteer, and eventually by Kate from Cardiff Transition, one of the organisations organising the day.
By 8.30am the early shift has started, with Carly and Chris also volunteering and the cooking being overseen by Wayne, chef at The Canteen on Clifton Street, who guides us on just what to do with the overflowing pots, pans and tins of vegetables and pulses that we've been confronted with.
The menu is a simple vegetable curry and rice, with a side of poppadoms and chapatis (more about these later). Onions a fried in vegetable ghee in huge batches. Spices are added and the vegetables follow in a steady stream.
9am and a welcome pitstop for tea. Wayne has realised that with the vegetables taking up the entire hob, we'll have to microwave the rice. He looks disparingly at the tiny, domestic microwave in the kitchen and after briefly instructing me on the ratio of water to rice, jumps in his car, only to return later with his industrial microwave oven. With two batches on the go at once, we're in business and by 10.15am I've filled one of the large pots which will become the first serving of rice.
At 10.45am we're on our way into town with a vat of veggy curry, my pot of rice and some dried fruit. It takes a while to weave through the horrendous weekend traffic, a journey only improved by the wonderful civic road works which seem to spring up overnight. A 10 minute journey quickly becomes 20 minutes but we're kept entertained by talk of monkeys in boxes and watching squirrels burying nuts at the roadside.
Eventually, the curry is safely transported onto the site and I can see our stand for the day, a gorgeous little gazebo comandeered from the University which has been expertly decorated. I meet some of the other volunteers and the gang from Cardiff Friends of the Earth who are also helping out with the campaign and highlighting the Sustainable Livestock Bill.
Our first customer of the day is a Big Issue seller, grateful for a free, hot meal in the middle of the day. He seems to genuinely enjoy it and soon everyone is getting in on the action.
The clock rolls forward to 12pm and I'm helping Toby and Grace with the chapati making. We start slowly and there are a few technical problems with the cooking but this is resolved and we quickly get into a good routine. They even taste good! The queue by the stand is huge and everyone seems keen to stop and taste some of our food. Even better, they are keen to find out more about food waste, the Transition Project and Cardiff FOE. People are genuinely shocked to find out how much money is wasted each year by disposing of food which is perfectly usable but may not meet the high aesthetic standards set by major retailers and our own expectations of what food looks like.
1pm and chapati making is in full swing. I have a quick sit down and a mouthful of chapati to keep me going and then it's back to it. People are still queuing and the chapati making is getting quite a bit of interest. Toby, Grace and I discuss food, gardening and how we should all quit our day jobs and start a chapati making business. 1.45pm and most of the chapati mix is gone and we're on the home stretch. Whilst Grace goes to serve, I keep squashing, stretching and flattening the dough into flat, roundish shapes, and passing them to Toby to throw onto the hot plate.
At roughly 2.15pm all the dough is gone. Mission accomplished! I can finally eat. Toby and I grab a bowl and ladle out some rice, curry and grab one of our chapatis. Sat on the cold paving stones of Working Street, in the shadow of St John's church, I shovel mouthfuls of the rich sauce and grains to my mouth. It's spicy without being hot, the vegetables are tender and the bread helps soak up some of the juices at the bottom of the bowl. Sated, I stop by the FOE stand and have a chat with them, signing a postcard to my MP and admiring the cow masks that have been decorated at the event.
By the time I come to leave we've fed over 500 people and are still going! Toby waves me off and I head home, exhausted but happy.
Later, via Twitter I learn that over 700 people were fed over the day. A huge achievement for the cooks, volunteers and most of all the organisers. We did an amazing thing, but it is rather poignant that all this was done on food would have otherwise been thrown away simply due to the buying habits of retailers and our response to food.
6.30am The alarm buzzes into life and I drag my butt out of bed and into the shower. It's 7am I'm washed, dressed and packing my apron into my rucksack and selecting some appropriate tunes to ease me gently into the day
At 7.30am I'm on a bus and heading to The Salvation Army in Grangetown that would be our kitchen base for the day. I arrive at 8am and am met by Joyce from The Salvation Army who lets me into the building and shows me down to the kitchen. I'm shortly joined by Helen, another volunteer, and eventually by Kate from Cardiff Transition, one of the organisations organising the day.
By 8.30am the early shift has started, with Carly and Chris also volunteering and the cooking being overseen by Wayne, chef at The Canteen on Clifton Street, who guides us on just what to do with the overflowing pots, pans and tins of vegetables and pulses that we've been confronted with.
The menu is a simple vegetable curry and rice, with a side of poppadoms and chapatis (more about these later). Onions a fried in vegetable ghee in huge batches. Spices are added and the vegetables follow in a steady stream.
9am and a welcome pitstop for tea. Wayne has realised that with the vegetables taking up the entire hob, we'll have to microwave the rice. He looks disparingly at the tiny, domestic microwave in the kitchen and after briefly instructing me on the ratio of water to rice, jumps in his car, only to return later with his industrial microwave oven. With two batches on the go at once, we're in business and by 10.15am I've filled one of the large pots which will become the first serving of rice.
At 10.45am we're on our way into town with a vat of veggy curry, my pot of rice and some dried fruit. It takes a while to weave through the horrendous weekend traffic, a journey only improved by the wonderful civic road works which seem to spring up overnight. A 10 minute journey quickly becomes 20 minutes but we're kept entertained by talk of monkeys in boxes and watching squirrels burying nuts at the roadside.
Eventually, the curry is safely transported onto the site and I can see our stand for the day, a gorgeous little gazebo comandeered from the University which has been expertly decorated. I meet some of the other volunteers and the gang from Cardiff Friends of the Earth who are also helping out with the campaign and highlighting the Sustainable Livestock Bill.
Our first customer of the day is a Big Issue seller, grateful for a free, hot meal in the middle of the day. He seems to genuinely enjoy it and soon everyone is getting in on the action.
The clock rolls forward to 12pm and I'm helping Toby and Grace with the chapati making. We start slowly and there are a few technical problems with the cooking but this is resolved and we quickly get into a good routine. They even taste good! The queue by the stand is huge and everyone seems keen to stop and taste some of our food. Even better, they are keen to find out more about food waste, the Transition Project and Cardiff FOE. People are genuinely shocked to find out how much money is wasted each year by disposing of food which is perfectly usable but may not meet the high aesthetic standards set by major retailers and our own expectations of what food looks like.
1pm and chapati making is in full swing. I have a quick sit down and a mouthful of chapati to keep me going and then it's back to it. People are still queuing and the chapati making is getting quite a bit of interest. Toby, Grace and I discuss food, gardening and how we should all quit our day jobs and start a chapati making business. 1.45pm and most of the chapati mix is gone and we're on the home stretch. Whilst Grace goes to serve, I keep squashing, stretching and flattening the dough into flat, roundish shapes, and passing them to Toby to throw onto the hot plate.
At roughly 2.15pm all the dough is gone. Mission accomplished! I can finally eat. Toby and I grab a bowl and ladle out some rice, curry and grab one of our chapatis. Sat on the cold paving stones of Working Street, in the shadow of St John's church, I shovel mouthfuls of the rich sauce and grains to my mouth. It's spicy without being hot, the vegetables are tender and the bread helps soak up some of the juices at the bottom of the bowl. Sated, I stop by the FOE stand and have a chat with them, signing a postcard to my MP and admiring the cow masks that have been decorated at the event.
By the time I come to leave we've fed over 500 people and are still going! Toby waves me off and I head home, exhausted but happy.
Later, via Twitter I learn that over 700 people were fed over the day. A huge achievement for the cooks, volunteers and most of all the organisers. We did an amazing thing, but it is rather poignant that all this was done on food would have otherwise been thrown away simply due to the buying habits of retailers and our response to food.
Comments
If you haven't already done so, please write to your MP here...
http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/biodiversity/press_for_change/back_sustainable_livestock_bill_24522.html
Well done you for doing this.
However, the underlying issue - how much perfectly useable food is thrown out daily - is a sobering thought,to say the least. I know that some supermarkets - Aldi definately - have scrapped sell by dates on products. The flip side is that I often benefit from sell by dates as I tend to do the food shopping at night and things are marked down to practically nothing because they have a sell by date on , and there is absolutely nothing wrong with them ;and invariably they go on to last four or five days longer in the fridge. We do very nicely on the five a day front in this house I have to say. However I know that so much else is still out by supermarkets. It's immoral. This needs to change.I will go the link that you posted right now.Thankyou for such an informative post.
I have got a thing about food wastage too. I am very nifty with the left-overs in our house - when there are any that is. I don't even like to throw a slice of bread away.
I think sell-by-dates are one of the modern day curses.
This is a really interesting post. that essence of bringing people together through both cooking and eating really comes through in your writing and the detail in which you describe the day. yes a real achievement. look forward to reading your blog more.