Mallory O’Donnell on A Sustainable Mind

I’ve learned so much listening to podcasts on A Sustainable Mind through the years.

This interview with Mallory O’Donnell, whose blog How to Cook a Weed is a favourite, struck me. The discussion reflects an approach to foraging which isn’t so much about wild food as trophy but instead gathered plant as relationship– with nature, with gardened landscape and feral escapees, with one’s own process of learning and self-education. I find this moving and hopeful. Have a listen.  And there’s loads to learn and recipes to inspire on the blog.  Looking forward to Mallory’s book!

How to Cook a Weed

I had the great pleasure earlier this month to be interviewed by Marjorie Alexander for the incredible A Sustainable Mind podcast. Marjorie highlights people who are doing some truly inspiring work around issues of ecology, food waste, reusable energy, sustainable living and a myriad of other matters that all relate very closely to the issues that are close to my heart. I feel honored to be included amongst these folks who are contributing in a much more direct way to facing and resolving what is one of the great crises of our times.

It is my firm belief that living more simply and in greater harmony with nature is one of the most important and personal steps we can take in life. I urge you to think about the sustainability of your actions every time you collect wild food, to understand and acknowledge the relationships of the plants and wildlife around…

View original post 62 more words

Support Calais Kitchens

A beautiful illustration by Niki Groom a.k.a., Miss Magpie, Fashion Spy, showing volunteers in a kitchen in Calais cooking hot meals for people in camps in Calais and Dunkirk- for as far around as can go.

My friend Vicky and I are going next week, to get stuck in, hopefully with one of the Calais Kitchens. Knowing we are going, people in our town, including the local Refugee Support Group, have been generously giving us money to help how we see fit when we arrive. I expect we’ll be buying onions. Our wheelie-bags are already filled with spices.

This is the Calais Kitchens crowdfunder, and thanks to friends who have already responded.

A week ago I organised some links to help people both donate and volunteer, if they’re able.

————

If I’m able, I’ll post photographs on Instagram on my new account with the name “kitchencounterculture”.  Please follow me there.

Another amazing illustration by Niki Groom:

Food Sovereignty and Breastfeeding, Illustrated in a Brilliant GIF

Much thanks and appreciation to whoever created this and put it online.

Squirrels as Ethical Meat: Recipe Ideas

Hello George Monbiot, here talking about roadkill as ethical meat, and I’m with him on this one, for all the reasons he dislikes most farm-bred meat, mentioned in the video above and discussed here and here.

And I have friends who, as foresters and re-wilders, deeply hate the grey squirrels of Britain for the damage these invasive creatures do to (re)foresting efforts; these activists see eating squirrel as a vote for a wider notion of Ecology.  Here’s a blog from a journalist in Scotland who writes about eating squirrel from this point of view.

When I wrote about rabbit over a year ago, I catalogued recipes in my cookbooks to give readers a sense of culinary possibility, and myself a future reference.  I’m reposting this list for everyone who might be inspired to try something new.  Squirrels are meant to cook very similar to rabbit, hence the recipes can be transposed.

For me eating squirrel is hypothetical so far, I should add– though there’s a dead one, courtesy of our cat, in front of our house, and I’m talking to kids about the succession of creatures that eat and rot the dead, especially the gorgeous bottle flies with their metallic blue-green jewel bodies.

Rabbit/ Squirrel Recipes

Crystal Palace Food Market: Local with Heart

photo awaiting name of photographer to credit 🙂

My twitter feed is mostly a combination of opulent food posts with gorgeously styled photos, and dire information about ecological and political calamity resulting in hunger.  I can feel both the discordance and how actually it’s a reflection of truth, how people live such very different realities in relation to food and eating.

As a food blogger, obviously I have an interest in delicious food, but I cannot forget inequality or environmental vulnerability, and social issues that concern me, and I most respect other individuals and groups who juggle these same concerns and yet passions.

When I learned that the Crystal Palace Food Market in South London was up for a BBC Radio 4 Food and Farming Award in the Best Food Market category award, and that they sought to use the opportunity (as winners or runners-up) to give voice to its aspirations and principles, I felt immediately willing to step up.