We’ve got a couple little veggie patch gardens in our community orchard where we planted beans, peas, spinach, squash, marrow, tomatoes & potatoes. At one of our workparties we spent our time picking these veggies, then chopped them up together and cooked them up over the fire. We fried up some onion & garlic with some curry spices then added all our chopped veggies and water with stock. When it was almost all cooked we added in our green leaves (spinach, chard & stinging nettles) to steam on the top. We all enjoyed eating it together, so delicious and enjoyable to all be involved in cooking and eating. This was the start of our plan to involve the community in more social eating events. We made the plan to celebrate World food day on 16th October together with our St Ives Community Orchard Foodshare (SCOF) group by cooking up a big pot of stew in our new big pot to share it with those who come along to our regular foodshare collections.
We’d like to broaden our foodshare group into promoting social eating in the future using surplus food and are looking at ways that this can be done, even in the coronavirus lockdown environment. Many individuals have reported that their experiences of loneliness & social isolation have increased hugely and some of the people who come collect food from us have said that it’s their main social interaction in the week and so we’re looking at ways we can create social eating spaces, using community venues and social bubble dining, a way of coming together that is safe & affordable. Watch this space & if you’re interested in being involved & helping, get in touch.
“In these increasingly fraught times, when community cohesion is even more important, making time for and joining in communal meals is perhaps the single most important thing we can do – both for our health and well being and for that of the wider community” Prof Robin Dunbar (taken off the www.socialeatingnetwork.org)
Interesting reading about social eating on //theconversation.com/social-eating-inside-the-supermarket-surplus-initiatives-that-could-change-the-way-we-eat
and //www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-03-16-social-eating-connects-communities