Blog Action Day: Sharing Our Food Knowledge

In this post I'll be combining Vegan Mofo and Blog Action Day. Blog action Day this year is about food so it's not that hard to combine the two. That hardest part is picking a topic. Food seems to be the most simple and the most complicated thing in our lives. I've picked a topic that is very close to my heart. I want to talk about sharing. Not just sharing food but sharing the knowledge that goes with it.

Everyone is saying it. Days barley pass before another newspaper complains about it. Kids today have lost touch with were there food comes from. I think that's wrong. Young people haven't lost knowledge. They aren't born knowing everything and then forget it just to annoy us. It's our fault. We've failed them. We haven't been passing knowledge down. In some cases we've been failed too. Nobody gave us the knowledge, nobody certainly gave us any confidence, or money for ingredients, or time to cook, or decent kitchens. We're in a mess.

One of the ways I try to dig myself, and my community, out of it is to teach young people how to cook. I've held impromptu lessons with my brothers, roped kids walking through Occombe farm into a quick lesson on herbs and vegetables, I've helped at cookery classes for young people and grown-ups alike. One of the best things in my life is volunteering for Girlguiding UK. And you can be sure I've slipped some food into that.

Actually it's not all that hard to combine food and Guiding. It's one of the things we're famous for. Most, if not all of our planning also comes from suggestions from the girls and they suggest eating an awful lot. It's almost always the first thing mentioned when asking my Brownie unit what they want to do this term. We're always happy to oblige.