My mum heard about this anti food-wastage event because she'd been to a previous one. And she heard about the previous one because she was reading about participation art on a website called "Tinata". I don't completely understand how the event was art, but as my mum says, "Art can be anything, anything can be art" (My mum's an artist), so I guess it
was in a way.........
So, anyway...
Where was I?...
Oh, yeah: So, we went to this event (We, meaning my family and I, plus two people we know). Well, when we got there, we really thought we'd come to the wrong place. I don't mean it as a metaphor; I don't mean that we didn't like the place; what I mean, is that the place looked like it was the back entrance to some kind of warehouse, rather than somewhere where you hold a cooking/ anti food-wastage event. The building was tucked away, perpendicular to a grey or black, rather unattractive gate. The building itself had a gate, too, which could only be opened from the inside; we had to press a button to be let in. Once inside the building, it took some time (And lots of question-asking) to figure out that we were in the right place. I really wouldn't have guessed it, as the place seemed a little... messy. It actually felt a bit like we were being smuggled into a gangsters' den ;-).
As I was saying, we found out that we were in the right place, so we went upstairs, along some corridors, and through some doors. Once in the right room, or rather, hall, it felt a bit less like a gangster's den. There was a projector suspended from the ceiling, and many tables and chairs. Everyone who was already there had been assigned tasks to do with he food preparation. It took us a few minutes to settle in and find something to do, but once my sister, mum and I began helping to make pastry, I found I was enjoying myself. We chatted with the lady who was making the pastry with us, who happened to be very pleasant. And what's cool, is that I learnt to make pastry. Yay!
While rolling out the pastry, I chatted to some more people, all of whom seemed both interesting, interested, friendly and sweet. After I finished with the pastry, I found some more jobs to do, and when all the food was ready, everyone sat down to eat.
While we were eating, three people stood up to give talks on food wastage. It was explained to us that the food we were eating was had been rescued from being thrown away. It was NOT off or mouldy or stale. I will explain why it was going to be thrown away; below is a list of some of the things I remember from the talks:
- A lot of the time, supermarkets don't want to sell food because it doesn't look perfect, even when there is nothing wrong with it. They throw away the food that they don't want to sell.
- Sometimes, when supermarkets make a contract with their suppliers about how much food they need, they find out that they'd ordered too much; they'd estimated wrongly how much food they'd need. To get out of having to pay for the what they won't be able to sell, they pretend to their suppliers that the food isn't up to expected standards. Supermarkets then have a right to throw away the food.
- Some food doesn't make it's way to the shops because there isn't enough transport.
The food that we used for the event was donated by different organizations, including "Feed the 5k". All of it was vegetarian, and some, vegan.
I think I would like to go to another one function like this one, or maybe volunteer to help at something similar. Maybe I'll do something like "The sandwich run", which I wrote about in a few earlier posts: London Streetfood Bank
London Streetfood Bank (Part two)
London Streetfood Bank (Part three)
London Streetfood Bank (Part four)
