Wed, September 09, 2015 04:38:43
This piece was published in the Fresh Vegan magazine, Spring Issue 2015.
When we make more than we can eat
by
Zeenath Hasan
Founder Director
Rude Food Malmö
Ending up with more than we can eat is a curious occurrence of our
times. While the existence of food waste can be said to be an outcome
of industrial production and materialist consumption, the emergence I
would like to trace here is that of interventions into waste
production by citizen action. In this essay I will share my thinking
behind initiating Sweden’s first food waste catering service, Rude
Food Malmö, to bring you the story of current initiatives into food
waste intervention. I will end this narrative with two recipes to
highlight food waste both as an age old occurrence and as a sign of
our times.
To begin with outlining the sites of intervention into food waste,
I shall delve into three turbulences from a citizen action
perspective:
1. Line of Resistance
2. The Needy Knows
3. Emergence of the Food Waste Entrepreneur
1. Line of Resistance
Freeganism as an organised resistance to counter food waste was an
outcome of the anti-globalisation movement in the mid-90s. It
emerged as an anti-consumerist move to quickly gain stronghold as a
subculture or a preferred way of life by a conscientious few.
Freegans resist the underuse of necessities like food and housing
through self-organised tactics of dumpster diving, squatting, or
guerilla gardening. Knowledge is passed on in the form of a buddy
system. Collectively mapping prospective supermarket bins, dumpster
divers follow self-made rules for their dumpster diving action,
cautioning each other to, ‘Leave it cleaner than you found it!’
Thriving at the borders of legality, dumpster diving in Sweden is
given a side glance by authorities for whom a follow up with legal
action is a financial drain that does not deserve precious executive
time nor the public outcry that it might chance up.
2. The Needy Knows
Soup kitchens are a meeting point for those that want to give and
those that have found themselves in a position to receive. Frequently
organised by charities, churches and community groups, the soup
kitchen is channel for food to those who need it. The food is sourced
from commercial kitchens, donated, or prepared by volunteers. The
eater here is one who lives at the edge of others’ excesses.
3. The Emergence of the Food Waste Entrepreneur
Rescue, intercept, glean are some of the terms that are being
employed for the more recent interventions into the curiously modern
practice of creating food waste. Whether dumpster diver turned social
entrepreneur, citizen making good, the food waste entrepreneur is
re-making the restaurant business. The Real Junk Food Project / UK,
Instock / Amsterdam, Spisehuset Rub & Stub / Copenhagen and Rude
Food / Malmö are some examples.
Heres where we come to the story of Rude Food Malmö. I initiated
Rude Food Malmö in September 2014 by inviting 3 friends from the civil
society sector around a blueprint for a volunteer run,
not-for-profit, food waste restaurant where excess is routed to
relevant charities. Today we number upto 35 active volunteers who
serve food waste brunch every Saturday and provide catering for
anywhere from 20 to 400 eaters at a time. Rude Food lays claim to be
Sweden’s first food waste catering service and one of the few climate
positive restaurants in the world.
Organic farms, supermarkets and bakeries provide their excess
regularly to the Rude Food kitchen. Our menu is lacto-vegetarian and
vegan. The restaurant kitchen infrastructure for the initiative was
provided by my restaurant kitchen project Tapori Tiffins, a space I
started in July 2013 to question the idea of the restaurant as a
restaurant.
Why do we call our food waste catering service Rude Food? Food
that has been ignored comes right back onto our plates. The Rude Food
initiative is a socially innovative way to re-think the food on our
plates.
And now to end with two recipes as a
way to look back and a way forward at interventions into food waste
as everyday practice.
Chorchori / Discarded Veggie Parts in Mustard Paste
/ Some classics never die
This recipe is from my childhood days in Kolkata, India. The Bengalis
hate to throw away perfectly good food, instead opting to make a
celebration with the supposedly discarded in their kitchen. So gather
your organic cauliflower stems, carrot peel, spinach stems, pumpkin
peel and aim to make this dish at the end of the week or whenever you
have enough discarded veggie parts to cook yourself a meal.
Portion: For 2 moderate eaters
Time to prepare: 10 – 15 minutes
Eat with: Chapati / Flat bread or with Rice
Equipment required: Blender with a small jar or a coffee grinder
Ingredients:
2 Tbsp, mustard seeds
1 piece, potato, with the skin on of course, provided it is
organic
2 cups, discarded veggies
1 piece, tomato
3 pieces, green chilli
1/2 tsp, turmeric powder
1/4 tsp, chilli powder
3 Tbsp, oil
salt to taste
1/4 tsp, organic brown sugar
(A) Boil together potato, tomato and discarded veggies in just
enough water until al dente.
(B) Make a wet paste in a blender, of the mustard seeds and one
green chili. Best to use a small blender jar if you have or a coffee
grinder. You can also make a bigger amount of this paste and freeze
it in portions.
(C) Heat oil in a wok, for an even spread of heat. Chop and fry
the remaining green chillis.
(D) Add the boiled veggies.
(E) Add the powdered spices.
(F) Add salt + sugar.
(G) Add the mustard-chilli paste and cook till the water
evaporates and you are left with a smooth thickness emanating from
the pumpkin and potatoes.
(H) Ready to serve.
100% Raw Banana Ice Cream /
Environmentally informed
food innovation
Vegan and Gluten-free
So heres the deal with bananas. Spotty ones are better for us
nutrition-wise than those deceptive bright yellow ones. The low shelf
life of bananas means that they are the leading loss incurring
product for supermarkets with some opting out of fair trade bananas.
As conscientious consumers-cooks-eaters we need to get into our
supermarkets and say, ‘Gimme me my spotty banana! And make that a
fair trade one while you’re at it’
Our supermarket food waste partners at Rude Food rescued 70 kgs of
bananas. As a food waste entrepreneur this should come as no
surprise. As a food waste cook, the challenge is to make wonders out
of a single ingredient. So for food waste brunch, we split the banana
pile into half and made Caribbean Banana Curry (the recipe to which
you will just have to wait out for when the Rude Food Cookbook gets
out 🙂 And the other half we made into Raw Banana Ice Cream. We’re
contemplating incubating Raw Banana Ice cream vendors this summer in
Malmö. Do you want to be a food waste entrepreneur?
Time to prepare: 15 minutes of active doing by you. 8hrs + 2hrs of
freezing time.
Equipment required: A pretty good blender or food processor
Ingredients:
Bananas!
Optional additions,
1 tsp, peanut butter per banana
or
1 tsp, raw cocoa, per banana
or
1/2 tsp, powdered fennel seeds per banana, if you’re into that
licorice fetish.
The bananas need to be peeled, chopped into bite size pieces and
frozen for a good 6-8 hours at least. Remove from freezer and defrost
at room temperature for upto 2 hours. Pop the semi-frozen pieces,
adding your chosen flavour, in your blender. Give it a good whirr
until you see creaminess taking shape in your blender. An ice cream
miracle taking shape in front of your eyes. The pectin the banana
gives it a good hold. No cream needed 🙂
Portion your 100% Raw Banana Ice Cream and refreeze for another 2
hrs at least.
Alternatively, the ice cream can be frozen and removed from the
freezer at least 1.5 hrs before you intend to eat them.
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