From plot to plate, from terrace to table

On Thursday 14^th March 2013 I went with one of my best friends to a conference held at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne. The event was called “From plot to plate, from terrace to table”.

The Edible Balcony

An amazing discussion with some great and well-known food writers! The TV presenter, journalist and food writer Indira Naidoo moderated the talk with Stephanie Alexander, Rohan Anderson and Max Allen.

Indira Naidoo’s book “The Edible Balcony” gives valuable advice on how to grow herbs, vegetables and fruits on your balcony. She claims that you don’t need to have a big garden to have your own fresh organic produce.

Kitchen Garden Cooking with Kids

Stephanie Alexander is known for the remarkable work that she undertakes with kids at the “Kitchen Garden Foundation”. She explained how rewarding it is to teach kids where vegies and fruits come from, to teach them how to plant and grow delicious tomatoes. She said that some parents say: “My son doesn’t eat vegetables”. But then when they actually grow their own vegetable and taste it they appreciate it and completely change their food habits. I think that it must be very exciting for a child to say: “Mum I grew this zucchini”! I remember myself when I was kid and we had to grow a bean by putting it in wet cotton. I remember that I was really excited when I first saw the little green plant growing from these beans!

Whole Larder Love

Rohan Anderson is the author of the book “The Whole Larder Love”. He is a controversial food writer who lives in Ballarat and basically eats what he has in his garden. And when he wants some meat, he takes his gun and shoots a rabbit in the bush. He shared with us his experience and explained that before he used to eat a lot of fast food, and what made him change his food habits so drastically. His book looks amazing! It gives great recipes and tips on fresh organic country produce and skills for the simpler life.

The History of Australian Wine

Max Allen writes about wine in Australia. He is the wine columnist for “The Weekend Australian Magazine” and G (Australia’s first ‘green lifestyle’ magazine) but also wine editor for Australian Gourmet Traveller magazine. During the talk he criticized the alcohol lobbying and compared it to the cigarette lobbying few years ago. I have heard that some people are trying to introduce unbranded packaging with pictures of car crashes on alcohol bottles the same way as we now have pictures of people dying from cancer on the cigarettes packs.

Personally I think that this is quite hypocritical, people get used to seeing those pictures and are not buying less cigarettes because of it. I think that people in Australia are buying fewer cigarettes because it’s very expensive and also some people are becoming more conscious of the bad effects of it. However I know a lot of people who are still smoking for pleasure and just got used to those horrible pictures on the packaging.

To summarise, the discussion was really interesting, lively and all the speakers were remarkably inspiring! I absolutely enjoyed being part of the audience. And at the end I got to talk to some of them and congratulate them on their wonderful work.

If you want to know more about the speakers here are the links to their blogs:

http://saucyonion.blogspot.com.au/

Home

http://wholelarderlove.com/

http://www.maxallen.com.au/index.html

Related articles

• Happy hunting grounds (theage.com.au)
• My Balcony Makeover Project (soniakhurana.wordpress.com)

Watch the play, eat the stage!

The other day I went with a friend to ‘Earthly Activation’, an informal talk about sustainability presented by Melbourne’s architectural and design community. The event was held at the Section 8 pub in Melbourne.

A nice hot day, where some fantastic speakers gave great insight on relevant topics such as the current food system, ethical food, organic food certifications and sustainability in all its forms! It was a really good discussion and I learned a few things about traditional and organic food systems in Australia. But what I really loved was Tanja Beer’s presentation about “The Living Stage”.

This presentation was really surprising! I’ve never heard about this concept of “Green Theatre” or “Living Stage”. The “Green Theatre” offers sustainable solutions for theatrical design to support the ethic of ‘ecological design’ in the Performing Arts. The main idea is to demonstrate to the community that we can create exciting artistic projects and ideas with minimal effect on the environment.

The Living Stage

Tanja shared her experience with the audience and explained how she started integrating sustainability into her work. She presented the concept of “Living Stage” which is an eco-scenographic concept that combines stage design, permaculture and community engagement to create a recyclable, biodegradable and edible performance space. She uses plants, vegetables, fruits, salads or even soil.

Imagine a stage that you can literally eat after the play! How crazy is that?! I have never seen this before and I really love the idea of being able to eat the stage! Such a cool idea!

Instead of using traditional construction materials to build the stage, they use recycled materials, plants and a veggie garden that is cultivated by the community. She said that the actors also play with the elements on the stage interacting with the audience. Those plays are for sure an exceptional experience for the public.

She brought some salads from one of her “Living Stages” for us to try and of course I didn’t miss the opportunity to scoff the salad! The taste was so good and healthy! I have just one thing to say! Great job Tanja! It’s a beautiful and creative way to integrate sustainability with design and performing arts. Well done!

If you want to know more about Tanja’s creations and her extraordinary work, visit http://tanjabeer.com/

http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/-2gb5z.html

Growing lemons leaves

Trash making treasure! Landfill Harmonic

I received this video from a friend on my Facebook. I had to share this with you guys! These kids are just awesome and their story is so inspiring! Stories like this give me faith in the humanity and make me believe that together we can make a better world.

Landfill Harmonic reduces landfill and give hope through the music. A documentary about the story of the people of Cateura, Paraguay, a slum built on a landfill where residents pick through trash to make music instruments. A cello made of oil can, amazing! The orchestra, its creator and the players are an example of human strength, solidarity, creativity and truly give hope in a better future.

I really love this trailer and I can’t wait to watch the movie!!

Please, like it, share it and tweet it! Let’s spread the word about this amazing project.

http://www.facebook.com/landfillharmonicmovie

Related articles

• Cateura, Paraguay’s residents live on top of a landfill… (thekidshouldseethis.com)