What food is on your table now?

Plant Five for Life and DYCLE - Diaper Cycle are collaboratively exploring cross-cultural connections to landscapes from birth across generations. This week we are asking the question:

What food is on your table now?

The holidays are coming in European countries and probably some of your table may have Christmas decorations, too. DYCLE asked surrounding friends what food is on their table and asked further where that food came from, as well as how they acquired it.
 


Marten, at home, Antwerp, Belgium

“Last night we made butter chicken, made with Seitan. We hardly eat meat any more so we are looking out for good alternatives to chicken, pork and beef.  

Breakfast is porridge made with water and pimped with dates, dried apricot, ground almonds, pumpkin seeds, goji berries, cinnamon, sunflower oil and some salt. Tastes awesome and is super healthy.

Lunch always varies, but is mostly bread with cheese or eggs or peanut butter. Sometimes soup.

Most of our food comes from an organic supermarket because we prefer to buy food that doesn't have poison on it. We try to buy things that have been grown as locally as possible. In the near future we want to grow a large part of the food we eat.

 

Desiree, visiting Schumacher College in South West England, UK

Soup is leek, onion, garlic, some squash and potato. Squash from own garden, rest sourced from Riverford Organics 10 km further. Salad is squash, beetroot and chard all from own garden. The cheeses are locally sourced from farmers in South West England. As is the butter. There is some sourdough bread made in own kitchen.

 

Mariko, at home, Nagasaki, Japan

This simple dish is called “Onishime” (お煮染), a classic Japanese vegetable stew. We use seasonal vegetables for it and celebrate special occasions such New Year with many guests at households. Arrowhead (kuwai) vegetable is nowaday imported from China. However few days ago, I found Japanese one at a shop, which was quite rare. Then I needed to buy it and cook this dish, although New Year is a little bit early! My neighbor knows a farmer in Shimabara peninsula in Nagasaki and she often gives over to us what she has received directly from the farmer.  

 

Clockwise: lotus root from Saga prefecture (next to Nagasaki), carrot from Shimabara peninsula, Nagasaki, arrowhead (kuwai) from Hiroshima prefecture, arum root (kon-nyaku) from Nagasaki, shiitake mushroom from Shimabara peninsula, Nagasaki, Eddoe (satoimo) from Shimabara peninsula.  

 

Agnes, at home, Venice, Italy

I love to buy fresh stuff, a lot of fruit and vegetables. I buy them nearly every day, also because it’s so much fun to see and to choose them here in Venice, on the rich Rialto market and in many other places too.

I bring them home and I like to leave them directly on the table,  - just because they are so beautiful to see. Well, in this period - mostly “Tarocchi” oranges from Sicily, Clementines without seeds, all from Italy and apples from South Tyrol. Pineapple and bananas as well - even if they do come from more far away, but they are necessary to prepare a typical “winterlicher Obstsalat”, typical for my winter- and Christmas feeling. Often I buy also wonderful and very big walnuts, Italian ones again - and basically all other kinds of nuts and dried fruit, again from different places of the world. (Of course, they do not have so much a problem with freshness).

But also cauliflower, zucchinis, red and many other types of cabbage - all kinds of salad (green and red), and also many types grown only here in the Venetian Laguna, such as Radicchio and artichokes.

I know well that we are very much spoiled with the freshness and the rich choice of those products.

And also, last but not least - Italians are very proud of the fact that they have so many genuine and delicious fruit from their own country. They call it “nostrano”= ours :), and so automatically, if you can, you’d always prefer the national products.


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