Well, what a bonkers bonanza of a year and it's only almost-August!
We ran the Family Cafe project, we did another International Food Evening, Marsha did another TEDx Talk and we've been cooking up some fine feasts for lovely people such as Area InBetween artists groups at WorkHouse Festival in Wales, and doing a crazy cook up at Edwinstowe, we've been catering for Nottingham City Council, Super Kitchen, running a social at Gamble St in Radford and now we are about to pop up for lunch at Green's Windmill in Sneinton.

To cut a long story shorter, Secret Kitchen has been taken over by Vic Leadbeater- amazing, awesome, bossy bwatty cook, grower, maker and baker extraordinare. Marsha has gone off (although not very far away) to push the Super Kitchen Social Eating Movement forwards and has left Vic to develop and move along with Secret Kitchen. After such hard work and success, we wanted Secret Kitchen to continue to do its thing, to continue to make delicious food and feed people with lots of love. Vic is the perfect woman for the job; with a kick-ass history of being involved with food from growing to cooking, to preserving. Vic is a butter-lover, real-food enthusiast, eater of cheese and general kitchen-y worker bee (all prerequisites for being involved with Marsha!). Marsha can move off to develop her vision now that the kitchen and business are in a super safe pair of hands, and Vic can put her stamp on Secret Kitchen as it moves from being a cafe space to just focussing on social events and evenings and catering for events.

We've had a brilliant, hilarious Summer so far making lots of people happy by feeding them 'bostin' food. We've been so fortunate to have hit upon our respective strengths and teamed up so that Secret Kitchen can thrive and prosper as a social eating enterprise and Marsha can be freed up to take her Social Eating vision forwards. 

So, with all this in mind. What da hell are we doing?!?
Well for the Summer of 2014, we'll be at Green's Mill In Sneinton every Friday from 12.30 to 2.00 for lunch. After that it'll be more social stuff... We'll keep you posted!

Well, what a year that was! From a bite sized piece of a dream to project fruition and the second helping of a whole new project, social eating has taken root and is ready to roll out. 

We completed our Family Cafe pilot, with food for 6,000 meals, saving 6 tonnes of food from landfill, with about 500 volunteering opportunities and tons of amazing food, conversation, inspiration and hard work. It was a really personal journey for me and I learnt A LOT of stuff along the way, usually by the hardest path and I am amazed looking back that I held it together and managed to keep afloat with work challenges, my own stuff, family stuff, moving venues and moving house and school!?!

Anyway, here I am and ready to plunge into the mega pan again and bubble up a new dish which has a tasty reach far beyond what Family Cafe started. It is a simple ingredient list: a shed load of amazing surplus food, a space for people to scoff and a super resourceful approach that eschews choice for quality. Super Kitchen just needed a body to work through, it just needed someone to actually get on and do it. Everyone 'gets it', everyone wants decent food, a good natter, affordable places to eat out in that aren't too far away. And people want spaces to be in where they feel that they can support people, be supported, be engaged and inspired and they want to make sure that good food is used and not wasted. So, Super Kitchens aren't theoretically complex, expensive or investment-heavy, they are just spaces where good food is cooked and served with the intention of feeding the whole person using hugely affordable food stocks of surplus.

When the going gets tough, the tough get asking the Universe for help. Lots of emails, lots of apples, lots of courgettes, lots of unaccompanied kids, lots of pot washing. Stuff is piling up. Family Cafe project has grown in fits and starts and is still wending its way from being a plucky idea about how things could be somewhat sorted in a situation of food insanity, towards becoming a real social movement about how to do food better nowadays. 

At the project outset....'That looks like rather a big hill in front of me and a long route towards its summit. But I've made a flask of strong tea and some granola bars. Onwards! Clomp, clomp, clomp. Phewee!.... (wipes brow demurely) It looks so much nearer in real life doesn't it? I'm actually getting a bit tired now and that tea doesn't stay that hot after a few cups does it? Seem to have munched my way through that scoff as well.... I think I need some help here...'

That feels like the journey so far. Don't get me wrong. There is a passionate, beautiful, brilliant bunch of co-workers, volunteers, well-wishers and funders to help me. I'm not really alone and never have been. It's much more than me and it couldn't have gotten this far without us all. But in my mind I suppose I hold the vision for something that I'm trying to manifest. I see how things can be and I'm reaching towards that. I'm lucky that people seem to instinctively 'get' what Family Cafe is all about and they have gladly come on board and pushed me towards that summit. However, I hold sway over the budget, I did the form-filling, I sorted the insurance, I chose the colour.... It's my project if it doesn't succeed (and it's everyone's if it does). I worry about not getting it done, or getting it right, about creating work for myself and my co-workers, about engagement, about hungry kids, leftovers, burnt things, the emails, the courgettes and the apples. Sometimes it feels like I'm down to the last granola bar... Cue the mournful bellow of some sort of ram's horn bugle through the misty mountain pass...)

That's when I woman-up and send out a plea. To those of you that have witnessed the foghorn voice booming out demands from the kitchen for washer-up'ers or chair stackers, this might sound familiar but I'm talking about the silent one that I do when in overwhelm. I take a good look at all the wonderful things our project is managing to do on 1.5 paid staff who earn £8.50 per hour, in a weeny end of Sneinton with no footfall, using food that some quarters have consigned to the skip, with a little budget of under £30,000 for a whole year and with a frankly brilliant team of volunteers and eaters... And we've got so far to get up this hill to try and show the world what we can do to feed people by simply getting them together over a shared pot of scoff. We are so passionate about social eating as a really simple and effective way to make sure we really look after our precious food resources, to reclaim space for socialising, to empower each other over a shared meal, to simply have a good knees up and a bit of a scoff... I've got a vision but I can't do it all and I know no one is expecting me to do it all and, and, and.....

And I say UNIVERSE! (and beyond) HELP ME! I NEED SOME ASSISTANCE! please send help, send support, send inspiration, send someone nice in a plaid shirt with a beard who can play the drums, send the right people at the right time, animal, mineral or vegetable... HELP!

And it shows up doesn't it? If you have eyes to see, ears to hear, a heart to feel, that help shows up every time. As I've said, I'm never really on my own with the stress. Yes indeed, I create it, but I really feel like that primal howl echoed across the mountain range and was picked up and responded to. I am absolutely humbled to have our project chosen for the first Good For Nothing, Nottingham. It seems they were just on the other side of that misty mountain top heading towards that shared summit of true social betterment...

What an immense pleasure to be reminded of what a great idea we have in Family Cafe and how we are all helping to manifest it; how there is so much good and so many good people who are dedicated to just making stuff better for us all.... What a great relief from the worry of running the project and holding that vision to get an invitation to dream for help without strings- a 'what can we do to help you?  A Good For Nothing shout out event where I get to dream up a brief and have a Family Cafe tribe emerge from the Universe to make that happen. Big Loves. Big Wowsers. Not sure what'll happen, and how it will all look but our Family Cafe crew have been chosen for a hack and that feels mighty good. 

Big mountain, well on the way towards the top.... It's like we've been handed some Kendall Mint Cake and someone's found a stash of Yorkshire Teabags...

When we get there you'll know about it and in the meantime please follow us at @GFNNottingham and @secretkitchlady

Picture by Dan McCarthy  
http://www.danmccarthy.org/  (Dan please don't sue me, I have actual prints of yours hanging on my wall, just not this one. I love you and thanks for reading this blog)

I have a really simple message about food empowerment, food activation and self-care through foods... and that is NO ONE IS COMING TO HELP!

You either choose to empower yourselves and those around you or you get left to stretch your income further and further until you start to feel overwhelmed by the current crisis around the costs of living in the UK.... Choose to put food and nourishment as well as physical activity at the centre of your life and you will be well-fed, energised and enjoy better mental and emotional health... But YOU have to choose towards empowerment and choose not to get stuck in the loop of negativity currently peddled by the mainstream media and the current forms of governance...

There are so, so many things you can do to buck the trend and feel powerful, proud, positive and well-fed and so I'll share with you what I have learned along the way and trust that you can add to the list of ways to become empowered around food and nourishment... Once you realise that you are the only real and meaningful change maker in your life, then you have taken back control and you aren't a victim of poverty mentality anymore....

1) Do not go shopping when you are hungry! You will succumb to the temptation to buy stuff that you don't need... Simple but true... The same with your kids- feed them before you go and remember you are the parent and you choose- don't go down the aisles where there are things your kids want and make a game of putting stuff through the till to distract them from the sweeties... Also, read the ingredients list as some substances are addictive and the aim of the product is to make you buy and buy again... See the next post on recipes on how to avoid....

2) Write a shopping list. Supermarkets spend millions of pounds working out how to extract money from you. Play the game back and write a list of what you need. Remember bread, milk and eggs are at the back of the store, generally, to make you walk through other offers on your way towards things you need. Aisle-end products are there to tempt you. Two for one offers or already-bagged up items with the price easily displayed on, are there to get you to buy things you don't need or to enable you to easily see the price which can be reassuring if you only have a small amount of cash or are unsure how to work out price per kilo. You can also club together with other people and book an online shop so you can avoid the supermarket all together! If you shop and share you can often get a very cheap delivery slot and make the most of any useful two for one offers...

3) Look at the price per kilo and compare items. Look for frozen over chilled and work out what is actually cheaper. Take a calculator and actually take the time to work out what is cheapest. You can do this online before you go and whilst you are writing out your shopping list. Remember YOU have to learn how to do this because it is a key way of budgeting. If it is already bagged up with the price on, you should still look up price per kilo. Supermarkets do this because people find it reassuring to know how much it will costs, but these bags are often more expensive when you look at the price per kilo. Similarly, check out the fresh, frozen or chilled- the same items can vary massively in price per kilo.

4) If you are skint and have a while until some more money comes your way then go for the budget lines in supermarkets or shops. Simply swap down from branded stuff to budget stuff and have a good look around at what basics you can buy that will bulk up your food haul for the week or month...A kilo of budget rice from Sainsbury's is about 50 pence and you can create several meals out of this. (I'll add some recipes later in the post for making something good from this basic foodstuff)

5) Get a grandma shopping trolley- or a big rucksack! You can fill this baby up with big bags of potatoes, tins of chickpeas and lentils and drag it around from place to place easily to make your budget go further. 

6) Get a days bus pass and go food adventuring.... Check out markets, Asian superstores, find out when shops reduce stuff and go and find the bins outside supermarkets and have a look what's on offer... I got a litre of olive oil the other week from a bin which was worth about £6- it had been skipped because it's label was scratched. There is no shame in bin-dipping! The shame is that vast amounts of amazing food get thrown away. Skip-diving etiquette states that if anyone approaches you and asks you to stop then please obey politely and find another bin or just wait around the corner until they have gone or come back on another day. There is never any need to be rude. But don't be deterred- bins and skips are gold mines of food empowerment. Once you see what is being thrown away you will enjoy the paradigm shift into realising that not only are you saving money, you are saving resources and the environment (and actually it is the rest of the Western world that is bonkers and you are really quite sane- and well-fed to boot!)

7) Get down to your library or go online. YouTube has videos of how to cook just about anything from a boiled egg to a pot roast, libraries have cookery books that can help. There are ap's that can give you ideas of what to make with just a few items. Educate yourself. Enjoy being enlightened. Feel good about taking back control of your way of eating and make the most of what you have got rather than focussing on what you lack... 

8) Find other people to share cooking with. If you take turns in one-pot, tasty meals then you save on energy bills, you enjoy sharing and eating together, you get to have a few nights off from cooking and you can enjoy and be inspired by other people's cooking. This works well if you have kids and you can get them to play together whilst you take turns in cooking...
And look out for slow-cookers at the charity shop or car boot- these are great tools to cook cheaply and have a hot meal ready for when you get home...

9) Make friends with lentils, chickpeas, seasonal vegetables, fresh herbs in pots, squashy tomatoes, market holders, security guys at supermarkets, allotment holders, local food growers and anyone or thing that can make your money go further... Get creative and celebrate your ingenuity. If you have a windowsill, a back step or bucket then you can grow fresh herbs or some salads. Go to the library and look up how to grow things and pickle, chutney or jam things... There is so much information out there for you to use and share....Your budget bag of pasta can taste really amazing with a bit of butter and some fresh herbs stirred through... Making your own food in bulk batches and swapping or freezing them can mean great homemade, ready meals or sauces for a few pence... I'll post some recipes up later for inspiration... But there is amazing food and food-people out there, you just need to make this your focus and get going...

10) Lastly and I suppose most importantly, is LOOK AFTER YOURSELF AND OTHERS... Use food as a way to show love and care for yourself and your families... You really can make a change to your future and to your kids futures by becoming empowered around food. Nourishment is what you can add to a basic dish if you cook it with love. When you simply make the decision to start really trying to shop, cook and eat better you will be gladdened by the sheer amount of amazing resources and people there are around who share your passion... You will become food empowered!

The opinions I give here are my own and represent only me, as The Secret Kitchen but not necessarily as The Family Cafe project as we have a Board and other staff who might well disagree with what I'm about to write...

Food banks aren't sustainable. Go to any one of them and pick up the energy of people pedalling madly trying to keep up with a huge increase in demand. Food banks like St Ann's try to solve the problem by challenging benefit sanctions and sorting out the reasons why people may have no money left for food that week. They are attempting to go back towards the source of the problem but they can only do so much. We are living in the midst of a crisis around who we are, how we eat, how we consume and how we empower ourselves to change, and food poverty and food banks are the manifestation of that. Food poverty is a state of mind as much as an economic reality. 

My issue with food banks is that we are attempting to mitigate the damage done further upstream by giving vulnerable people free food. People end up being referred to food banks because they are in crisis. That crisis isn't just about food, it's the crisis of our whole society where we have people actually struggling to feed themselves. Step back from this for a moment and just scratch your head and wonder how the hell a developed nation with an astonishing array of technology, science and ability has members of its own, scrabbling around looking for food? How it is that we have children who are literally starving, malnourished and stunted and how we have people rotting away in our very midst for want of love and sustenance? 

What the hell has happened here? How are we living like this? I believe it's because poverty is a market. It's attempted relief sucks vast sums of public money but like the diet or pharmaceutical systems, a cure doesn't make money. For all the incredible people out there working so, so hard to help people, it's frustrating. Follow the money upstream to see the few yet very influential number of groups who we pay to solve the problems that the other companies they own create. Consuming, competitive, corrupt capitalism needs to be starved to death; it's the system that needs to be packed off with some noodles and a tin of carrots. We need to turn our back on this sham edifice where food poverty is an intended consequence of political policy. 

Food banks don't work. They feed people in crisis but they don't work. Follow the problem upstream to our core social values as espoused by our current form of government. Lack, scarcity, competition: these are the issues that food banks can never be a solution to. I don't think food banks are pretending to be the solution. We all know that they are a stop gap that has arisen because of an austerity ideology that has degraded our very humanity. People presenting in food poverty suffer from the wider impoverishment of food; its commodification. They might suffer from a lack of food knowledge, or a lack of food capital, and a scarcity of available resources because of a system that over inflates the price and simultaneously degrades the incredible food resources our planet gifts us. Food banks don't work because this austerity ideology needs victims, it needs people for Michael Gove to blame. Food banks are even worse than that in my mind because its another market for the very organisations that are causing the problem. You go to the supermarket and you BUY a few more items to donate to the food bank. These supermarkets and corporate food producers have managed to make a market out of food crisis.

So, rant over. What next? Well firstly see through the headlines designed to get you angry. Peek through the bushes and notice how many amazing food initiatives are springing up. Loads of fantastic people sowing, growing, mowing, making, baking, jamming, pickling and preserving. So many great cooks who can magic a mega pan of something good out of a few ingredients. All those people who are buying into a relocalisation of the food economy as they see the benefits. The attempts at reintroducing wholesale in this country, the move towards people growing their own food. These solutions were already there; we are already able to turn this around because we already have the skills and resources to up our food game. The edifice is crumbling away and the corporate food theme park is looking shabby. I don't want to go there anymore;  I want to participate in a celebration of food and an appreciation of our incredible planet's abundant resources, and trade with those people and groups who get that, and indeed the corporations that are looking to change for social betterment.
 
But what about those people who are so far down the food helter skelter that they will struggle to stop the downward tumble? Social eating spaces. Spaces where you can come and enjoy a meal for whatever you have in your pocket or where you can volunteer in return for a meal. Not soup kitchens, not places where everyone's skint and its miserable, not a place where you wash up because you are simply desperate. A social eating space; a warm, welcoming, homely, inclusive place to sit and eat. Fulfil your human need for nourishment. Tackle food waste and cycle your excess produce in return for a meal. I don't think it's any coincidence that we have presided over a massive reduction in the spaces where people can be social; these are spaces where people become empowered and share ideas. I truly believe that long term social eating spaces are places where people can be supported, offer support, see positive modelling, ask questions and be educated around food, become food-active and simply nourish themselves. Engagement with vulnerable, defensive, distrustful people takes time but it's a worthwhile investment. In the meantime there are lots of people who simply enjoy social eating and there is room around the table for everybody. Social eating spaces are sustainable and they make sense. Imagine a city with a social eating joint in every area? Even if we don't have cafe's using surplus, it's still pretty cheap to make a big pan of something good and share it. Just participate and show up at your social eating space and put your contribution in the bucket! It's not the solution to everything but it's a start. See you there.... 

In my last post on this subject I gave a bit of a lurid potted history of my employment journey so far and ended by saying that by simply deciding in my early twenties that 1) I wasn't going to work in a factory any more and 2) I was going to choose to work less and enjoy my time more. 

As it happened I started to get better paid, part time work. I still worked hard but I enjoyed it more. I had time to potter, bike ride, skip-rat and make things. I applied for jobs that I wanted to do. I liked being supportive so I started to work with students as a note-taker, I worked in the homeless sector, I did one on one support work in people's homes; I began to see how enjoying my work and trying to help others was a great way to work. 
It was better working and it was working better for me...

I bankrupted myself aged about 25 and wrote off all the debts including my student loan, that I'd accumulated during my studies. I had no credit card and no access to credit, I was told I'd ruin my future but I knew that was a lie. I had started to see how I could choose to forgo what seemed like the benefits of a disposable income, a mortgage, new, shiny things in order to access the benefits of something far more fundamental- freedom and living within my means and under my own direction.

Cue a few years forwards and my bankruptcy was annulled. I knew this day had arrived because I got a credit card application through the post! I'd managed to survive on my earnings and the generosity of my family and was an expert on lentil-living, potato-based diets, cheap wine and burning smashed up pallets for firewood... In the meantime I'd been working part time back at Uni teaching, I'd had a baby and I was living as a single parent with a Masters in Philosophy and a desire to move away from teaching. I re-trained as a therapist and had a few Michael Jackson years believing I could heal the world before admitting to myself that I was the one with problems. Lots of depressive periods, lots of personally orchestrated disasters which were my necessary learnings, lots of personal pain and suffering and lots of growth and development. I emerged several years later harder, better, faster, stronger and with a real commitment and love for effective community work. This was built upon an understanding of the real need for self enquiry; walk the walk as well as talk the talk if you want to be effective.

So now I had a few things in place for me to make my next better work step. The catalyst for change began with the birth of my daughter and freedom for the modern indenture of debt and a desire to dig deep were the steps forward from that catalyst. At that point I'd realised that I could work better, work less hours, do things that were interesting and useful. But I still hadn't quite 'got it'. I still hadn't twigged that Life wants us to be happy, Life wants us to be fulfilled, Life wants us to follow our heroic probability and be most excellent. Life wants us to live!

I was working with refugees and still part-time teaching and wondering where to go next when life took a brilliant turn and I was made redundant. This seemed like an awful thing at the time and I panicked about what i was going to do. My brilliant Mum simply suggested that if possible, I should take the Summer off with my daughter and think about 1) what I liked doing and 2) what I was good at....

I really hope you ask yourself this at least once in a lifetime...and if you haven't then please feel free to do so... 

Beginning the Summer holidays knowing I had 6 whole weeks of no work was amazebombs. I went walking in the woods with my daughter and niece, cycling about, baking, gardening, reading, uber-pottering and attending every car boot sale I could. I relaxed, my body relaxed. I had time to really think about what I wanted to do... Giving myself permission to do that was a fundamental step.

I decided wanted to work with soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress. I'd been volunteering for a military charity and had found it very satisfying. It seemed like a good thing to do. People and connections seemed to appear and I attempted to manifest the next stage of my work life. It didn't work. I couldn't get anywhere. I was pushing but not moving forwards. This culminated in what I thought at the time, was a dream job working on a helpline for soldiers. I prepped, I studied, I wrote a great application and I was invited for interview.  I turned up for the interview A WEEK LATE! I totally and utterly sabotaged my chance at this 'dream' job. I was gutted and went into total self-punishment mindset. I was stupid, disorganised, useless, chaotic and untrustworthy. I had a calendar with June and July stuck together so had written the interview date down onto the wrong month. Had I been a bit more aware at the time, I'd have noticed the signs that my intention wasn't the right one. Instead I pushed on and created yet another learning for myself. Painful as it was I righted myself emotionally and mentally and wondered what I should do given that I really needed to get back to work and earn a living.

Another shift came when a friend emailed me a work-wheel exercise. I should look at what I loved doing, in what circumstances, in what situation and in as much detail as possible. I should jot down on a big piece of paper my optimal states and happiest ways of being and then intend that something would come forwards. I should also write on the sheet

'All this and more comes to me with ease, harming none and with the highest intention for all...All that is not in my highest interest falls away with ease'.... How helpful I found that last bit of the statement given my recent humiliation...

On the sheet I had written 'riding my bike and walking in nature..... looking in skips and going to car boot sales, vintage things, blackberrying, making chutney, serving others and feeling appreciation, working a busy but satisfying week, inspiring people, being inspired by people, working as a productive team, stuff that's not too formal, having fun, listening to Radio 6 and earning enough money to be able to do what needs doing, a job where I am always learning and a job that makes a difference somehow.....'

Well who the hell is going to pay me for riding a bike, looking in skips and picking blackberries!? Ye Gods, what kind of job description would that be?! (Notice that money never really came into the picture?) Well, I let those thoughts about what was possible and impossible arise. I stuck my sheet on the bedroom wall and I looked at it and just decided to stick with the feelings of how much I enjoy myself when I do these things and left it at that. About 2 months later a chance conversation about something else led to someone asking me to set up a cafe. I'd been doing a fair bit of community cooking as a volunteer but it had never occurred to me set up a cafe. Within 3 months of that conversation The Secret Kitchen opened its doors....

Next post I'll write a bit about how I actually started the cafe, what principles I stuck to, how I was tested on these and where things led. 

It's a bit like Jason and the Argonauts but with pies, scalding flows of chutney and incinerated vegetables... stay tuned for the next thrilling episode...

Where has the sun gone? Oh. Dearsie. I hope it comes back. At least our new raised beds will get a good dousing and it should bring some of our edibles closer to being used in our meals... 

In the meantime we are constructing a savoury, squidgy, baked bread and butter pudding with thyme, garlic, sweet tomato sauce, tons of black pepper and a good crowning of sharp cheese that will be baked into crispyness and served with toasted seeds, a zesty coleslaw and a green salad with some leaves from my very own garden... On the sweet front there will be a toothsome chewy lemon flapjack.

That is all. See you there from 4-5.30pm...