Thank you to everyone who donated fruit and vegetables last night. We seem to be doing well for apples, but could do with more squash!
Head down to Hereward Rd off Tooting High St, by Mushkil Aasaan (see map) from 11-5 TODAY to see what our chefs cook up, tuck into the Community Feast, enjoy the music, stalls and creative spaces at Tooting’s sustainable food festival. Late entrants to Top Tooting Cook accepted!
We are delighted to announce that Sophie Rushton-Smith from The Corner Plot will be coordinating this year’s Top Tooting Cook Competition at Foodival on the 14 September.
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| Sophie was Top Tooting Cook in 2015 |
In 2015 Sophie won the prestigious TTC award for her use of locally grown vegetables to make a delicious colourful roast vegetable medley.
Who will be this year’s Top Tooting Cook? Could It Be YOU?
There are lots of lovely prizes to be won. Want to take up the challenge?
See here for TTC FAQs and the 2019 Registration form.
Email transitiontowntooting@gmail.com with any queries.
That’s plenty of time to grow local vegetables from scratch to donate or cook for the Foodival community festival on September 14th.
What can you grow well in your garden, containers or window box in a couple of months?
Who can you get involved? There’s a school summer holiday soon, and could the children be in charge? The RHS has a guide to getting children interested in gardening, here.
The varieties below will all grow fast.
Click on the vegetables in the list for more information from gardening websites.
Are some of these new to you? Try them out:
Kohl Rabi and Beetroot
are worth a try too.
Click here to download a copy of these suggestions with the links to the gardening websites.
What else could be grown quickly? Please share your ideas with us all: Tooting Foodival and Tooting Community Garden are on Instagram, and the garden is on Facebook too.
Happy growing and see you at the Foodival.
It will be great to see your produce and we’ll add you to our ‘I Grew This!’ poster, 2019 edition
All about Tooting Foodival Food:
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| The Four Wonderful Chefs |
Volker Nissen (top left) is co-ordinating the cooking on Saturday, plus Manisha from Pooja Sweets (top right), Rick Gibbs of Rick’s Tooting (bottom right) & Elisabetta Costantini from Minestra Supper (bottom left).
Thank you all for sharing your time, experience & passion!
The Top Tooting Cook competition (for details on taking part click here – and please do enter, just for fun of it) has some brilliant prizes for the different entry classes as well as the main TTC award itself.
In the generous style that we so admire in the Tooting community, the competition prizes have been donated by the local enterprises listed below. Thank you so much!
For the 10th Foodival on September 16th we need lovely local growers to help us deliver this free menu to the streets of Tooting:
Starter: Pakoras : Onions, cauliflower, courgette, spinach
Main Course: Vegetable Stew : Onions, carrots, potatoes, turnips, peas and any other veg including tomatoes, garlic, herbs etc.
Dessert: Fruit Crumble : Any soft fruit – apples, pears, plums, berries
Are you growing any of these? Can you help?
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| Some home grown donations from 2015 |
For details on the Foodival and how to get involved growing, cooking, eating or celebrating please visit THE FOODIVAL BLOG
For more information or to get involved please email transitiontowntooting@gmail.com
Full PRESS RELEASE HERE
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| Chuck’s Kale |
So some of us went vegetarian for the month of January and, for me, it proved surprisingly fun to try an alternative, more mindful way of feeding myself. 80 people shared experiences and recipes on the Vegetanuary facebook group and a celebratory feast was held at Vegan Express last week.
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| Vegan Express Celebration |
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| Dipa’s vegetable pastilla with feta |
It would be great to try this again, maybe even risking Veganuary or Veganpril and I am sure there must be a recipe collection in here somewhere??? It’s also a great way to kick off thinking about the 10th Foodival later this year.
Well done Richard for organising this inspriring initiative and thanks to everyone who or joined in. Not sure I’ll ever salivate over a bacon sandwich in quite the same way again!
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| Components of agricultural water footprint (from SAB Miller and WWF, 2009) |
Some of the effects are obvious: more carbon emissions, fewer carbon sinks, excess water usage, changing climate. Taking just one of these factors I’m amazed to see that according to Mekonnen and Hoekstra (2010) the water footprint of bovine meat is 15,415 litres of water per kg, compared to 322 litres/kg for vegetables. For beef cattle 98% of the water used up is with respect to their feed.
For more info on Vegetanuary, check out the facebook group.
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| Chuck’s Vegetarian Risotto Tonight |
There are new posts on our Foodival blog (click on that link) which follow up on two of the fun events at this year’s Tooting Foodival: celebrating local food together as a community.
One post gives Minestra Supper Club’s recipe based on Elisabetta’s pasta-making demonstration.
The other shares all the how-tos of our grow-you-own home seed-sprouting crusade.
Do enjoy both. Maybe you can combine the two…?
Let us know how you get on!
Both these posts celebrate local Foodival themes which have been London-wide campaigns in September: Urban Food Fortnight and Zero Waste Week
Click for more information.
Feast your eyes on these amazing photos of the #Foodival2016 Top Tooting Cook entries! All grown principally from donated home grown produce. More details on recipes and prize winners will follow … but I thought you’d like to see this hot off the press!
Thank you to Charles for these stunning shots. There’ll be some from the Soup Disco photo booth soon too!