Transition Town Tooting

Tag: Foodival

  • Top Tooting Cook 2018 at the 11th annual Tooting Foodival – all welcome to enter!

     
    Top Tooting Cook, the Tooting Foodival‘s fun local cooking competition is ably co-ordinated by ‘firm but fair’ Belinda. Using locally-grown fruit and vegetables which you can collect from us on 14th September, you make your dish overnight and then bring it to the competition at the Foodival on Saturday 15th. See the details of how to enter by clicking here and checking the Top Tooting Cook info in the menu at the top. You can also follow us on Instagram: @TootingFoodival.


    In 2017 we had a record-breaking number of entries: do join in this year!
     
    This is Imira, who won the overall award of Top Tooting Cook 2017 with her squash compote! It’s a Brazilian recipe.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

    All 2017 competition dishes are in this photo – crying out to be tasted (some people had to be held back…) 
     
     
     
    There was a wonderful variation of international cultures, ingredients, skills and why-not-have-a-go represented. So – how about entering the Top Tooting Cook competition this year? All welcome!
     

    Here are some local pickles at a secret location – maybe you’ll see them again on Saturday September 15th at the Foodival!

    tootingfoodival's profile picture
  • Annual general meeting and celebrations

    Annual general meeting and celebrations

    Here at Transition Town Tooting we love a chance to celebrate – and we don’t mind a good birthday cake either!
    Last month was our annual general meeting and party, the perfect opportunity to reflect on the past year, look forward to the future and celebrate the now.
    We had feedback from some of our main events and projects of the last year and it was lovely to hear from some new faces.

    The projects represented were: Foodival (Mal), Future Tooting (Eleanor), Restart/Sewstart (Jeni), Vegetanuary (Sharon), Tooting Twirl (Lucy & Richard), Carbon Conversations (Peter), Caras (Jeni & Egle), Outdoor Learning (Sharon), Tooting Community Garden (Christine) and Green Drinks (Richard).

    This list shows the diversity of our community activities – some long standing partnerships, some one-off events – and of course covers just a snapshot of the many things TTT is involved with.

    We then moved to the formal part of the evening – reports from the treasurer, secretary and co-chairs and the reelection of the officers. Your chief officers remain: Sharon Gray & Jeni Walker, co-chairs; Eleanor Glen, secretary; and David Thorne, treasurer. We look forward to hearing from you!

    Time for a fun activity – we asked everyone present to write down some ideas for future TTT projects or wishes for Tooting on a ‘cookie’ and these will be stored in our TTT Cookie Jar to be enjoyed when we have a lull in our calendar – there was certainly plenty of food for thought.

    A quiz followed, put together by David, which provoked much debate and brain-straining and then we rounded off the evening with a gorgeous chocolate cake to celebrate TTT’s 10th birthday, some delicious snacks and many enjoyable conversations.
    Huge thanks to everyone who came and contributed to a great evening. We look forward to seeing you at next year’s party, or before then at any of our TT activities. Just email us on transitiontowntooting@gmail.com to find out how you can get involved.
    Sharon

  • Foodival Growers Poster

    Here is this year’s montage of growers from the Tooting Foodival 2017, the 10th TTT Foodival – wow, the first one only seemed like the other day!  We are really grateful to all our donors of fruit and vegetables without whom the festival could not happen.  More on the Foodival blog about this years event back in September. 

    Can you spot yourself or someone you know?!

    In this picture we should be able to pick out some of our individual donors: Jon, Kath, Hilary, Debbie, Richard, Indrajit, Heide, David, Mal, Jane, Richard, Barbara, Maggie, Judy, Kelly, Chris, Esther, Eleanor, Chrsitine, Lucy & Helen!

    Thanks also to Tooting Community Garden, Paradise Co-op, Doddington & Rollo Community Garden, SHARE Community Garden, Abundance Southfields & Tamworth Allotments for your amazing contributions!

    We really love Foodival and hope if you came along to this year’s street festival version that you had a good time, whether eating sutainable home grown live cooked dishes, getting involved with our Craft or Green Stage activities, or chilling by the Sound Lounge stage.  Maybe you even had a rant on the Soap Box?!  More on the festival here.

    Roll on 2018?

  • “Shazifim yerakim, gojeh sabz, jarareng, erik, janarek….” Tooting Community Garden’s plums

    Did you try the sour plums at the Foodival?

    ‘These sour plums are known as shazifim yerakim in Israel, gojeh sabz in Iran, jarareng in Lebanon, erik in Turkey, and janarek in Jordan.’

    These plums were saved after pruning the Greengage trees that grow in the tooting community garden as part of a pruning workshop. They were not ripe for eating but nothing goes to waste so Charles experimented with pickling the plums. They were certainly delightful at the Foodival. Something Unique.

    The pruning workshop was delivered by Ryan O’Kane from The Orchard Project and we were joined by people from other gardens that could benefit from advice on pruning fruit trees.

    Once we knew which trees were remaining then we needed to prune them  to provide space for air and better light to help them be healthy trees. Ideally this would be a vase shape but our particular trees are grown from ‘suckers’ – that is a  self propagating system connected to the main tree.

    While we all wanted to get going with the variety of exciting tools they had brought along it was important that first we decided what the aims of the pruning were. The trees have been allowed to grow a bit wild which makes them great as a habitat but the pruning would help to promote tree health and improved crop. The aims are not complementary and that made it difficult in the beginning to decide on a strategy.

    This is often something that we can struggle with any of our gardening aims. Balancing the needs of nature and the needs of humans are not always compatible and these decisions are hard. Particularly as a group who may have divergent views, or feel they do not know enough to choose a course of action. In the end we were able to agree a compromise with half reserved for habitat with some pruning for health and the other half would be cut back quite dramatically to get to a spacing that would promote fewer but stronger and more productive trees.

    There was also time to look at the Victoria plum and identify branches that we could prune to promote healthy and strong growth for the tree.

    While there were many people helping the plums are close together and it wasn’t practical to prune more than two trees in the area at a time. So there is still more work to do but we now have a strategy that should be maintainable in the future.

    It was a fantastic learning experience and if you have fruit trees in your own garden then check out https://www.theorchardproject.org.uk/about-us/ for more advice and opportunities for you to learn about caring for your fruit trees.

    Maybe you’re inspired to start a new orchard? This year our friend Martin Cobley has helped establish the first Community Orchard in Wandsworth Borough. Congratulations! If you want to visit, contact him at wendelsworthra@gmail.com

  • Building on the 2016 Tooting Foodival at home – home-made pasta recipe, plus seed sprouting

    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.

  • Foodival Top Tooting Cook entries – wow!

    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!

  • Foodival, Top Tooting Cook, Soup Disco

    Don’t miss the Foodival 2016 Soup Disco at Tooting Market this evening. Low food mile sustainable veg peeled, chopped and cooked up into a community feast to the sound of classic dance beats.  You couldn’t make it up!  Well you can if you come tonight …

    Optional checklist: peeler, glitter, apron, platform shoes, wig, chopping board, friend, inner Travolta

    Before that, check out the Top Tooting Cook competition from 4pm at Mushkil Aasaan.  Still time to plunder the vegetable patch (or your neighbour’s!) and enter. Cooking demos and taster dishes from Minestra.  All sorts of other malarkey.

  • Foodival 2016 Celebrating Locally Grown Produce

    Foodival Growers
    Foodival Day One brought a glut of locally grown fruit and veg for the Top Tooting Cook competition and tomorrow’s Soup Disco at Tooting Market. See the Foodival blog for more. 

  • #Foodival2016 starts tomorrow! Join in, donate produce and celebrate local grow-&-cook-your-own

    The Tooting #Foodival2016 starts Saturday 10th from 1300-1700

    This is the ninth year we’ve run the Tooting Foodival, and every year we call out to local gardeners for home-grown donations.

    Every year we’re amazed at the range and quality of what gets grown locally by beginners and experts in backyards or pots, on balconies or allotments.
    Maybe you took part in our Growing Tooting classes in spring 2016?
    Maybe you have been growing your own all your life.

    Here’s our ‘I Grew This’ poster of locally-grown donations at the 2015 Foodival.

    To contribute your locally-grown donations, please select something you’ve grown which you’d like to share and bring it along to Mushkil Aasaan, 222 Upper Tooting Road SW17 7EW between 1:00 pm and 4:00 pm on Saturday 10th Sept. There are lots of other activities at the venue on Saturday.

    • After 4:00 pm on Saturday 10th, local cooks taking part in the Top Tooting Cook event will be able to choose produce from what’s on offer. There will be the potential for wonderful dishes – maybe with surprising ingredients that the cooks had not anticipated using before seeing the selection. Top Tooting Cook will be judged on Sunday afternoon at Mushkil Aasaan.
    • Then we’ll store remaining vegetables overnight for use in the Soup Disco cook-up with music and dancing on Sunday evening in Tooting Market.
    • Any surplus will be donated to the Battersea Canteen supper clubs being run by the London Cooking Project and Tooting’s own Be Enriched. The clubs aim to reduce food waste and feed those in need.  And to CARAS, who run clubs and support services for refugees and asylum seekers in south west London.
    A huge Jerusalem Artichoke!
    And small ones – but with big leaves!

    Whatever you decide to bring along, donating is all about celebrating local food and wanting to share that enthusiasm with others.
    It’s about sharing Tooting’s flavour, diversity and interest! 

  • Soup Disco … What Are You Wearing?

    This year’s Foodival culminates in a Soup Disco in Tooting Market on Sunday night at 7pm. What are you wearing and what veg are you chopping?  Send us a picture inspired by veg and disco (see above!). Bring a peeler and your dancing shoes, DJ till 10 pm, Unwined and Graveney Gin will both be open, too.

    As usual the Tooting festival of sustainable food starts with donations of locally grown produce at Mushkil Aasaan on Saturday 10th, where you can enter the Top Tooting Cook and Ugly Vegetable Competitions, learn about bee-keeping and sample some taster dishes.

    All the info you need is HERE on the Foodival blog.  We look forward to seeing you this weekend.