Page 18 - ALG Issue 1 2019

Interview with...
‘Natural Cooking’ – from seed to plate!
snippits
Year of Green Action
2019 is the Year of Green Action, which aims to see more people taking action that improves the natural world, in turn encouraging and inspiring others to do the same. Children and young people are at the heart of the year that focuses on three themes – connect, protect, enhance.
As a part of the 25 Year Environment Plan, the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs will be working with partners from the environmental and youth sectors to promote environmental opportunities that attract young people from all backgrounds.
Annual General Meeting and Conference
The 2019 Annual General Meeting of the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners Ltd will be held on Saturday 8th June 2019 at St Georges Hotel, The Promenade, Llandudno, Conwy, LL30 2LG.
Experience Llandudno and all that the North Wales Coast has
to offer by staying in the AA Hotel of the Year for Wales. St Georges luxury Hotel in Llandudno, cleverly combines traditional Victorian elegance and its stunning setting with the comfort of a luxurious 4 star Hotel. St George's Hotel is
a Victorian hotel situated on the Llandudno promenade.
Llandudno is Wales’s largest resort with a multitude of hotels, traditional B&Bs and other attractions, uniquely situated between the Great and the Little Orme with two wonderful beaches, the award-winning North Shore and the quiet, sand duned West Shore.
Among other delights, NAS delegates will be offered morning and afternoon tea and coffee, as well as a 2 course Hot & Cold buffet lunch on Saturday 8th June.
Check out the NAS website for details about accommodation
at St Georges Hotel or visit
Tourist Information - http://www. visitllandudno.org.uk/ for alternative accommodation in the area.
Erin Baker’s allotment in Spider Lane, Stroud has great bunches of tomatillos strung across beds, interspersed with the scarlet fronds of amaranth. Most allotment growers are great cooks,
but Erin’s background in nutrition and therapeutic gardening has given her a career in ‘natural’ cooking that is spreading the word about the health- giving qualities of eating plants.
A ‘seed’, that began by helping in her Mum’s New Hampshire backyard vegetable garden, “ignited something in me”. At college she took courses in nutrition, volunteering for one day a week in a local ecology community where all the residents’ food was grown on site. She became one of their cooks, having to cook whole meals from the garden: “That was it for me... Mum started it, and they just put it all into full flame!”
Erin came to England for a short-term job, met her now husband, and stayed. She worked in Woodruffs, an organic café in Stroud, then took on a Vision 21 'Get up and Grow More' programme, supporting three new allotment sites in Gloucestershire. Her greatest success
was in Tewkesbury, where, on a piece of derelict land in a deprived estate, she set up a community allotment that now has 20 plots, and has won three Golds from Britain in Bloom’s Neighbourhood programme. Her favourite story is about a man whose social anxiety meant it took him months to pluck up the courage to join the allotment community. When chosen to receive the Britain in Bloom award he was asked
what was his favourite thing about the allotments? His answer was: “Friendship”. Erin now runs her own Natural Cookery
School, cooks for a wide variety of events (including Monday nights at the local
pub 'The Crown & Sceptre' next to the allotments), and is increasingly successful. Her cooking is plant-based, her ethics strong – for example always using seasonal vegetables: “Why use an aubergine if it’s
not in season?”
Perfect for allotment holders...
Lesley Greene, Individual
member
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