Through shared cooking, eating and gardening, our Extended Table project creates spaces for people to come together, learn from one another and build connections with food and place. The Land Use Plus project works with farmers to support local and nature-friendly food production, bringing the people and landscapes behind our food closer to the city.
Brighton & Hove Food Partnership is all about making connections – and we have been weaving these projects together in our 6-week Growing New Roots course.
Growing New Roots is an outdoor wellbeing group for people with a mental health diagnosis that takes place in the globally significant chalk grassland that surrounds the city.
One of the Growing New Roots sessions includes a visit to Saddlescombe Farm. Just moments outside of the bustling city is this wonderful haven of farmland birds, wildflowers and grazing cattle. The group are welcomed by Roly and Izzie, tenant farmers of the National Trust who have a huge passion for what they do, with a beautiful and thriving landscape that reflects their work. Find out more about the grazing at Saddlescombe Farm in our blog.
At the next session there is an opportunity to take part in a communal cooking activity. Sussex Grazed (part of the Land Use Plus project) kindly donated beef mince from Saddlescombe Farm to be used in the cooking, helping to continue the learning from the farm to the kitchen.
The dish of choice tends to be build-your-own beef koftas. Led by one of the Food Partnership’s community cookery leaders, the activity involves preparing the shallots, chilli and parsley for the koftas, forming the kebabs and, if the weather is kind (and the surrounding land not too dry), cooking them over a fire.
Preparing the ingredients creates a nice opportunity for conversation, from sharing food likes and dislikes and swapping recipe ideas, to simply taking a moment to appreciate the people and animals that brought the food to the table. It is a chance to slow down, connect with one another and feel grateful for the opportunity to cook and eat together.
Research has found that sharing meals can help create social bonds, strengthen and support a greater sense of connection and belonging. This is a big part of what makes this session so valuable, with a gentle invitation to reflect a little about where our food comes from and to help connect those from the city with those that produce our food. We hope to continue supporting this crossover of projects, and connect people, food and our local landscape together.
*Sussex Grazed is our meat box scheme that connects members of the public with meat produced through landscape recovery and habitat protection. To buy from the scheme visit the Sussex Grazed Shop on the Open Food Network.
