December 14, 2024

Quote of the Week

"A successful local food economy implies not only a new kind of food producer, but a new kind of eater as well, one who regards finding, preparing, and preserving food as one of the pleasures of life rather than a chore." - Michael Pollan

Schoolchildren Are Reviving Slovenia's Sustainable Culinary Heritage

This week we'd like to share about project Kuhnapato (roughly translated as “kitchen and all that”) through which children in participating schools cook traditional regional meals for their peers throughout the school year. 

This seemingly quaint idea touches on a pressing issue: Global food trade has more than doubled since 1995, and the global food system now accounts for 30 percent of the world’s emissions. Beyond their cultural importance, traditional recipes are time capsules from a time when food was considered a valued and often scarce local resource, not a globally traded commodity.

Through this project, the students discovered that home cooks depended on local and seasonal ingredients, wasting food was close to sacrilege, and meat was only eaten on Sundays, if at all. Accordingly, almost all of the recipes used in the project are vegetarian, and all use local, seasonal produce, often sourced from local farmers. 

This initiative which started in Slovenia 14 years ago is now spreading across the world in different formats. While not all children may connect about the project’s lofty goals — they just like cooking and spending time together in the kitchen, and in the process they become instruments for reviving sustainable culinary heritage, one meal at a time. [Read More]

Reading Corner

Title: My Love for You Is Always
By: Gillian Sze (Author) and Michelle Lee (Illustrator)
For: 4+ years

What is love? a child wonders. What does it feel like, smell like, taste like? How does it move? How long does it last?

And as she prepares a traditional Chinese meal for her family, the child's mother replies: her love for him is rosy as wolfberries, warm like tea, sweeter than the red dates she puts in his soup. It shines through the water like its own brilliant sun. It goes round and round with no beginning and no end. Because a mother's love for a child is always there, warm and soft, broad and tender.

In this tender story that pairs beautifully poetic words with brilliantly stunning art, a mother's love comes alive on the page and wraps readers in its warm embrace.

Be the Change

Rediscover a traditional recipe that has been forgotten or not tried since a long time, prepare it and share it with loved ones.