Award-winning pumpkin turned into educational meal
LINDEN – After winning the Walkerville competition for the largest pumpkin, the victorious vegetable became the main ingredient in charity organisation Nosh Food Rescue’s Odd Plate Dinner. The recurring event hosted at Cheese Gourmet Café in Linden on the evening of 19 March, was an intimate affair to raise awareness about food waste.
After winning the Walkerville competition for the largest pumpkin, the victorious vegetable became the main ingredient in charity organisation Nosh Food Rescue’s Odd Plate Dinner.
The recurring event, which was hosted at Cheese Gourmet Café in Linden on the evening of 19 March, was an intimate affair to raise awareness about food waste and how to curb the misconception surrounding food traditionally thought of as ‘not edible’ while raising money for the feeding scheme.
The organiser of the event and owner of Nosh, Hanneke van Linge with the help of professional chef Owen Jullies, Nosh volunteers and hospitality students used creative ways to utilise left-over food items to create palatable dishes for attendees.
The Livingseeds Giant Pumpkin Competition at the Walkerville Agricultural Show is a competition where contestants compete by measuring who can grow the heaviest pumpkin in kilograms. The pumpkins entered into the competition are grown over a period of 80 days and weighed in kilograms at the end of the standardised time period. The most recent champion pumpkin weighed a whopping 613kg. After its victory lap, the winning pumpkin found its way to Nosh Food Rescue to become the main ingredient for the Odd Plate Dinner. Organiser Van Linge muses that at first she felt the competition was ‘so absurd… but now I’m so in it’!
She first came across the event online.
The Odd Plate Dinner is an event run by Nosh to raise awareness regarding the high quantity of food waste and how it contrasts the number of people who go without. Originally it has always been held at Van Linge’s home outside, however, the unpredictability of weather conditions led to a new venue. Van Linge aims to host the dinner at different locations to reach a varying audience until she has a location designated to the charity organisation which she muses is almost finalised.
The event is formulated around taking food from various sources which is still edible, yet not prioritised by the masses, to create a meal and highlight that food wastage does not have to occur if we manage our eating and buying effectively. Tickets are sold to the event and proceeds go towards feeding people who cannot afford their own food. Both Jullies and Van Linge explained to a shocked audience of the enormity of food waste where South Africans waste 30 per cent of food.
The three-course meal served at the event consists of food which has been deemed not edible due to expiration dates or common societal perceptions. Jullies explained, “If the food is passed the expiration date and doesn’t have fungus growing out of it, it is still edible. You may just need to cut off the outside layers and be creative.”
The menu of the night consisted of cabbage and beef spring rolls for a starter, a buffet with various pumpkin-inspired options and a dessert of fluffy pumpkin fritters, hot-cross bun bread-and-butter pudding with homemade custard, litchi and banana ice-cream, custard and cake. The buffet options included pumpkin and potato madras curry, biriyani, lentil and mung bean parcels, pumpkin and bean cassoulet, plain potato wedges and cinnamon-grilled pumpkin.
On arrival, guests were met with an enthusiastic Van Linge at the door with a smile, a name tag and a cocktail. The cocktail, nestled in an ice bucket within arm’s reach of the entrance, was mixed by Van Linge herself and is a concoction of vodka, orange bitters and pumpkin juice. The pumpkin cocktail was notably served in recycled Nutella jars with a hole cut into their lids to allow for a straw. Once seated at the table, chilled water, litchi and kiwi juice awaited those who chose to opt out from the pumpkin juice cocktail.
The initiative to destigmatise the use of food thought of as expired was a success, with the various dishes catering to a variety of palettes. Jullies, former lead chef at South African Airways, with the help of Nosh volunteers and students from the HTA School of Culinary Art in Randburg, crafted meals from food donated from their various partners to the feeding scheme. Jullies encouraged the general public to use food innovatively where they can. The efforts of everyone involved provide some well-appreciated food for thought.
The evening was fuelled by anticipation of the next dish with dessert being the most-anticipated dish of the night. Chatter filled the room with networking among charity organisations and other businesses dedicated to the bettering of our communities and the preservation of our environment. The rare pause in conversation was filled by performer Mia-Kama Jonker with acoustic versions of popular songs such as Justin Bieber’s Love Yourself and Bill Withers’ Ain’t no Sunshine.
Get in touch with Nosh Food Rescue to join in on the conversation: Facebook page Nosh Food Rescue NPC; 011 793 6390, tweet them at @noshfoodrescue; and follow them on Instagram: @noshfoodrescueNPC; hanneke@noshfoodrescue.co.za
Fact Box:
- Meat accounted for 8.1 per cent of total sales income in 2014/5
- In January 2019, positive annual growth rates were recorded for:
- restaurants and coffee shops (3.5 per cent and contributing 1.8 percentage points); and
- takeaway and fast-food outlets (1.3 per cent and contributing 0.4 of a percentage point)
- Fruits, vegetables and cereals account for 70 per cent of the wastage and loss primarily throughout the food supply chain – from farm to fork.
- The energy wasted every year in South Africa for producing food that is not eaten is estimated as enough to power the City of Johannesburg for roughly 16 weeks.
- About 90 per cent of waste in SA is disposed of to landfills, where the food-waste component leads to the production of methane gas and carbon dioxide
- The energy wasted every year in South Africa for producing food that is not eaten is estimated as enough to power the City of Johannesburg for roughly 16 weeks
- Government has made a global commitment to halve food waste by 2030
- Many actions needed to reduce food waste are already well formulated. The challenge is embedding this knowledge within government, businesses and households
Related articles:
https://www.citizen.co.za/randburg-sun/362301/classic-flavour-combinations-take-food-next-level/
