What is the bottleneck in our organic cooking methods and how can we manage to produce less plastic waste? A few years ago, we launched a family challenge to answer these two questions. We wanted to find out and see how far we could get.
David Martin is currently inviting people to embark on a consistent organic adventure. Whether at home or on the go, at the train station or in an organic restaurant, in the canteen or with sweets in the evening, how does it change the taste and perspective on food, how does it change daily routines and awareness?
Our family experiment took place 12 years ago. David’s appeal has now brought our experiment into the present: ‘Oh, that was exhausting,’ said my eldest daughter. She was about 14 years old at the time. My middle daughter remembers that there were no more snacks, that chocolate bars with first aluminium, then a layer of paper, then plastic again and finally a box around the outside no longer ended up in the shopping basket. My youngest daughter was eight years old at the time, and she also vividly remembers ‘we didn’t want to produce any more rubbish’. My husband and I remember the organic challenge more strongly – because we wanted to see how far we could go with biodynamics in particular without changing our consumption patterns.
We get vegetables, fruit, dairy products, eggs, beef and oil from a Demeter farm run by friends. Two or three times a week, we get a green box full of produce, sometimes more, sometimes less, straight from the field. Demeter bread still requires good planning, and we noticed that we could only buy it on Fridays or Saturdays, which meant we had to travel quite a long way during our lunch break during the week. During those six weeks, we often didn’t have enough bread in the house, which was a challenge. Overall, we reduced our meat consumption during this time. Sausage and bacon bits were off the menu during our organic and plastic-free period. We needed significantly more time for shopping, had to plan better and change our routes. Packaged sweets were replaced by baking, and there were no quick pizza outings during those six weeks.
These six weeks really were family time, because we wanted to do it together. No one knows for sure whether we actually ended up with just one yellow bag. What remains is an awareness of natural products, a great desire to cook, eat and shop at the farm, and a focus on waste prevention. Our daughters sometimes say, ‘I can’t manage to buy as much organic food as you do.’ Their strategies are second-hand shopping, swapping, food rescue, veganism and vegetarianism, in order to deal with the question of what they need to live, what they can afford and what is important to them.
I ask myself this question especially when I’m on the road, looking for provisions for the return journey or thinking about my own fridge at the hotel breakfast buffet. I feel good when I can relax while eating. The atmosphere and the way the food is prepared contribute to this. The contrast makes it clear to me that I cook because: I can taste a piece of the soil in the vegetables, because insects flutter around the fruit, grain fields and meadows, because I meet people while shopping who have become friends, because I feel awake and nourished by the food, and because I enjoy handling natural food.