Good food brings memories to mind, brings us new friends and makes us rejoice from the bottom of our hearts.
As compared to a lot of the other Food Revolution Community Ambassadors who come from the food service industry and have qualified experience in this field, I come from the world of art and theatre. This year, I decided to become a freelancer and create interdisciplinary and experimental workshops for children, which means I combine theatre and reading for children with many other arts and fields.
For me, Food Revolution Day 2012 was a big challenge, but one that fascinated me. I loved the idea that food can arouse such enthusiasm and fascination all over the world and I believe that food is also related to our cultural foods and our civilization, and that makes good food, good for the soul too. So I decided to get involved and see what I could do in my community.
Fourth of July
Even though I am in Romania, not the USA, this year the fourth of July had real significance for me too, as on this day I heard that I had been accepted as a Food Revolution Community Ambassador! Hearing this, I realised how much I wanted to organize a cooking and storytelling workshop for young children who do not always receive as rich and cultural education as the older children. I also think that at this age, food and eating is a very important educational topic as the impact we have on our children is very strong and memorable and will affect how they think about food for the rest of their lives.
Having found a large bookstore in Bucharest to partner with, I also managed to find a restaurant build around the concept of healthy food to also partner with and together we organised the launch of our local Food Revolution campaign with our first workshop on August 18th!
Fascination For Food
The workshop ran smoothly and everything was so easy, natural and everyone was constantly smiling! I think the reasons behind this amazing success were the utter fascination that everyone has around food and also the simple recipe that I chose for this workshop - yogurt with berries, a good recipe for breakfast at home. For us in Romania, berries are among the most natural and purest fruit growing on soil where there are never any chemicals added.
After the workshop, everyone was so happy in such an intense way that I've never experienced before! Parents were pleased to see their children get involved with food and preparing this simple dish and I realised even more so that healthy eating and good food brings about a contagious fascination.
A New Generation Of Little Chefs
The second workshop was held on the 15th of September and as this time our sponsor was the producer of seed oil, we worked with 7 varieties of seeds, teaching the children all about them. We then made a cake together with walnuts, pistachios and raisins. Again, I received great enthusiasm from the parents both during the workshop and afterwards and have since received letters from parents telling me about the transformation of their children into 'little chefs' and their new found love for getting involved in the kitchen.
The Future
I've so far found that in order to be a good Food Revolution ambassador, you need to enjoy discovering the richness of healthy, real food and show this to everybody you can, inspiring them into action. This is what I do each day on my Food Revolution Romania facebook page, which is continually growing in numbers.
I hope that the children, who are the future of the Food Revolution in Romania, manage to further this food fascination. Art and food are both great for the soul and are also connected to imagination, and imagination and soul are some of the fundamental attributes of children - who are always my inspiration!