Building on the 2016 Tooting Foodival at home - home-made pasta recipe, plus seed sprouting

There are new posts on our Foodival blog (click on that link) which follow up on two of the fun events at this year's Tooting Foodival: celebrating local food together as a community.
One post gives Minestra Supper Club's recipe based on Elisabetta's pasta-making demonstration.
The other shares all the how-tos of our grow-you-own home seed-sprouting crusade.
Do enjoy both. Maybe you can combine the two...?
Let us know how you get on!

 

Both these posts celebrate local Foodival themes which have been London-wide campaigns in September: Urban Food Fortnight and Zero Waste Week
Click for more information.

Foodival Top Tooting Cook entries - wow!

Feast your eyes on these amazing photos of the #Foodival2016 Top Tooting Cook entries!  All grown principally from donated home grown produce. More details on recipes and prize winners will follow ... but I thought you'd like to see this hot off the press!

Thank you to Charles for these stunning shots.  There'll be some from the Soup Disco photo booth soon too!

Foodival, Top Tooting Cook, Soup Disco

Don't miss the Foodival 2016 Soup Disco at Tooting Market this evening. Low food mile sustainable veg peeled, chopped and cooked up into a community feast to the sound of classic dance beats.  You couldn't make it up!  Well you can if you come tonight ...

Optional checklist: peeler, glitter, apron, platform shoes, wig, chopping board, friend, inner Travolta

Before that, check out the Top Tooting Cook competition from 4pm at Mushkil Aasaan.  Still time to plunder the vegetable patch (or your neighbour's!) and enter. Cooking demos and taster dishes from Minestra.  All sorts of other malarkey.

Foodival 2016 Celebrating Locally Grown Produce

Foodival Growers

Foodival Day One brought a glut of locally grown fruit and veg for the Top Tooting Cook competition and tomorrow's Soup Disco at Tooting Market. See the Foodival blog for more. 

#Foodival2016 starts tomorrow! Join in, donate produce and celebrate local grow-&-cook-your-own

The Tooting #Foodival2016 starts Saturday 10th from 1300-1700

This is the ninth year we've run the Tooting Foodival, and every year we call out to local gardeners for home-grown donations.

Every year we're amazed at the range and quality of what gets grown locally by beginners and experts in backyards or pots, on balconies or allotments.
Maybe you took part in our Growing Tooting classes in spring 2016?
Maybe you have been growing your own all your life.

Here's our 'I Grew This' poster of locally-grown donations at the 2015 Foodival.


To contribute your locally-grown donations, please select something you've grown which you'd like to share and bring it along to Mushkil Aasaan, 222 Upper Tooting Road SW17 7EW between 1:00 pm and 4:00 pm on Saturday 10th Sept. There are lots of other activities at the venue on Saturday.

• After 4:00 pm on Saturday 10th, local cooks taking part in the Top Tooting Cook event will be able to choose produce from what's on offer. There will be the potential for wonderful dishes - maybe with surprising ingredients that the cooks had not anticipated using before seeing the selection. Top Tooting Cook will be judged on Sunday afternoon at Mushkil Aasaan.
• Then we'll store remaining vegetables overnight for use in the Soup Disco cook-up with music and dancing on Sunday evening in Tooting Market.
• Any surplus will be donated to the Battersea Canteen supper clubs being run by the London Cooking Project and Tooting's own Be Enriched. The clubs aim to reduce food waste and feed those in need.  And to CARAS, who run clubs and support services for refugees and asylum seekers in south west London.

A huge Jerusalem Artichoke!

And small ones - but with big leaves!

Whatever you decide to bring along, donating is all about celebrating local food and wanting to share that enthusiasm with others.
It's about sharing Tooting's flavour, diversity and interest! 

Soup Disco ... What Are You Wearing?

This year's Foodival culminates in a Soup Disco in Tooting Market on Sunday night at 7pm. What are you wearing and what veg are you chopping?  Send us a picture inspired by veg and disco (see above!). Bring a peeler and your dancing shoes, DJ till 10 pm, Unwined and Graveney Gin will both be open, too.

As usual the Tooting festival of sustainable food starts with donations of locally grown produce at Mushkil Aasaan on Saturday 10th, where you can enter the Top Tooting Cook and Ugly Vegetable Competitions, learn about bee-keeping and sample some taster dishes.

All the info you need is HERE on the Foodival blog.  We look forward to seeing you this weekend.

Counting Down To Foodival

This year's Foodival is nearly upon us as next weekend we will run our 9th annual celebration of all things local and sustainable in Tooting's food culture.  For the latest news head to the Foodival blog.


As usual we will be collecting donations of locally grown fruit and vegetables at Mushkil Aasaan on Saturday and there'll be a chance to enter the Top Tooting Cook and Ugly Vegetable competitions, as well as check out many other food related goings on.

On Sunday we have the truly marvellous concept of a Soup Disco where you can help wash, chop and cook all the fantastic locally grown, donated produce to make an enormous soup, before cutting up the dance floor with your vegetable-themed moves!  

Other dance styles will be perfectly acceptable and our resident DJ will be keeping you grooving till 10pm.  We hope to see you there!

Celebrating Local Food Together as a Community: Preview of #Foodival2016 on the 10th & 11th Sept

We're very excited about TTT's ninth annual Tooting Foodival which is all about Celebrating Local Food Together as a Community. 
We're planning the details now - here's a snapshot preview.
Plenty more information to come later on.

'Local food plus local community' is the weekend's theme:

I Grew This! (Foodival 2015)

Saturday 10th Sept activities run from from 1pm to 5pm and are based at Mushkil Aasaan, 222 Upper Tooting Road SW17 7EW. 

On Saturday we welcome all local growers to share and donate some of their local produce - maybe a bag of potatoes, or a single chilli pepper...whatever you would like to share.

Mark where you've been growing on our Growing Tooting Map.

We'll take your photo proudly holding your fruit or veg for our 2016 I Grew This! poster and we'll display what's shared.

Where will all this wonderful donated local produce go?

Top Tooting Cook! 
First, donated produce goes to anyone who wants to enter our fun Top Tooting Cook event. Take some produce or recipes away (or cook with what you have grown at home), and bring back what you make on Sunday for the light-hearted judging and more at Mushkil Aasaan from 4 to 7pm.

The TTC hat - not the only prize you might win

Show off your culinary skills using fruit and veg grown locally and you could win a prize... and the coveted title "Top Tooting Cook"!
Find out all about the competition here and get in touch with Belinda to enter.
For inspiration, look at these delicious dishes - sorrel soup, risotto with cavolo nero, fava bean toast with egg - cooked by visitors to the Tooting Community Garden, using produce picked that day!

Thanks Naomi, Charles and Janine.

Soup Disco!

Second, local produce donated on Saturday will go to Sunday evening's Soup Disco party from 7pm to 10pm in Tooting Market, 21-23 Tooting High Street SW17 0SN.

From 7pm, we will all starting chopping the veg to make our delicious Tooting soups for a shared meal. And throughout this collective cook-up, our top local DJ will be spinning the tunes so you can show off your dance skills as well as your kitchen skills.

Beginners welcome throughout... fabulous outfits very welcome!
Plus, some Graveney Gin and Unwined will also be open for business - it's going to be a memorable night!


Other activities for all ages on Saturday at Mushkil Aasaan from 1pm to 5pm will include:

Celebrate reducing waste and having fun by displaying your Ugly Veg. Or as it's called in the USA: Produce with Personality.

Learn about urban beekeeping, taste SW12 and SW17 honey and get close to bees. Local beekeeper Richard is bringing a demonstration hive of live bees. He can chat about bees & honey - and about sources of info for planting and gardening to encourage bees and other pollinators.

Sprouted teff seed

Practice being a successful home farmer by sprouting seeds - easy and delicious. Fresh seeds sprouted at home only have to travel a few inches 'from plot to plate'. 
NO food miles!

Play our fun low carbon living games including exploring food's footprint and much more.


Get hands-on and creative with crafts linked to food and the Soup Disco - all ages can come and enjoy making.

In the garden...

Explore the local network of community gardens which can offer you fun, exercise, friendship, time outdoors in nature and a place to grow healthy local food.
Plus, you will pick up plenty of growing advice and encouragement to grow your own fresh food on window sill, a balcony or in a front garden.


Discuss the other local sustainability projects that Transition Tooting facilitates with many different partners, find out how to get involved - and we welcome your suggestions and new ideas.

All welcome to #Foodival2016!