Green Fingers

I never thought that I would end up building a career as a foodie,

and yet here I am, South Africa’s ‘bush cook’ as people have come to call me.

It all started as a happy-go-lucky road trip where I would cook for my friends, but that novelty eventually wore off as time went on and my appetite grew. I started to realise that I didn’t really have any clue about where my food came from, how it was made, and what was in it. And I had these questions after establishing a career in food, so I couldn’t imagine how anyone else would know the answers to these questions either – and that’s a problem for me.

So that became my next mission and I produced a number of series that tried to answer these questions by interrogating fast food ‘restaurants’, meeting with farmers, and visiting commercial food production facilities. It was very revealing and although I was able to pry bits of information that shed some light on my queries, my questions remained unanswered for the most part.

“I’ve had the time to really think about what I’ve experienced this year and the one and only thing that repeats itself in my head is:

Where does my food come from?”

That’s when I decided t to take matters into my own hands. I was tired of being dependant on these companies who supplied my food without telling me where it came from or how it was made, and I started wondering whether I even needed them that much. So it was time for me to start earning my green fingers at home. I was going to see whether I could possibly grow my own food as far as possible, and although I had learnt a lot about food and farming over the years, I was going into this somewhat blind – let’s just say there were many (failed) experiments, but after a good couple of years of trial and error, I’m finally coming right and proving to myself that I can do this.

Now I need to share this with you and prove to the world that we can all do this together, because in my opinion it’s one of the most important issues that currently face humanity. There’s an analogy that I often use to describe how vital our food is to us:

“Would you put dirty oil into your one-of-a-kind car? Muddy water into the radiator? Bad fuel into the tank? No. Your body is a one-of-a-kind vehicle and unlike our four wheeled collector’s items, we can’t get a new one, so be careful what you put in to it.”

This is the beginning of a new series of projects for me,

so keep your eye on this space for all the updates on how we can all do this at home…