Jack Crotty, of plant-based food businesses Rocket Man and East in Cork, was approached earlier this year by Avril Stanley of Body&Soul Festival to create a food area at this year's festival. "We all come to festivals to change the world, but we actually end up damaging it," says Crotty. In keeping with Body & Soul's green efforts, Crotty came up with the idea of Food on Board, a food area that would highlight food waste at festivals, while simultaneously offering food that festival-goers would crave.
“Packaging is essential,” says Crotty. “My businesses uses packaging, but our question was, ‘why do we need it at a festival?’ Food is eaten and then the packaging instantly goes in the bin. It seems like a huge waste. For me, Food on Board was about trying to contain the level of waste within a site, and reduce it overall.”
Crotty pulled in a small but perfectly formed gathering of food stalls, along the outskirts of the walled garden, the calm heart of the festival. Each stall served all their food on boards, with recyclable cutlery and napkins. A covered seating area built by Canadian carpenter and horticulturist Dan Krakauer, using reclaimed materials. Punters got their food on boards, ate in the area, and then returned their boards, cutlery and napkins to a recycling and to-be-washed station.
Virginia and Donal O'Gara of fermented food My Goodness had a hit with their papusa, a South American cornflour pattie stuffed with an assortment of fermented vegetables. Also on sale were their delicious tonic waters, with an option to spike them with whiskey. My Goodness has weekly stalls at Wilson, Mahon and Douglas Markets in Cork, selling salads, wraps and bottled tonics.
Jane and Myles Lamberth of Shell's Café in Sligo were serving up hangover-busting Sligo oysters and a South African toasted cheese sandwich that packed some serious mustard heat. Sarah McNally and Liadain Kaminska of The Market Kitchen were selling pulled veal toasties, a halloumi toastie and a cabbage wrap for those who don't eat bread. Crotty's Rocketman team served Badger & Dodo coffee for the weekend. Chef Katie Sanderson, "Rocket Mum" Simone Crotty and Assassination Custard also took over a pop-up stall for the weekend, serving their wares on boards.
Crotty brought in food writer Dee Laffan to host a Conversation Yurt over the course of the weekend, a canvas-covered space ideal for talks and sharing thoughts. There were conversations around food and sustainability led by Chef Clare Anne O-Keefe, Birgitta Curtin-Hedin of Burren Smokehouse, Chef Kevin Thornton, among others, and a performance of Fictional Restaurant by Moira Averill and Isadora Epstein. Some festival-goers may have come in to seek shelter from the rain, but they left with their heads full of questions about in-vitro meat and TTIP, and plans to smoke salmon at home. The Science Gallery also had a pop-up lab in the area, to share findings from their recent Future Farming exhibition.
Behind the scenes were Crotty's partners in Food on Board, Joe Cowley and Oisín Depriall of Harp Renewables. This Irish company has engineered a bio-digester that breaks down recyclable packaging into a compost-ready grit by macerating it. "When all is said and done, what we were left with is just compost, no bags of rubbish," says Crotty on the Monday after the festival. "I think people understood what we were trying to do. If we were to do it again, perhaps we could bring the behind-the-scenes composting to the front a little more, so that the whole process could be on display."
Body&Soul has always led the way with their food offering, and overall the standard of food was stellar this year, thanks to stallholders in the main arena such as L Mulligan’s Grocer and Sprout offering substantial, sustaining and healthy alternatives. Over the weekend, I heard it said more than once how the food at our festivals reflects how far Irish food has come in the past two decades. Long gone are the burgers and fried onions served out of a sweaty van. Today, we have choice. And we can choose to be more mindful about how we can reduce our food waste at festivals.
To me, Food on Board was the cherry on top of Body&Soul’s food landscape this year. It’s a sign of the festival’s genuine commitment to reducing their carbon footprint and raising awareness of waste, but it was also an area that highlighted some really special producers from around our country. Here’s hoping we’ll see Food on Board at next year’s festival.
