Having a Lark in the Park

Instead of yawning at the TV one September Saturday, I whizzed off on my rickety bike to find The Stockwell Festival. Luckily, when I eventually found Brixton People’s Kitchen, they’d come far better prepared, with a custom-built mobile-kitchen bike, built for free, from recycled materials, by two lovely Germans.

Bike envy aside, the day turned out to be a great one – the weather mocked the forecast and came out in (patchy) sunshine and we transformed an intimidating mound of mushrooms (weighing at least half of the 19ish kilos of saved fruit and veg) into very popular tempera titbits.

Celebrated as a great alternative to popcorn by one happy mum, they were also easy pickings whilst cooking, although decidedly trickier to photograph…

Cooking alfresco with music from the bandstand wafting over was pretty cool. Mixing this with free food that would have otherwise been landfill, and a bit of teaching kids from the children’s centre what I’d just learnt myself, made it a great day.

Other highlights were working out how to up-sell a stuffed marrow to suspicious punters and chatting over a frying pan outside with a Portuguese lady, who gave a vivid description of fruit orchards back home in Madeira, previously known only to me by the cake.