INGREDIENTS FOR LIFE
FOR MAGDALENA ROZE TEACHING HER TWO CHILDREN TO GROW FOOD AND COOK IS PART OF HER ROLE AS A MOTHER, AND SHE ENCOURAGES ALL KIDS TO GET INTO THE GARDEN.
Cookbook author Magdalena Roze on why she is teaching her two children to grow fresh fruit and vegetables as well as cook healthy meals.
GARDENING IS A FAMILY AFFAIR for cookbook author, journalist and meteorologist Magdalena Roze. The 38-year-old enjoys nothing more than getting out in the vegetable garden at her home in Byron Bay, NSW, with her two children Archie, four, and two-year-old Charlie. “The kids love the vegie garden, it really is their happy place. They get involved and enjoy every aspect from setting it up with the digging of the dirt and planting seedlings, to watering, picking things for us and feeding the worms,” Magdalena says. “Sometimes I see Archie sitting in the middle of the vegie patch munching on something and it makes me so happy.”
Food, cooking and devising recipes play an integral part of Magdalena and her partner Darren Robertson lives. Forty-three-year-old Darren is a chef and co-owner of Three Blue Ducks restaurants and having a kitchen garden was important right from the beginning of his career. “The very first kitchen garden with beehives and chickens was created many years ago at the Three Blue Ducks in Bronte as a way for customers to see where their food comes from,” Magdalena explains. “The vegetable gardens at the restaurant on The Farm in Byron Bay are much bigger and the farmers there provide a lot of the food that goes on the menu or in the produce store. We love seeing kids pick and eat things.”
For all children, not just her own, she thinks it’s essential to learn to grow food. “When they’re older, it’s important that they can cook and prepare their own food that they source ethically, grow some of their own and be self-sufficient,” she says. “I feel like there’s a level of resilience we need in these uncertain times, and if you can feed yourself, that’s a good start.”
So what’s new in her family’s vegetable garden where they grow herbs, capsicum, tomatoes, zucchini, beans, lettuce, rocket, strawberries, watermelon, a curry plant and some citrus trees? “Our latest project is a beehive,” she says. “Darren and Archie had to assemble and paint it, and now we’re going to plant some bee-friendly flowers to keep the bees happy.” >
For more information on how to enter our Harvest Table competition with the kids in your family, turn to page 108.