Healthy habits
Chef Asher Boote runs a meatfree kitchen (Hillside, in Wellington), so it may surprise you to learn that his favourite meal of the year is a ham-andcheese toastie, served a couple of days after Christmas.
Like many of us, Boote doesn’t stick to a particular diet. His eating, like his cooking, is a mix of trying to eat more sustainably while also enjoying what is yummy and convenient.
I have weeks when I feel like our family is doing well at eating what’s good for us and the planet – lots of different in-season fruit and veges, whole grains, maybe a feast of fresh fish from the amazing local fish shop (if we’re feeling rich, that is, since snapper is approximately a million dollars a kilo), a bit of red meat for those family members who eat it. On a really great week, the meat might be from a family member who’s shot a deer in the forest, thus helping save native trees while getting us some venison.
The next week you might find me mowing through an entire large bag of processed chips while throwing out a bowl of something we forgot to finish off from the fridge and googling ‘‘hoki, bottom trawling’’ to figure out how guilty to feel about the impact of three boxes of frozen fish fingers.
Sometimes the foods that bring me joy are incredibly crap for my body and the climate. Don’t judge me – you know how it is some days.
What I love about Boote (whose essay is on page 30) and the food producers featured in Katie Doyle’s feature on pages 5-8 is how much joy they seem to get from helping the soil, the climate and the people around them, while growing and serving food that puts a smile on people’s faces. They helped me remember that joyful food can be lowimpact on the climate, too.
For the gardeners, taking back some control of what they eat, what they serve or how they grow it is a way to live their values. When you’re stressed out, rushed and strapped for cash, that’s not always easy to do – but the gardeners in Doyle’s story are also trying to make it easier for other people to eat well, as well as their own wha¯ nau. If that’s not the spirit of the season, I don’t know what is.
You’ll notice a lot of food-related goodness in this issue, as well as some pre-Christmas inspiration in the form of intrepid glacier scientist Lauren Vargo (our Change-maker) and some inspiring people who are making doing good for others their business (see Sarah Heeringa’s feature on fostering hope, pages 23-25).
Some of you might remember Heeringa as the long-time editor of Good magazine – and from next year, she’ll be editing this magazine and contributing a lot of regular sustainable living content to Stuff as our new Forever Project life editor. I think you’ll enjoy her perspective on sustainable, joyful living. You’ll still see me sprinkled liberally throughout, writing climate features and keeping you up with the news.
Sharp-eyed readers might notice another change, too – from this issue onwards, we’re printing on 40gsm paper, which requires less bleaching, is more efficient to make, and is lighter to transport, giving it less planetary impact.
Bringing you features about climate change for the past 12 issues has been a pleasure, and writing more of them for you to read next year will be an even bigger one!
Until then, eat well.
Ma¯ te wa¯,