Transcriber: Mehmet Bostancı Reviewer: Elisabeth Buffard
Hello everybody.
Thank you for having me here tonight.
I'm very happy to be here.
So, what I would like to share with you tonight
is some tips and tricks on how to eat great food every day.
Because it is actually possible and easier than you think.
So first of all, a little bit about myself.
Well, I love food;
and not just ice creams.
So I love food and I also dream a lot;
and so what is my biggest dream?
Well, to eat great food everyday,
and this is actually the reason why I'm here tonight,
because it's possible to eat great food everyday
just by doing your grocery shopping a little more wisely.
So before we get started, some definitions:
what do I mean by great food?
Well, in my opinion, great food is food that is produced locally,
whenever it is possible.
What does that mean?
That means that if some food is not produced,
cannot be produced in your area,
let's say, coffee, it's OK,
as long as you gather information about how the coffee was produced
who made it, where was it made, how was it made.
An so that's the first thing.
Then great food to me is food that is produced according to seasons.
So who wants to eat tasteless and pale strawberries in winter
when you can have juicy oranges instead?
Then great food is food that is produced on a small scale.
And that's because when food is produced on a small scale,
the social and economic spillovers in the region are very strong and very positive.
And that's something that we all want to happen.
And then last but not least,
great food is food that is produced respecting the land and the animals.
If you have a right to be happy, they have a right to be happy, too.
And also this thing goes back to what I was saying before
about producing food on a small scale
because usually production on a small scale
is also more respectful of land and of the animals.
So just to wrap up,
why is great food produced locally
respecting land and animals, seasonalities, and on a small scale?
Well, because it's good for you, and because it's good for your community.
And now I know what you're all thinking.
"Alright, great. But this is difficult.
Where do I get good food, great food everyday?
I don't have the time, I don't know where to get it.
It's just too complicated."
Well actually it's easier than you think.
It just needs a little bit of organisation.
And so what I thought is just to share with you
how I'm doing my groceries everyday
because I can assure you I always have
great food in my fridge, at my home, in my place.
So one of the things that I'd like to do a lot is to buy food in a group.
And what does it mean to buy food in a group?
Well basically, it means that I get together with a group of people,
we contact the producer, the food producer directly,
the farmer, and we buy food as a group all together,
through a coordinator.
I find that this way of buying food is really helpful and useful
for some kind of products.
For instance, non perishable food, like flour, rice, pasta
because since we buy it in larger quantities than normal,
I need to be able to store this food somewhere in my house.
So this is very very useful.
And also the kind of products that I buy this way in a group
are all those products that cannot be easily found locally.
So fish, olive oil, oranges, and this is because
that food does not come from here,
so it's more difficult to know the story behind the production;
but since there is a direct relationship with the producer,
when we buy together as a group, I can ask the producer directly,
"How did you make it, where does it come from?",
and so it's a trustworthy source of information.
And last but not least, it's also more convenient to buy food in a group,
thanks to the power of group-buying.
So here it goes, great food is convenient, first thing.
Then, another thing I like to do a lot, because I'm a lazy person,
and I just don't have the patience to stand in line
in a supermarket, I really like to buy my food on-line.
And I find that this way of doing my grocery shopping is really helpful,
for those products that I buy every week like every week I know that I eat milk,
I eat eggs, I eat ham, cheese, fruits and vegetables
so every week I go online, I place my order,
and a couple of days later, I know that the delivery boy will come to my office
and have it delivered to me.
And maybe you'll think,
"Oh yeah, but I'm never home, this is complicated,
where can I get my deliveries?"
Well, increasingly more there are websites that allow you
to receive your groceries, not just at home, but also
at your office, or you can go pick it up at delivery point
around the city, so that's very, very helpful.
And something that I like to do a lot with my colleagues,
I think it's in the good mood, good food mood.
I get some fruit, some box of fruit and I have it shipped at my office,
and we share it all together and it's a perfect healthy break.
So what can I say about this online kind of shopping?
That is really, really time-saving and time-convenient
so great food is time-saving as well.
And then now something that I like to do on my spare time.
Instead of going shopping for clothes,
or when I happen to visit a new city, a new place,
I really like to go visit farmers' markets.
And when I go there,
I start touching, I start smelling, I start tasting the food,
I start talking to the producers
and I find that it's a very exciting activity,
especially when I'm in a new place,
it tells me a lot about the places that I'm visiting.
And I don't go there with a precise idea of what I want to buy or find.
I just go there and start discovering things,
and this is really important to me,
because great food is also discovery.
This is what I do when I'm running out of milk at home
for instance, when I'm in a hurry, or when I invite people over to my place.
And I know that, for instance, my friend Ricardo
is very fond of that particular cheese
or that particular wine, I go and shop
at small shops in my neighborhood.
I always try to know the place where I live
and go select the small shops in the area.
I pick shops that I know that
source their food from small producers and local producers
and it's just really helpful when
I get out of work and it is late,
to go and visit the local shop nearby;
and also it's very important, because I know that when I go buy
at the small shops around the corner,
I'm also helping the local economy grow, and it's always nice
to speak with the shop owners, because they know a lot about the food
they know a lot about how the food was produced
and so it's a relationship there that starts and grows.
And this is to say that to me, great food is relationships.
So just to sum up pretty quickly,
it's actually doable and easy to eat great food every day:
once a month, I buy my non perishable food
and food that comes from far away
through buying groups,
then every week I place an order online, for my weekly share
of fruits and vegetables and the things that I use the most.
Then when my fridge starts to become empty
and I run out of food, I go and shop at the local store.
And then every now and then, I go visit farmers' markets
and discover new tastes and new producers;
and then at the end the week,
when I'm tired and I don't feel like cooking any more, what do I do?
I go eat at my mom's place, because we know that that's where
the greatest food of all is.
Thank you.