How Ugly Is Your Veg?

This year we are again holding an Ugly Vegetable Competition at Foodival.  Have you grown something in your back garden, window box, flower pot or allotment that would meet no supermarket specifications?  Something truly distorted, organic, untainted by order?  Yes?  Great!  You could be a contender or rather your fruit or vegetable could.  Bring it along to be celebrated, photographed and admired at Mushkil Aasaan on Saturday September 10th, 1-5pm.

Last year's winner was a rather beautiful ugly pepper grown by our friends at Share Community Garden.  Congratulations to Jenny Shand and her team.  Could you be a prize winner this time round?

Ugly Veg Champion 2015

Celebrating Local Food Together as a Community: Preview of #Foodival2016 on the 10th & 11th Sept

We're very excited about TTT's ninth annual Tooting Foodival which is all about Celebrating Local Food Together as a Community. 
We're planning the details now - here's a snapshot preview.
Plenty more information to come later on.

'Local food plus local community' is the weekend's theme:

I Grew This! (Foodival 2015)

Saturday 10th Sept activities run from from 1pm to 5pm and are based at Mushkil Aasaan, 222 Upper Tooting Road SW17 7EW. 

On Saturday we welcome all local growers to share and donate some of their local produce - maybe a bag of potatoes, or a single chilli pepper...whatever you would like to share.

Mark where you've been growing on our Growing Tooting Map.

We'll take your photo proudly holding your fruit or veg for our 2016 I Grew This! poster and we'll display what's shared.

Where will all this wonderful donated local produce go?

Top Tooting Cook! 
Firstly, donated produce goes to anyone who wants to enter our fun Top Tooting Cook event. Take some produce or recipes away (or cook with what you have grown at home), and bring back what you make on Sunday for the light-hearted judging and more at Mushkil Aasaan from 4 to 7pm.

The TTC hat - not the only prize you might win

Show off your culinary skills using fruit and veg grown locally and you could win a prize... and the coveted title "Top Tooting Cook"!
Find out all about the competition here and get in touch with Belinda to enter.
For inspiration, look at these delicious dishes - sorrel soup, risotto with cavolo nero, fava bean toast with egg - cooked by visitors to the Tooting Community Garden, using produce picked that day!

Thanks Naomi, Charles and Janine.

Soup Disco!

Secondly, local produce donated on Saturday will go to Sunday evening's Soup Disco party from 7pm to 10pm in Tooting Market, 21-23 Tooting High Street SW17 0SN.

From 7pm, we'll all be chopping up the veg to make our delicious Tooting soups for everyone to enjoy. And to accompany the collective cook-up, our fantastic DJ will be spinning some great tunes so you can show off all your best moves on the chopping board and the dance floor. 

No cooking or dancing experience required but fabulous disco outfits are encouraged! Plus, some enterprises in the market will be open for business - it's going to be a memorable night! 

Other activities for all ages on Saturday at Mushkil Aasaan from 1pm to 5pm will include:

Celebrate reducing waste and having fun by displaying your Ugly Veg. Or as it's called in the USA: Produce with Personality.

Learn about urban beekeeping, taste SW12 and SW17 honey and get close to live bees. Local beekeeper Richard is bringing a demonstration hive of live bees. He can chat about bees & honey - and about sources of info for planting and gardening to encourage bees and other pollinators.

Sprouted teff seed

Practice being a successful home farmer by sprouting seeds - easy and delicious. Fresh seeds sprouted at home only have to travel a few inches 'from plot to plate'. 
NO food miles!

Play our fun low carbon living games including exploring food's footprint and much more.


Get hands-on and creative with crafts linked to food and the Soup Disco - all ages can come and enjoy making.

In the garden...

Explore the local network of community gardens which can offer you fun, exercise, friendship, time outdoors in nature and a place to grow healthy local food.
Plus, you will pick up plenty of growing advice and encouragement to grow your own fresh food on window sill, a balcony or in a front garden.


Discuss the other local sustainability projects that Transition Tooting facilitates with many different partners, find out how to get involved - and we welcome your suggestions and new ideas.

All welcome to #Foodival2016!

Could you be Tooting's Top Cook?

Look at these delicious dishes - sorrel soup, risotto with cavolo nero, fava bean toast with egg - all cooked by visitors to the Tooting Community Garden, using produce they picked that day! Thanks Janine, Charles and Naomi!

Are you feeling hungry yet? Or maybe you have a wonderful recipe to share with the community?

If you do...

Enter Top Tooting Cook at this year's Foodival!

Show off your culinary skills using produce grown and sourced locally and you could win a prize... and the coveted title "Top Tooting Cook"!

Find out all about the competition here and get in touch with Belinda to enter or come chat to the team at the Community Garden picnic tomorrow!  Plenty of time to decide what you'll cook. The competition takes place during Foodival: 10-11 September.

The Top Tooting Cook hat... not the only prize you'll win!

Share your recipes with Tooting!

If you have a delicious recipe you'd like to share - post it to our Facebook page.  Post the recipe with a picture if you have one. We hope to produce a recipe book. Maybe you'd like your recipe to be shared with local people. Let us know!