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!

Peas Come to Meet & Make on Weds

Hoping lots of you can apPEAse TTT and join in Jeni's Meet & Make on Wednesday. She is very PlEAsed with the poster she has designed.  Do you have experience making 

GIANT PEAS?  

This is not necessary.  Can you paint a bucket?  Or draw a sign?  We need high level experience for this ... such as the ability to apply paint to objects or write in a West Germanic Indo-Eurpoean language commonly used all over the world ... (yes English).  PEAs just turn up and join in!

Help us decorate Foodival! What could it pea?

What's made of two PEAfect circles and bright green?

Come to SMART Meet & Make at Sprout next Wednesday evening and help us paper maché one of the centre-PEAces of Foodival's Festival Day! Led by Jeni Walker, you can also help to make signs and posters for the weekend.

The session is open to all ages and abilities. Everyone is welcome and it's free to attend!

SMART Meet & Make

"A Special Foodival PrePEAration Session"

Wednesday, 9th September 

6.30pm - 8.30pm 

at 

Sprout Arts

74 Moyser Road, Furzedown, Tooting, SW16 6SQ

More making for Foodival at fanSHEN's final Field Day

Join the final Field Day of 2015 for some Foodival fun. Meet at Tooting Market at midday to make and decorate percussion instruments and hats and then join the carnival parade to Foodival for 2pm.

Find out more on fanSHEN's blog.

Make a Pea for Foodival!

Want to contribute to Foodival, but don't grow or cook? Maybe you can make!  All welcome tomorrow for a maker session at Streatham Cemetery to get going on the creation of a Giant Pea for the opening ceremony. Using withy (sticks of willow) and paper mache, you'll learn how to construct amazing shapes just like the carnival professionals.

We'll also be making decorative plant pot covers using the same technique, so you can brighten up your window sills.

Join us from 6.30 - 8.30pm at the vestry at Streatham Cemetery - Garratt Lane, Tooting, SW17 0LT.

Thanks to both SMART and fanSHEN who will be leading the session. 

Any questions, please contact transitiontowntooting@gmail.com

Hot gifts hidden in the streets of Tooting

Keep your eyes peeled around Tooting this week and you might just find an especially hot gift from the folks at SMArT.  Nestled on a windowsill, settled on steps and hidden around the BATCA Fun Day, will you spot an upcycled package inviting you to "Open Me"?

We're keeping the surprise under wraps for now. What we can say is if you're lucky enough to find these carefully crafted gifts, you can keep it to yourself, or take it along to Foodival on Sunday, where you'll receive another something special. Hmmm, intriguing!

Thanks to all the makers who joined in at the last two SMArT Meet & Make sessions and everyone who collected their Tetrapak cartons and donated hot home-grown produce.

Let us know if you find one of the mysterious packages and we'll see you at Foodival for more home-grown fun!

The Phantom Knitter of Tooting is Knitting for Foodival

The final preparations are underway for Foodival with all kinds of making, harvesting and cooking planned this week.  Now, if you're wondering where Samaj Hall is, worry no more, our friend the Phantom Knitter of Tooting (a.k.a. Penny) has been working tirelessly the last few weeks knitting an amazing banner so you can find us this Sunday.  We took some time to find out more.

"Tooting says No to more betting shops"

Penny, how did you get the name, "The Phantom Knitter of Tooting"

The name “Phantom Knitter” was given to me by the local Guardian newspaper after I made a banner and placed it in the Broadway at night. This banner was started out of frustration with the increasing number of betting shops in the Tooting area. I had attended a local licensing hearing and it became very clear that planning changes meant that intended limitations from gambling deregulation could no longer be applied. The banner which said “Tooting says No to more betting shops” was my way of making the voice of objectors heard. It was made very quickly and in thick wool and is now very dirty and needs to be removed.

How have you made the Foodival banner?

I came up with a design quite quickly using images of fruit and veg as references. The banner has been completed in blocks. I have designed patterns for each block on Excel and provided my knitters with the acrylic yarn to complete a square. I have been assisted by knitters from Wandsworth U3A and from Earlsfield Townswomen’s Guild. I kept the centre part for myself. The big challenge was the stitching up. I worked some crochet around the edges to bring it all together.

It looks amazing. You're certainly an expert knitter. How did you get started and learn such great skills?

I started knitting at around the age of 6, taught by my grandmothers and my mother. I started with doll's clothes and remember making a brushed pixie hood for my sister for her first birthday. I made quite a few of my own sweaters, often receiving wool as Christmas and Birthday presents. In those days, there were wool shops in every village who would lay away wool so you could purchase a ball at a time but still have everything in the same dye lot.

We were a large family and by the time I was 11 I was making jumpers for my brothers, plain at first then becoming more complicated. I suppose I came from an era where it was considered wrong to just sit watching TV in the evenings so I would always have something on the go – usually knitting or needle point.

In the 90’s I got out of the knitting habit. I was working very long hours and it was easier to pick up a needlepoint (tapestry) project.

But in the mid noughties I began to knit again with renewed passion, finding it was good therapy to help deal with work stress and then depression. I began to devour knitting books and attend courses to refresh and extend my skills. I became involved with an online therapeutic knitting group “Stitchlinks”, and with “In the Loop” an academic knitting group based at the Knitting Library in Winchester. Lately I have also become a knitting history enthusiast and was delighted to give my first talk in July.

And now you help people young and old learn how to knit, is that right?

I started running a knitting afternoon at Broadwater Primary School about five years ago. I teach year 4 children in a lunch club, then am open to members of the local community in the school community room in the afternoon: mothers, aunts, friends and local residents irrespective of age or background. It has been a particular pleasure to help a few ladies who have been affected by strokes reconnect with former skills and to help those for whom English is a second language develop their confidence in conversation.

How can people get involved in the knitting groups you mention?

Those interested in finding out more about knitting can get in touch by emailing me at penny.ryan@btinternet.com

So, this Sunday, as you walk up Tooting High Street, keep an eye out for the wonderful banner. Walk through and enjoy the fun! Thanks to Penny, Wandsworth U3A and Earlsfield Townswomen’s Guild for all your efforts. We can't wait to see it and meet you on the day!

Who else will you meet at Foodival?

Foodival this year brings you fabulous food from locally grown food cooked up by local restaurants. While you eat, you'll be entertained by a wonderful range of entertainers.  But that's not all!

Venture around the whole venue and you'll meet people from local business and community groups; you'll discover places to play games, do art and crafts and we hope you'll meet some great new friends from your neightbourhood.

So here's our little nod to the great range of stalls lined up already for the Foodival this year.

• If all the lovely food at the Foodival is whetting your appetite for getting outside and growing your own, we have Transition Town Tooting and Transition Town Wandsworth talking about their community gardens.  
• The Friends of Streatham Cemetery will have representatives of their community beekeeping project (there might even be some local honey to try).  
• Meanwhile Niamh’s Nutrition stall can tell you all you need to know about eating healthily.
• We’ve got some great local energy projects with the Furzedown Low Carbon Zone, and Community Renewable Energy Wandsworth both working to set up renewable energy generation projects in the area.
• For the creative amongst you, the Sustainable Makers and Artists of Tooting (SMART) will have a stall with some hands on making activities... and if games are your thing you can have a go at giant low-carbon Jenga with Carbon Collaborations.
• Some lovely local makers will be there – locally made chutneys from Hilary’s Preserves, home made cakes from China Jordan and vegetable ivory jewellery from Tahgwa.
• You can find out more from our friends at fantastic local charity, Klevis Kola who support refugee and asylum-seeking families and helps them to play their full part in the community.  And the amazing Foodcycle Wandsworth will be around, so if you fancy cooking up a feast, find out how you can join in with them every weekend in Tooting on a Friday or Saturday.

We're still in need of a few volunteers to help on the day, so if you have an hour to spare, get in touch. And we can't wait to see all at Samaj Hall on Sunday 14 September from midday.