We invite you to open your fridge.

Take a deep breath; feel the cold air on your face... 

 
Can you use your fridge as a gateway to exploring the rest of the world?

 

Pull out a few vegetables from your fridge. Notice their colours and the bumps or ridges on their skins, the blemishes and dents and hairs...

 

Have you ever thought of vegetables as more than food? Where do they come from? Where will they end up? What happens in between then?

Feel free to comment any thoughts you have below.

Now that you have engaged with the organisms that exist in your immediate surroundings and connected them on a global scale, think about the following question: how can we give back to the land? 

As Robyn Kimmerer describes in Braiding Sweetgrass, some Indigenous peoples saw education as learning from the land. In the “The Gift of Strawberries” chapter, strawberries were a gift from the land, and our gift of giving back to the land was time, attention, care and red-stained fingers. The combination of these Indigenous peoples knowledge with novel western ideals, could create stronger reciprocal relations with all peoples in Canada. The social philosophy of Buen Vivir, of living well together, encourages this equal sharing of respect between all cultures. What if it was extended to all living and nonliving things? 

Think about your relationship with the land and with others. What is your relationship with your green space? How have you given back to the land? How could you connect your kitchen to the world? Create a project that addresses your reciprocity with food and the land. This is a thinking project to explore reciprocity, allow yourself to think ‘outside the box’. Your exploration can include one or many parts of the following examples:

Please consider the following criteria to guide you. (Please modify the success criteria based on your/ the participant’s level of learning).

Explore https://earthtotables.org or similar websites for ideas. We encourage you to connect with your local Indigenous peoples for inspiration. Post your project in Part 3B.

Step 2: Find out where this fruit of veg is from by looking for the country of origins sticker on it or another from the batch

Step 3: Google the name of your fruit or vegetable + the words place of origin (i.e. eggplant + place of origin). Where was this plant first cultivated by humans? How long has this been a common food grown on earth? If you feel inspired- add a link below to a recipe that is from the place where your fruit or vegetable is Indigenous to.

Step 4: Take the fruit or veg and sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil or some differently coloured pens/ markers. Imagine what this vegetable looks like in the field, orchard or forest where it was grown. What might the full plant this veg or fruit was picked look like in the field? What might be in the surroundings of this plant when it was still growing? Is anyone else there?