Welcome everyone to 100 Climate Conversations. Thank you for joining us. Before we go any further, I’d like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the ancestral homelands upon which we meet today, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We respect their Elders, past, present and future and recognise their continuous connection to Country. Today is number 68 of 100 conversations happening every Friday. The series presents 100 visionary Australians that are taking positive action to respond to the most critical issue of our time, climate change. We’re recording live in the Boiler Hall of the Powerhouse Museum. Before it was home to the museum, it was the Ultimo Power Station. Built in 1899 it supplied coal-powered electricity to Sydney’s tram system into the 1960s. In the context of this architectural artefact, we shift our focus forward to the innovations of the net zero revolution. My name is Pat Abboud, Alex Elliott-Howery is the co-founder of cafe, picklery and cooking school Cornersmith. Elliott-Howery is a leading voice in the war against food waste and has co-authored The Cornersmith Guide to a More Sustainable Kitchen and The Food Saver’s A-Z: The Essential Cornersmith Kitchen Companion, which helps busy people embrace seasonable and sustainable eating. A testament to how good Cornersmith is and the whole ethos of the business and what you create, my mother, my Lebanese mother — who is incredibly specific and picky about pickles — I took a jar of pickles from Cornersmith to her and she devoured them and said that they were fantastic and also asked me to buy the pickles as a gift to give to her friends. It’s a testament.

It is the highest compliment I’ve ever received.

You’ve made it, girl.

I mean, I’m feeling happy. I can give up. Career highlight.

Please don’t. Please don’t give up. But, I suppose everyone has their own individual relationship to food. For many, it means culture, memory, legacy and for others, food is fuel. What does food mean to you firstly, and what is it that shaped that?

Huge question on what food means for me. I guess food for me now is so much more than fuel. What’s become complicated around that question is that once you start to understand how food does impact climate, it’s really hard to just use food as, you know, for joy or for nourishment because I know too much. So, I’ve done too much research. Every time I look at something, I’m like, ‘Oh, I know the backstory of that’. So, I’ve really got to separate sometimes work from joy as well. But ultimately, I use food to bring people together, to feed my family, and I’m the person that feeds all the friends as well. So, I grew up in a household that was a busy household. It was not a traditional household. I grew up with my mum and all her gay best friends raised me. And so, it was a house that was very much full of a lot of people, a lot of laughs, but it always centred around the dinner table. So, my mum was an excellent cook and as were some of the other people that lived in the house as well. So, it was always, you know, we always sat down at the dinner table together and I didn’t really think about it like it’s just what we did. I was always involved in cooking, but I didn’t love it as a kid or anything. So, I guess, you know, a hats off to my mum and my family for teaching me to love food and showing me how it does bring people together and is an easy way to have conversations.

People say we have our best ideas in the shower. I have a lot of great ideas in the show, I must say. Your best ideas come in the kitchen?

Yes.

What is the power of this space? If you are picturing the kitchen and this visually – this beautiful visual that you just created of your mum with all her gay best friends and, you know, the neighbours, I’m sure, and other family members. And I’m seeing a big, gorgeous, beautiful table with a huge spread of wonderful food. What is the power of this space, like the kitchen in enacting change? Because to have that gorgeous big spread that comes from the kitchen, what is the power of that space?

Well, look, I think kitchens are really important spaces and I think they can be really important spaces for climate action, but also just change in general. I think that vision of this big table spread with food does actually come out of the 80s and the 90s, and we need to drop that. Because that’s why we’ve got food waste. Because it’s lovely to make that big table but no one can eat it all. I think for me, I feel like what we need to do is look at why kitchens are so important, but also how they can help us move into the future. And I think actually, we’ve got to change our habits and we’ve got to change – it doesn’t mean we take the joy out, it doesn’t mean there’s no laughs, it doesn’t mean it’s not abundant, but something’s got to change in that space. And that’s what I’m hoping is what I’m helping people do is to kind of change the way they use their kitchens to become a really important working cog within their household, but within a bigger.

So the kitchen is a place for climate activism. In a nutshell.

Yes, and without even knowing that you’re doing climate activism. Like, basically you’re cooking a meal for your family but, if you know what you’re doing, at the same time you’re reducing food waste, you’re reducing packaging, you’re knowing where you’re buying food from yadda yadda yadda, and you’re actually being an activist.

That’s fantastic. And so, for you, was there a sort of penny drop moment? When did the moment happen when you saw the connection between food and climate come together in your mind?

So, I guess, you know, I moved out of home and I lived in share houses and I was always the person that cooked. And then when I was 24, I think, had a baby, you know, accidentally had a baby. It’s all worked out. It’s all fine. Everything’s good. But I guess I had, you know, found myself in my mid 20s with two little kids and I was trying to figure out how do I feed my family, so how do I do what my family did for me? But there’s a lot bigger pressures around environmentalism now. So, how do I do that in a sustainable way? And there’s so much information out there. I got totally overwhelmed. And I would just like lie in bed at night thinking about, you know, if I throw away half a lettuce and the people next door throw away half a cucumber and then, you know, and then suddenly I was just like on top of the world. And all I could see was food waste. I was like, what is going on? So, I want to live in the city, but I feel like we have such a disconnect to food often in the city as well. Because you go to the supermarket, you fill up your trolley, you go home, you fill up your fridge, you cook, you get tired, you order Uber Eats, you go out, whatever, that food deteriorates. And I just was like, this cycle has to change. So, I did heaps of research, and I realised that every single culture actually preserves or has traditional techniques to deal with food when there’s too much of it. And it was that, like looking at cooks from other cultures, looking at cooks from other tricky times that just – I was researching interest. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just like, something’s going on here that got me really excited about food. But also, it almost felt like a challenge. And because I’m like a lunatic and obsessive –

A beautiful lunatic.

Thank you. Because I’m a really obsessive person. I just like, went deep. So, once I heard about this thing called preserving and I was like, oh, that stops food waste. I was just like rabid, like I was a rabid preserver, and I didn’t learn how to pickle at my grandmother’s knee or I don’t even know was YouTube around then? I didn’t even know how I learnt.

Let’s stay on food waste for a moment, because I think that’s the thing that, you know, in people’s minds it kind of makes sense. Okay, I want to have an impact on climate change, what can I do? So, let’s talk about food waste. One-third of all food produced is not eaten. Let me say that again one-third of all food produced is not eaten and food waste accounts for approximately 3% of Australia’s annual greenhouse gas emissions. That’s actually quite huge. Food waste is clearly something that needs to be addressed. What are the sorts of industry operations and consumer decisions that you’ve seen that have led us to waste so much food?

So, I think there’s two things here. The first thing is, is that we can’t all put it onto the individual because we live in an industrialised food system and we’re not making a lot of decisions and us, you know, like making sure that we use the top of our celery leaves is not really going to change those bigger issues. If we do want to just look at consumers, so much food gets thrown away because it doesn’t meet supermarket standards. So, you know, we want our oranges to be glossy. We want our whatever, we don’t want cherry stems to be brown we want them to be green. Tiny things. And that’s why a lot of food gets thrown away. So, the problem I have is that I don’t want to feel like you’ve got to do all of these things in order to fix the climate because no individual actually can do that.

It’s more so enabling people with the tools or to encourage them to say, ‘Yes, it’s worth taking that extra step’.

Yes. Absolutely.

In the kitchen, at the supermarket, because it does have a trickle-down effect down the track.

It really does. And also, even if that trickle-down effect is just the supermarket kind of saying, ‘Oh, actually people are fine to buy’ whatever it is, like Harris Farm and the ugly fruits and veggies. Like, all those initiatives are really great. So, I think if we’re talking about domestic here — because of that, those statistics are also about all the food, like at the farm gate, at the supermarket level during transportation. But I think for, you know, the statistics around a home shopper, it’s like you go to the shop and you buy I think it’s five bags of groceries. And on the way home you throw one of those into the bin. And I think when we start thinking about it like that, not only is that huge environmental impact, but also you’re throwing away what like $150 bucks? Is that a bag of groceries right now? So, that becomes another incentive. So, I think food waste, for me, is: number one, you’ve got to understand ingredients. And I like to know a bit of something about an ingredient. So, if I walk into the supermarket and there’s a giant pile of cauliflowers there, I’m like, ‘They want me to buy cauliflowers’. And that’s for a reason. And that’s because they’ve got a whole lot of cauliflowers. So that’s the decision that you can make. So, you like, okay, we’re eating cauliflowers, so you take that and that is actually stopping food waste at the supermarket level. And then once you bring something into your house, you have to bring it in and value it. And it’s like, I don’t want to sound like a hippie, but, you know, but you’ve got to, like, care for your cauliflower that you’ve brought home.

Well, it nourishes you.

It nourishes you, but you have to value it. And go, ‘You know what, cauliflower? You are in my domain. I’m going to look after you and I’m going to treat you well’. And so that means you store it well, that means you understand how to cook it. You know, my superpower is that I can look at a cauliflower and go, I’ve got five ideas for you, so it’s never going to go to waste. I’m never going to let it rot in my fridge. So, I guess it’s habit changing is the thing that’s going to stop food waste. But it’s also, it’s skills and it’s value. It’s really important to value food.

Well, I suppose it’s worth talking about what’s led us to waste so much food, and you’ve touched on that from the consumer perspective. But in terms of bigger-picture industry operation, just so there’s bigger context, what sorts of industry operations have you seen that have led us to waste so much food?

Well, for me, you know, I mean, I have a cafe and we have food production as well, so we’re dealing in scale. But I guess what I’ve seen mainly is that there’s a lot of aesthetic issues and that’s why people are wasting things. So, we will get a phone call of someone saying, you know, there’s a tonne of cherries that the supermarkets are going to reject for X, Y, Z reasons. Do you want them? Otherwise, they’re going into landfill.

Wow.

And you know, or like when the strawberry crisis was going on with the needles in the strawberries and no strawberry farmer could sell their strawberries. We were getting so many calls like, ‘Do you want strawberries?’ There’s punnets and punnets and punnets of strawberries just going to be tipped into landfill and I’m like one little person over a big pot.

Did you hire 10 trucks and send them all out?

I go into panic mode–

How do you respond to that?

Well, it’s panic and it’s also like I’m calling anyone I know that might know how to preserve and but I can’t fix that problem because I’m–

One individual.

One individual with a little shop in Marrickville. But when I made those jams, you know, out of those products and told that story, that’s the stuff that people wanted to buy. So, then a consumer can get really interested and go like, ‘Oh, there’s two kinds of jam. I could get one at Woollies or Cornersmith rescued those strawberries. It’s going to cost a little bit more money, but I want to put my money where my ethics are, basically’. So yes, I think there’s aesthetic things that are massively problematic.

Look, I think there’s some really interesting points you raise and it’s when you see real change, it comes from a lot of lobbying, a lot of, you know, action and that translates to policy. When it’s policy, there’s rules, there’s a set of – there’s a system we’ve got to kind of abide by. And this is such a large, complex, multilayered industry. The food industry, as you say, is complex.

Yes.

So, where do you see the line between, you know, what changes we as individuals need to make, which we’ve touched on, versus those larger industry and systemic issues that need to be addressed through things like policy?

I guess I feel like I don’t know how those big changes are going to happen because we have been in an industrialised food system for so, so long now and it’s really, really problematic. So, I guess the advice that someone gave me was, ‘If you don’t know how to cook — and you’re not going to be, you know, making your kitchen a site for positive climate change — write letters’. Write letters out there in the world to, you know, your MP, , whoever and just say, ‘This is a really important issue to me’, because the supermarkets are big beasts that are really hard to – someone else has got to make that big decision. And that’s not going to be someone like me. I’m going to empower a lot of people – individuals in their homes and also industry, like in the hospitality industry, I feel like I’ve made a big impact on how kitchens run as well — but the supermarket chains–

It’s a collective effort. That’s what I’m hearing.

Yes.

The letters, buying the odd fruit and vegetables — it helps, right?

Absolutely, it all helps. It’s all really important.

Now, you and your partner James started Cornersmith in 2012. It’s a long time to be in the business–

Yes, it is–

Of food and cafes and hospitality generally. It’s grown to be a hugely successful cafe and cooking school. What makes the way Cornersmith operates so successful, and what do you feel has made it an institution in the Inner West community?

So, when we decided to open a business, my partner James had been in hospo and bars and coffee roasteries and, for a long time, was like kind of sick of working for other people and wanted to open his own thing. I was at home trying to figure out how to preserve all the lemons of Dulwich Hill and Marrickville and how to – I didn’t know what I was doing. I just suddenly had two kids and I was like, ‘This is not the life I was imagining for myself’, but knew I loved cooking, knew I loved environmental stuff. So, I just cooked for a couple of years to just try to figure out how to get my head around it and feel empowered in a really domestic life that I wasn’t expecting to find myself in. Once I discovered what preserving was, I started noticing my neighbourhood — which is an old Greek and Vietnamese neighbourhood — heaps of fruit trees, heaps of veggie patches. A lot of the old Greek families have moved out. Younger families have moved in. There are olive trees dripping with olives. There are lemon trees dripping with lemons. There are fig trees with figs falling on the ground because people don’t actually know what – like you can grow so much fruit in your backyard and then you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got three boxes of grapefruits’. I was just noticing all of this stuff around me and really noticing waste, I guess. So, I started knocking on people’s doors. I always took the kids, so they didn’t think I was, you know–

A lunatic.

I was going to say lunatic. ‘Hi, would you mind if I – are you going to do anything with those kumquats?’ Most people were just so into it and would like, ‘Please take them off my hands. Like I just feel guilty and terrible every time I look at them’. I’d take it away, try to teach myself how to preserve something or make something. Lots of fails, lots of great stuff. And then I would take a jar back to that person and be like, ‘Hey, look what I made out of your kumquats’, and I built up — I must have done this for years just with little kids and this weird side hustle. Not selling anything, just like a vibe, I guess.

You were also creating community.

I was creating community and I didn’t even know that’s what I was doing. But as I was like, you know, dropping jars back, I started realising I was like, what’s happening here is that I’m living in the city and we’re having proper conversations about not just food but gardening and also food waste.

And climate.

And climate.

Without realising.

Without realising, with people who didn’t want to talk to me about the climate. So, the word spread around the neighbourhood and I would open my front door and my husband would be like, ‘There’s more bloody chokos on my doorstep!’ or whatever it was, and I’d be cheering and turn it into whatever we turned it into. And then the Greek nonnas came and found me. And they taught me so much. So, I learnt how to cure olives in Greek. I don’t speak Greek, so, you know, it’s my own version of it. And I got given a lot of recipes from grandmothers or great grandmothers, had lots of conversations about, you know, the memories of food. And when I think back then, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just like, love food, hate food waste. Got these kids, you know, live in this suburb, you know, just trying to figure life out. So, once I had all these amazing recipes and all these stories to tell, I was like, there’s something in this. And then did heaps of research and just realised that, you know, around the world people are figuring out how to deal with gluts of stuff. So, I just obsessively preserved and look, I got really so hardcore about it that I was canning my own tuna and making my own butter and making mustard. Like not – that’s not what I’m going to recommend anyone does.

And raising two children.

And raising two children. But I guess I really don’t think, that’s not the answer to climate change. So, everyone can just sigh a breath of relief there. Please just buy butter. But what I felt like was that it was giving me a really amazing skill set around cooking from scratch, and I will be the first to acknowledge that I was actually part of something that’s problematic in our food world, which is that cooking from scratch has to be a really big deal and that we have to, you know, can our own tomatoes and make our own pasta and go to work and raise children and that is not the answer here. So, once my kids started to get bigger, we opened Cornersmith and it was like a hit from day one. It was just like everyone flocked to it. And I think it wasn’t just because it was delicious food and like good vibes, but also everyone could feel this like there’s something powerful here that’s happening.

It’s that value system. It’s a beautiful kind of connection to your local community in a way that hadn’t happened. So, you’re right, you’re on the money–

And it was a bit right time, right place. Like we live in Marrickville, Dulwich Hill, so I was just like, let’s just open something that’s close to home. Like, it wasn’t – I mean, we didn’t have a business plan. It was like a scratchy bit of paper and a crayon. It was just that I knew we needed something that had – if we’re going to have a cafe, which my husband wanted to open — it had to have the heart and the ethos that we tried to live by at home. So, then I think people were responding so well to it, just vaguely that I decided to set up a trading system within the cafe, which meant that if you had too many grapefruits or figs or whatever it was, you could bring them into the cafe. You know, I’d give you a coffee, you give me your whatever, grapefruits. And so, I guess then I was like, ah this is what’s happening. That’s why it’s become, shall I say, iconic? Seems a bit–

It’s definitely iconic and it’s had great success and it continues to have great success. And it’s not because you know, you’re out there trying to, like, pull money out of people’s pockets. You’re actually doing the opposite. You’re empowering people to make a small change. And the small changes mean bigger-picture change. It really is idealistic – my mom keeps telling me I’m the most idealistic person in the world. But, you know, I think that idealism means you’ve got to be idealistic to dream and make change, right?

And we have to have that.

And we all have to eat.

So, the fact that you’re empowering people to bring food to you and you’re giving them something in return — the old school, the barter system — that is really empowering.

One of my favourite stories was really early on, this guy — who was like a full suit, I didn’t think he was going to love what we do — every morning he would drop us, on the way to the train station, a giant bag of rocket, and he’d get his morning coffee. He drops us the rocket and he was like some hot-shot lawyer in the city.

That’s gorgeous.

And then that rocket would go on the sandwiches that day. And I used to just cry at work every day. And hugging everyone, like, whatever it is, it’s so beautiful.

Well, it is. It’s that old kind of, you know, hug a tree vibe. You know, it’s like it brings you closer. I feel like what you do, Alex, brings everybody closer to a solution. So, what are some of the sustainable practices in use at Cornersmith? Obviously, there’s the bartering system, but can you give us a snapshot of what the kitchen looks like and how are you making sustainable food happen at Cornersmith?

Yes, at Cornersmith — and it bleeds into my home. It’s all one kind of thing. We’ve had amazing chefs, like I also want to put out there that Cornersmith’s — my husband and I own Cornersmith, but we are a bigger operation — there are amazing people that work for us. And really, people only come to work for us if they are also driven by a passion to make some environmental change as well. So, we’ve had some incredible chefs who have really taught me a lot as well over the years, because I’m like the hokey home cook and we’ve had proper chefs in there as well. I guess what we’re doing – when we first started, I was like, every single decision that we make has to, you know, make a change environmentally. So, we had our own beehive on the roof in Marrickville because I was like, we can make our own honey. Like, we can’t have a cow in the city, but we can definitely have honey. So, that was cool. And basically, our menus — well, firstly, every ingredient that we choose to have in the cafe is there for a reason. So, we always really know where the choices that were coming from, which is really important. Only Australian produce, so we don’t get anything imported because, food miles. And then also the menus and anything that’s made in the kitchen. — we don’t really have any food waste. If pineapple’s on the menu, we figure out something to do with the pineapple skins. If you know there’s leek on something, the tops are going into – the leek tops are going into that as well. So, it’s about being resourceful but it’s also for the chefs, it’s about being really creative, which is why they like working for us. So, we made yesterday, I made a giant batch of mandarin jam and then there were just all these peels and I just put it on Instagram. I was like, ‘Anyone know what to do with peels?’ I can’t tell you, I got hundreds and hundreds of messages of what you do with the peel.

What do you do with mandarin peels?

Oh my God, I’ll get out my phone. There are so many. But like, so when I go in the next couple of days, I’ll make something. Like we’ll dry them, we will powder them, we will probably do a mandarin and sesame and chilli salt that you can sprinkle on things to make it delicious. So, it’s about beingresourceful, creative and not putting anything in the bin.

One of the things you’re passionate about is using the whole of something, as you’ve said a couple of times — and you know, we’ll chat through some of the ways you use all of a certain ingredient in a bit more detail — but I suppose, how did we get so picky, is the question? How do people get so fussy and picky about the avocado or the orange or the banana?

I think lots of reasons. And I think — I write cookbooks and I want people to buy my cookbooks —but I also feel like this kind of cookbook culture, chefs becoming kind of celebrity vibes, food on television — everything had to look really beautiful. And that’s what we were shown. So, no one’s showing us what, you know, my Greek neighbour’s growing in their backyard. We’re seeing the beautiful bunches of spinach at the supermarket shelf. So, I guess aesthetic issues around that. I think also we’ve got a fear of food and we want the supermarkets or someone to tell us like, is that okay?

What do you mean by fear of food?

We’ve got a fear around – that’s why use-by dates exist, right? Not because we don’t trust ourselves to go, ‘Is that still okay to eat?’. We’re like, ‘Oh, someone’s got to tell me — a higher authority has to tell me that’s okay’. So, we’re kind of expecting things to look beautiful, to be at their best all the time. And we don’t want to engage with food. We want to be told what to do, told how to cook it. We want to throw it away. We want someone to take it away without us actually having to be part of that process. So, I guess it’s taking away our hands-on element that you need to have to know how to cook, to know how to feed yourself, to know when you can eat something and when you can’t eat something. To know that like a tired, old, bendy wrinkly cabbage is totally fine to eat, like you just take the outer off. You know, it’s sort of we’ve lost our instinct, I guess, when it comes to food.

Yes. I suppose there’s a set of rules that have been created and we tend to follow.

And that sort of rule has been created for someone to make money.

Speaking of money, you’ll often see produce available out of season.

Yes.

Like peaches.

It’s the worst.

Being sold in supermarkets–

It’s like a knife in my heart–

In the middle of winter, which I always find weird. Is there a cost to this convenience and what should people be aware of?

People should never, ever, ever buy anything out of season. The rule is if you walk into a supermarket and on the cookbooks that you’ve looked up, it says you need asparagus and you can’t find the asparagus easily, don’t buy it. It’s not around if you have to – if it’s not a top shelf somewhere hidden, it’s not in season. So, when food’s in season, it means that it’s grown at the time that it’s meant to be grown. It means that it hasn’t had to travel too far to get to you. It’s the most nutritious and it’s also the most delicious — when things are in season they taste the best — and it’s the cheapest.

So, what sustainable shopping and cooking habits can people adopt when they’re contending with this sort of rising cost of living? What are some of the other sort of more sustainable shopping and cooking habits?

So, number one is like ideally, try not to write a shopping list that’s like really kind of very detailed. So, if I write my shopping list, I’m like greens. So, it’s just like a green. I know we need something green in the house, but I have to go to the supermarket before I make that choice because I don’t know what’s there that week. So, if the green beans are in a giant pile, I’m like, yep, that’s what we’re having. If it’s broccoli, yep, that’s what we’re having. If it’s cabbage, I’m like, sorry, kids, we’re having cabbage. This is the cabbage week. So, I guess it’s firstly flexibility, I should say. So, even if you are someone that follows recipes, keep it really loose and broad like root vegetables. So, if there are no beetroots around, choose something else. Choose a carrot. Like they work in the same way, basically, I think again, really do try to buy Australian produce where you can, is a really good sustainable choice, but mainly just don’t buy too much food and that saves you a lot of money. So, I have a lot of people that are like, ‘Oh, but it said I needed coriander and then I didn’t get to use it’ and I’m like, ‘Just don’t buy coriander’. This dinner is still going to be really good. It’s still going to be fine.

A little bit more pepper.

Yes, a bit more pepper, get a bit of coriander seed in there — so just strip everything back. If you are not going to use the entirety of anything, whether that’s like a jar of tomato paste or a cauliflower, don’t bring it into your house.

This is such an inspiring way to start a Friday morning going into the weekend, thinking, what hopefully you guys in the audience and people listening as well are feeling the same, about what we’re going to cook. So, let’s go through a few ingredients to see what creative ways you can use them up. That’s your forte and your specialty. Thinking about what’s seasonal and winter, what would you do with the cauliflower, say?

So firstly, do you know you can eat the leaves?

No, never done it.

So, weirdly, cauliflower leaves taste a bit like cauliflower, but they just need to be cooked a little bit differently.

But they seem so sour and bitter.

And have you ever tried?

And weirdly textured.

Have you ever tasted one?

No. Now I have to.

Yes, exactly. But I’m not going to ask you to eat them raw. What you got to do is you – so basically, if you buy cauliflower with the leaves on, you’re buying two ingredients. So, you’re buying the cauliflower and you’re also buying a whole lot of greens. So, if you wash them, thinly, thinly slice them, sauté them with lots of garlic, in olive oil or butter, salt and pepper, you could chuck in some chilli flakes, you could chuck in some lemon, you could chuck in some fennel. And so they’re fibrous, right? So, they’re not going to cook like a baby spinach leaf, but they’re going to cook lower, slower. You could even put a lid on top for a while in your frypan, could chuck a little bit of stock in there if you wanted to. And you get them really velvety and really soft. Now, that is a delicious green that you could have–

As a side?

On the side. Like if you were having a piece of fish, you could have it on the side, if you were having a roast chicken. I put that in omelettes. When I make a green pie–

In omelettes?

In omelettes. It’s just like green.

Wow.

No one knows what they’re eating. My children do not know they eat cauliflower leaves.

Okay, I’ve got two cauliflowers in the fridge. Legit. I do. I’m going to do this tomorrow for breakfast.

Do it and see what happens. And then, if I make a green pie and I don’t have spinach, I’m like, oh, it’ll be cauliflower leaves and parsley, And I’m like, it’s a green pie. No, one knows. Delicious.

Give me one other kind of hack.

So, I think celery is a really good one because everyone buys a whole celery — and it’s probably one of the most wasted because you buy it, you use three sticks for your bolognaise or whatever you’re cooking, your soup.

Chop the tops off.

Chop the tops off and then you put it in the fridge and then you’re like, eh. Nothing ever happens. It gets limp, you know, you throw it in the bin. Firstly, I want you to store your produce really, really well. If you cut the bottom off, cut the leaves off, don’t throw either of those things away and put those stalks into a Tupperware container with a bit of water in the bottom. Change that water maybe every week, it will last a month. I’m not even joking.

Yes, I’ve definitely done that.

So, that just keeps. You don’t need to buy celery for the whole month. The leaves are delicious. Once again, they taste like celery.

I just calculated that saving like celery is expensive.

Yes, it is expensive.

And you’re throwing half of it away, every week.

That’s like five or six coffees extra a month. Think of it like that.

\Exactly. So, yes, that storage and like my books are full of, how do I store this? How do you store a kale for the best, you know, storage is really, really important because that’s going to make things last longer. But then the celery leaves are also delicious, grassy, fresh, salty. So, if I bought a celery, I would never buy parsley or coriander. That’s my herb for the week. Chop it up. You can make a gremolata, you can make pesto, you can chop it up finely and put it on top of avocado aon toast there, it’s just–

So versatile. Who would have thought?

I actually don’t buy very much food and my kitchen is really quite bare. So, when I have to do those things of like, ‘What does your cupboard look like?’ I’m like, there’s nothing in there. It’s very empty.

I suppose, but you’ve got great storage solutions for food so, that’s where the time goes.

Yes. But I think it’s about not having too much in there. That’s how you’re going to save money and reduce food waste.

Okay, now you’ve been referred to as the godmother of pickling, which I love. I love. And very accurate. It’s such a great way to reduce waste and continuing this sort of, you know, equipping people with the tools. But what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever pickled?

There’s nothing I haven’t pickled. So, you could just fire away anything. A banana was disgusting. It’s not weird, but pickled seafood is amazing. Like pickled mussels, pickled octopus, pickled sardines — all really yummy. But I think it’s rather than, like, what is the weirdest thing I’ve ever pickled. I think it’s really important to say, like, what I want with preservation is for it to stop being like, ‘Oh, Alex that cute pickler. How adorable’ and to really look at like why preserving is so important. So, we put a lot of nostalgia onto traditional food skills but actually we need to go, ‘Why were they doing that in the first place?’ Because we’re in our own tricky times right now. We actually have to look at why did those things happen, why did people bother preserving food? But now we need to make it make sense in our busy urban lives. So, preservation stops food from deteriorating. And it doesn’t matter how you preserve, but what you’ve got to do is make sure that that food doesn’t go off.

Everything about what you do I love. But community is such a driving force in your work. And I think that’s something that, you know, when we’re talking about big, big, big, complex issues like climate change, community is what drives the change to affect these big, big-picture issues in the world, right? So, how can we band together to better the food industry?

Yes. So, heaps more conversation. I think it’s, you know, we don’t live in, as much as I would like to, where you make the bread and I make the cheese and our mate brings the salami — we don’t live like that. It’s all we’re all in one house trying to do everything and please don’t try and do everything, audience, I’ve done that and almost had a nervous breakdown, so it is not the answer. But I think that we have to share and we have to share our resources and share our knowledge and share our wisdom. So, so many people say to me, Why do you give all your recipes away? Why do you give your secrets away? Tthe only way that change will happen, is that if I am completely transparent about everything that I do to the detriment of my bank balance, but also that’s what drives me. Like we all need to do a little bit more of that. So, I think it is sharing of information.

We have run out of time. Please join me with a huge round of applause for Alex. To follow the program online you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And visit the 100 Climate Conversations exhibition or join us for a live recording, go to 100climateconversations.com.

This is a significant new project for the museum and the records of these conversations will form a new climate change archive preserved for future generations in the Powerhouse collection of over 500,000 objects that tell the stories of our time. It is particularly important to First Nations peoples to preserve conversations like this, building on the oral histories and traditions of passing down our knowledges, sciences and innovations which we know allowed our Countries to thrive for tens of thousands of years.