As I’ve mentioned previously in NVN Weekly, I’m joining Slow Food delegates and foodies from around the world in Turin, Italy for Terra Madre Salone Del Gusto 2022! The event takes place every two years to celebrate and showcase Good, Clean and Fair food as well as discuss the challenges facing our food system. The week has finally arrived, and here I am in sunny Turin ready to take part in this exciting event.

As part of the biodiversity installation, all delegates were asked to bring food samples from their region to contribute to the Arc of Taste – which this year will display grains and flours, pulses and legumes, and dried fruit and nuts. From the Locavore Store, I chose to bring along one of my favourite grains – our unique Black Barley grown by Roger Duggan in New Norcia. If you haven’t yet tried this fantastic heirloom grain you should! You can also read the story here. For the nut section, I couldn’t go past Sandalwood nuts from our friends Maureen and Clive Tonkin in Moora. Along with their popular Westways Wildflowers, the Tonkins have been collecting the fallen sandalwood nuts from a failed sandalwood plantation on their property and value adding to this high protein bush food by roasting, salting and everyone’s favourite – covering them in chocolate!

For the final category, legumes, we consulted with the Noongar Land Enterprise Group(NLE), a not-for-profit Aboriginal-led grower group based down south in Noongar Boodjar country. NLE have been planting and collecting bush foods as part of their mission to provide more opportunities for Aboriginal people to take part in the cultivation of indigenous foods and cultural tourism. It was suggested that wattle seeds harvested from the Acacia bush were the ideal example to represent Western Australia. Wattles seeds have been used by Aboriginal people to make a type of flour and can be used to make bread cooked in hot coals, or eaten raw out of pods. They are highly nutritious and – as I was excited to learn – can be ground and roasted to make a coffee type drink! This is definitely something I’m keen to investigate further.
 
For more news from Terra Madre stay tuned! I’ll be posting more updates on the Locavore Store social pages (Facebook and Instagram), as well as presenting (online) at the Slow Food High Tea on 2 October – which you can buy tickets for here.