David Williams writes on food and activism, or “How to Feed 100 People”
We’re keeping it simple here. This isn’t fine dining en masse for a swathe of paying guests. This is doing a big ol’ quantity of grub – bonus points if you can make it healthy and nourishing – for a relatively unknown quantity of people at a community event (see – Protestival). We’re calling it 100 here because that’s a nice round number, but really it’s as many portions you can scrape out of the giant cooking pot you’ve borrowed from a comrade (which, come to think of it, should be step one – obtain said pot). Maybe, like me, you put your hand up at an organising meeting and said you’d have a crack at making the soup – this is for you.
Past self – take heed! Have you ever tried to cook something for this many people? No? Then you’d be wise to listen to the advice of that same comrade who lent you the cooking pot – cooking at this scale is no mean feat. You’ll be bringing several litres of broth to the boil – this will likely take longer than you think. You’re dealing in kilos of vegetables and seasoning in fistfulls, not pinches. You’ll want to arrange some peeling and chopping buddies ahead of time. It’s also going to be heeeavy, so make sure you’ve got transport sorted. Get your playlist arranged and empty the work surfaces in your kitchen. You’ll want those good ‘Y’ shaped peelers – trust me, and make sure your knife is sharp.
You’ll also need to obtain quantities of veg, of course. Either try and secure some donations from supermarkets, or, if you’re doing something specific, get onto the wholesalers ahead of time – and remember, these folks are early risers so you’ll need to get in touch before midday (If you’re Hastings based, I can highly recommend J Fountain & Sons). Wait, what are we making? Let’s roll this back a bit.
It’s going to be a blazing hot day in July, so while you’ve committed to making soup, this might not be the most appropriate form of food. Luckily, some more experienced pals and your Polish partner have gently suggested, why not make a cold soup? In this instance, we’re going for ‘Chlodnik’ – but because your Polish pronunciation is terrible, and because more folks have probably heard of its Ukrainian counterpart, you’ll be referring to it as a Cold Borscht, which also isn’t wholly inaccurate. While a deliberately cold soup isn’t something folks are so used to here in the UK, you’ll be providing cool refreshment AND a delicious, healthy, psychedelically pink-purple soup to wrap their brains and taste-buds around.
You’ve guessed it – beets are the order of the day here. If you’re not a beetroot lover, look away now. But you probably should be, because as well as being highly nutritious, as plants they are great at improving soil health – their deep roots help break up compacted soil and increase organic matter content. They also contain betalain – the pigment which gives beetroot its distinctive colour, which has powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Culturally they’re pretty significant too, having been cultivated for over 4,000 years, and in Greek mythology they were associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Maybe time to reconsider the humble beetroot, eh?
Along with all them beets, there’s cucumber, radish, and that fine East-European herb staple, dill. The recipe also calls for spring onion, but as I’m not great with alliums, this ingredient was omitted. Oh, and plenty of kefir and/or cream. The original ‘Polish Housewife’ recipe gives quantities in the region of: five beetroots, two cucumbers, six radishes, three tablespoons of dill and around 200ml of kefir and cream. This is purported to feed around eight. Take a step back and allow your brain to process these quantities scaled up.
For something approaching 100 portions…oh holy crap, you’re going to need to multiply these by 10. From the wholesalers this equated to a 10kg sack of beets, a box each of cuc’s and radishes (so, so many of those little red peppery devils to chop), eight bunches of dill (this was far too many, used around half that), six 1kg bottles of kefir and five x 400ml tubs Polish Śmietana. As you can probably guess, I was improvising with quantities a bit here.
Before you go on to peel all 10kg (around 70 or so) of beets like I did (see previous comment on peeling pals – they’ll keep you sane), do check that your estimated quantities will fit into the cooking pot you have acquired. You’ll then be grating up enough beets to fill just under 2/3rds of your pot – in my case around 50 / 7kg of beets. Cover with water and bring to the boil along with a few fistfuls of salt and a generous amount of black pepper (taste as you go). Bringing this amount of liquid to the boil on a domestic hob, yeah – it’s gonna be there a while.
In the meantime, though, you’ve got what will feel like a mountain of radishes to de-top and chop, and that alarming quantity of giant cucumbers to get through…breathe. Have a cup of tea or a beer. Take a break. This is your afternoon now – and possibly next morning, ‘cuz you’ve got to wait till the soup has cooled down before you add the chopped cold ingredients. That which took long to heat up will also take time to cool down, so you’re going to want to leave that bad boy overnight. Come morning time, all that’s left to do is bung in all of your chopped cuc’s and radishes (wondering how you made space for all this in your fridge), pour in the kefir and cream, stir it all up, and marvel as deep purple changes to hot pink. Congratulations, you’ve done it!
Whizzing back to the past now for some reflection. Don’t forget your ladles and double-check that someone is bringing the paper cups. You’re about to blow some people’s minds, not just with the colour of the soup, but that it is cold and delicious and FREE. The old boy who turned his nose up but was willing to try and then came back for thirds. The little girl whose dad came to get her a hot dog but she insisted, “I want to try that!”. The whispers around the site of a magical pink liquid and those distinctive signs on white shirts that tell of the eagerness of the eating. Yes, there were a couple of cups returned; it was a bit much for some. But on the whole, it was a success.
To quote Martin Hägglund – ‘freedom is determined by how we cultivate the finite time at our disposal’. You’ve chosen to take time to make food for people – and have joined a wider group of folks who have come together, given their time, to protest joyfully. Because we believe in the power of community to bring about radical social change. You have chosen freedom.
If you’ve ever dabbled in activist circles, community organising, or been a human in the world, at some point your shared thoughts will have converged around food provisioning. It can be all too easy to get caught up in the cause, the work, but when we don’t feed ourselves well and look after our bodies, we cease to be effective. Because food IS important – the right to food, feeding yourself with dignity – is a human right. In 2023, a Big Issue report found that food poverty in the UK was among the worst in Europe, with 9.3 million adults experiencing food insecurity; poorer households were hit the hardest due to the cost of essential items rising at higher rates. We’re witnessing daily the weaponisation of food and forced starvation as a tool for genocide in Palestine.
When you’re able to arrange FREE FOOD at community events like this, you’re not only garnering rich human interactions, you’re sustaining people at the most essential level. The fact that, while capitalism is great at producing surplus (extractive, environmentally catastrophic intensive farming methods notwithstanding), yet so many people in this country are still in food poverty, is surely enough for one to stroke one’s chin and ponder (or take to the streets and scream), surely there has to be another way..?