[As published in January/February BayBuzz magazine.]

It’s a huge idea! it would benefit all of us by saving money, making us more healthy, growing biodiversity and driving the local economy. It’s not going to happen. 

We should commune more frequently with friends and family. Sit, sharing stories, anecdotes and amusing tidbits. But it won’t happen. 

Cook! That’s the big idea. Cook and cook again. From scratch and from left-overs. Banish the packets. Leave the take-aways where they are. Buy fresh food and cook it for yourself, for your whānau and for your friends. Eat the meal at the table and share stories of the day. 

Yes, it might seem like a chore or a bore. You don’t have time, or know what to buy, or the kids won’t like it. But you’re wrong. You have time to prepare a good nutritional meal. It’s a priority, or should be. You do know how to cook or at least you do know how to learn. Those two hours a day doom scrolling could search out cooking techniques. Sure you’ll miss out on the latest mildly-amusing memes and the ‘effluencers’ latest holiday shots but it’ll be worth it.

Much like training a puppy, making the effort to cook fresh ingredients is a little daunting to start but you’ll reap the rewards in no time at all. There will be setbacks; occasional bad smells, emergency calls for a pizza as a trial batch of ratatouille is scraped into the bin, or the dog. But you will eventually triumph and be adored for it.

I tell you that it’s your duty to cook. I implore you to cook. I want to food-shame you about your choices. I too make poor choices; I’m shorter than my weight indicates that I should be so we’re all in this together. Let’s get into the year with renewed energy for feeding ourselves well. When Hippocrates said ‘Let food be thy medicine’ he wasn’t talking about a packet of Doritos and an onion dip. 

My go-to for an easy to cook, just because it takes three hours doesn’t mean that you have to stand and watch, is a multi-optioned chicken dish that always starts the same way.

I take a whole chicken, Bostock Brothers organic, and I put it in a big saucepan, cover it with water, add herbs, peppercorns, onion, garlic, carrot etc and poach it until just cooked. Remove the chicken and let it cool. Take the meat off the bones and return the bones to the poaching liquid. Simmer slowly for about an hour until you have a tasty stock.

From this point I might make a curry or a chicken casserole or soup. Chicken fried rice and so on. I keep half the chicken stock and some of the meat to use next time. For around $30 we have a meal for four people plus left-over ingredients. The cooking process gives me great pleasure. 

Swap out the chicken for beef or pork bones and add some mince. Recipes are easy to find. 

Gently fry those summer favourites, eggplant, tomato, capsicum, onion and garlic in some oil with basil and coriander seeds. Then serve the ratatouille with eggs, bread and butter. 

How good would we look! Buying produce from local growers, who in turn widen the range of produce that they grow to feed the locals. Biodiversity flourishes. We would shun the drive-through and the chemical additives. We’d sit, share a meal and talk. We’d be a little smug to start with.

But it won’t happen. The horse has bolted and is thus off the menu. 

We are marketed to by processed food suppliers at every turn of the drive-through and of the supermarket aisle. We eat ingredients that we don’t recognise supplied to us by people that once told us that smoking was good for us. And we lap it up. 

We’re an unhealthy, fat population, disconnected from our food source. Illness costs us a small fortune and we’re losing the funding battle. We drink too much and spend hours looking at worthless content on screens that control our lives. It’s not all doom and gloom. 

The big idea of rebooting the food habits of the western world is undoubtedly pie in the sky. So we must change our own habits, our family’s habits and then those of our community.

It can be rectified quickly. Sow some seeds. Seeds of revolution and of lettuce. The lettuce needs about two months to grow. Revolution? A year or two. 

Ian Thomas is a caterer and formerly free range egg farmer, cooking demonstrator, and manager of a commercial food production business. He specialises in cooking paella. paellaagogo.com

Photo: Florence Charvin