Foodweb at Little Food Festival

Recently we were invited by Community Gardens Australia to run a cooking activation at the Little Food Festival - Australia’s iconic food festival for kids. We had a fantastic action packed two days with up to 500 children coming and cooking Turkish Gozleme with us. We were very privileged that renowned Turkish chef Ozlem Warren wrote a personalised letter to our pariticpants sharing her recipe and own childhood sensory memories of cooking and eating Gozleme with her family. Children were invited into the space by a plushy garden filled with soft worms and snails and then into the welcoming arms and heart of our wonderful Cathy. Cathy read them the oversized airmail letter from Ozlem and asked them to locate firstly where we were and then Turkiye on the giant globe. Children then independentally made their way through the different stations with help from our AMAZING volunteers who went above and beyond to assist children to really feel empowered to follow the steps along the way and create their own dish. Thank you sooooo much vollies!! The children began by harvesting their fresh greens - silverbeet, chives and saltbush which had been generously donated by many local gardeners. They then prepared their filling of mixed cheeses donated by Baxter’s IGA and rolled out the dough with flours donated by Tasmania Flour MIlls. After assembling their Gozleme in very basic do it yourself at home Foodweb Education approach it went onto our trusty non toxic sandwich presses which had been donated by GreenPan with discount vouchers for all. All children left with their handcrafted gozleme and a recipe card including their treasured letter from Ozlem. There are so many people to thank for making it possible for us to bring this experience to as many kids as we could get through over the two days including all of the businesses, organisations and individuals mentioned already. I do want to give a special thank you to the students from the Blooms group at Longford Primary School for their promotional efforts and the spectacular handcrafted decorations that made the space so colourful and inviting. There was much joy and doughy goodness felt by everyone. I can’t wait to do it again…actually I can as it was absolutely exhausting BUT definitely keen to do it again and keep kids cooking from the garden. Please have a look through the images to get a taste of the day and follow the link below to Ozlem’s home style mini gozlem video.