We decided to become Food Gadgeteers and prepare a sustainable experimental picnic for everyone. Or, well, everyone who can digest our edible imaginations. At the beginning, our picnic basket contained a sourdough jar, a home-made berry jam, a food-safe transportation box, nutmeg leaves and some gut supplements.
Based on our group discussion, we added a fermented carrot marmalade foraged in one participant’s home pantry and also some jammed black walnuts to add raw, earthy flavors. We took our sourdough and made a flatbread (in some food cultures called a ‘pancake’) as a staple to feed our workshop companions.
Did you know that the word ‘companion’ comes from ‘panis’, the Latin word for bread? Originally, the term was used to describe someone with whom you shared a meal.
“The companionship [in our case] is not just sharing of the food, it’s also sharing of the gasses produced from the consumption of the food that could be fed back to the system.”
– Companions Picnic group
Flavored with the fermented jams we had at hand and some extra nutmeg for a twist, our bread was a humble yet tasteful meal. We Gadgeteered the first bread prototype in our group kitchen and started thinking, how to make more of it in an outdoor picnic setting, as sustainably as possible. We had our box to safely transport all the ingredients, but the cooking mechanism and energy source were unclear.
And then we considered: in the spirit of all-embracing food companionship, why not build a simple mobile stove powered by the gas released from the fermented jam jars and human digestive processes triggered by jam consumption? A sustainable more-than-human picnic stove, using both food and human microbes to make a tasty meal for everyone.
Does that sound silly? Maybe. It is our first playful step in thinking about sustainable food futures that are sustainable and efficient but also experimental and fun.