March 6, 2019

Musings about Bristol

Last week, I traveled “across the pond” to work with Jane in her new city, Bristol. Among our many activities: finalizing the designs for our newly re-branded spice blends; combing stores in the UK to find unique packaging ideas; pausing before lunch for an hour to take a run; hunting for Banksys around the city and concluding our time together with a dinner hosted by Kalpna Woolf.

Kalpna founded an organization called 91 Ways. With 91 different languages spoken in Bristol she was inspired to create a series community dinners using our common language: food – to foster stronger connections.

Norah in the kitchen at the Cookpad venue

Her mission was simple:

To use the convening power of food to bring communities together to break down barriers and make genuine connections.
To encourage people to share their stories and build common ground
Reach out to people that are isolated and disenfranchised and build strong cohesion within these groups and to others
To engage people in a discussion about their health and well-being; and
To support interventions to affect positive and sustained changes in their lifestyles.
To create a channel for business and civic leaders to connect with communities

It was a beautiful evening and a memory I will treasure for a lifetime.

We sat side by side with an award-winning chef, a teacher who does “food therapy” for special needs children and a sculptor. We were treated to a four-course Egyptian dinner (my first) cooked by Norah El-Gohary of Nounas Kitchen. The dinner was spectacular and included an Egyptian meat pastry called Goulash, Koshari made with lentils, rice and macaroni topped with a spiced tomato sauce and Kofta, and for dessert a semolina cake with honey syrup.

During the evening, we listened to Kalpna’s vision for tomorrow. She said, that when people immigrate and assimilate into new cultures, the one part of their heritage that remains is their unique traditions around food.

All I could think about for those three hours was how grateful I was to be in a room filled with diversity of thought and culture, food made with love and people who were genuinely interested in exploring something new. As we each shared our personal story with complete strangers, I couldn’t help notice the magic of human connection.

That evening really took me back to our roots.

When Jane and I started the zen of slow cooking food blog, we had one simple yet bold idea – to create a community that encouraged people to slow down and connect over the shared meal. We also wanted our blog to be a place of non-judgment – one home cook to another.

For in the end we are better together, more alike than different and all share a common bond – love of food.