A good meal can bring families together and forge bonds, there’s a reason why the kitchen is often called the heart of the home. Foraging for food is an almost forgotten skill and is a great way to begin to connect with the natural world or deepen the connection you already have.

There are still apples on the trees, rosey in their ripeness or perhaps windfallen and bruised and I’ve just plucked the last of the ripe tomatoes from the vines. Some have split and others are not quite as firm as you’d like for a sandwich but these are great for cooking with.

It’s in this time where the fact that we’ve forgotten how to actually cook, to actually make the most of the food we have, becomes most glaringly obvious, and indeed a surprise. When I talk about how to cook, I don’t necessarily mean the following of a recipe to create a nice meal, but to actually make something using what we already have and what is available to us. This type of cooking is akin to magic.

Learning to cook from scratch and even trying to grow your own food is an act of rebellion and resistance. These skills and knowledge are quickly being displaced by convenience foods that are not good for us and so in this way then, magic in the kitchen becomes another tool in our arsenal we can use to reclaim ourselves from the clutches of Capitalism. And it’s easier than you might think as well, the trick is to start small. There is no other way, all rebellions and resistance start as a trickle. Resist beautifully folks!

... first we must reclaim ourselves and the knowledge that we have forgotten or lost. We must learn to rely less on the State. The suggestions contained here on in  may well seem basic to those already well versed in such things, but for so many these skills have been lost and it is for those that I write this, after all, we must all start somewhere. There's no shame in starting small.