110% Green Annual Event: 67 Minute Cook-Off for Mandela Day

This year, 110% Green celebrated our annual event by giving back. We were hosted by our partner Spier on the 18 July 2014 for this fun and eventful day. With only 10 minutes to prepare, our eight teams of six embarked upon a 67 minute competition to cook the tastiest soups for donation. The  ingredients for the cook-off, kindly sponsored by Woolworths, was what is typically donated as  to soup kitchens.

110% Green has now added food wastage and loss as a key focus. Why the food focus? Well, it is estimated that worldwide a third  of food is lost between farm and fork. The need to reduce food losses is gaining prominence as an international crisis in the midst of major food insecurity. In South Africa, the CSIR estimates that the monetary value of the food lost is approximately R61 billion per annum, 2.1% of South Africa’s GDP. As an agriculturally rich province with agri-production being a key economic sector, food wastage is an important issue in the Western Cape.  The problem is, however,  we do not know the extent of the issue in the Western Cape.

Therefore, at our annual event this year, Premier Helen Zille launched the 110% Green Food Forward project. This will embark upon five journeys in each district municipality in order to discover best and worst practice with regards to food loss and wastage, and promote a more sustainable food system.

As trendy as food is in Cape Town, food wastage often goes unnoticed. Through the cook-off project launch we aimed to raise awareness and get the issue trending in social media. As guests at the event and key social media noise-makers got on board, we managed to the @WCGov110Green trending in Cape Town for Mandela Day!

The event saw high-spirited teams running between the pantry and the 45 litre cooking pots, poised over large braais fired up with EcoLogs (another event sponsor).

Amongst  criteria such as taste and food preparation, including how much each team wasted, teams were assessed on team spirit. This saw the exuberant teams bursting into song and dance, with 567 Cape Talk radio presenter Africa Melane leading  our national anthem, creating high spirits and excellent team work to get the soups ready on time.

As these teams excitedly prepared the soups for the day,  South African MasterChefSA judge Pete Goffe-Wood strolled between cooking stations while joking with teams, giving advice and tasting a soup every now and then.

One of our favourite moments? Goffe-Wood’s eyes watering as even he was a little shocked by the amount of chilli in one particular soup. The team in question hurriedly corrected this, softening the taste of the soup, while Goffe-Wood recovered from the eye-watering mouthful. Sometimes you can even surprise a master chef.

Over all, we would like to reflect that this was probably our most fun-filled event yet - and with a benevolent purpose to boot.