Fresh vegetables for “young sprouts”

About 200 people live at our farm Rooihoogte in South Africa and they’re our employees and their families. Since the farm is located right in the middle of the pristine wilderness of South Africa, so it’s not so easy to get to the next village every day and buy fresh food. This is why our employees mainly buy canned and packaged food. And even sweets – which usually have a long shelf life – are often eaten by both adults and children. We wanted to change that. A healthy diet with lots of fresh fruit and vegetables is important to us and contributes to the health and well-being of our employees and their children. Therefore, under the guidance of an expert, we first created a so-called permaculture garden – a garden that is structured in such a way that a sustainable natural cycle is formed and there will always be something delicious to harvest. A part of the harvest from our garden is sold in a communally run shop at low prices, but the larger part goes directly to the kitchen of our kindergarten at Rooihoogte. Our colleague Adriana, participant of our international volunteer program, was our guest there for a few days. Together with the cooks, she thought about what delicious dishes

they could conjure up from the fruit and vegetables of our Permaculture Garden. Among other things, they cooked stuffed cabbage rolls with vegetables. Amazingly delicious. It goes without saying that this dish was immediately incorporated into the menu of the kindergarten kitchen. The aim of our little cooking course was to show how versatile you can cook with fresh vegetables and how good these dishes taste – even for the youngest ones at Rooihoogte. We’d say: mission accomplished! Because in the end, everyone was satisfied and super happy – both children and cooks.