The Sustainable Living Festival has now run with the Tropical Garden Spectacular for 2 years in The George Brown Botanic Garden. It is a great event with stalls, talks and discussion panels, music and entertainment, demonstrations and has a community and school gardens area or village. It is a beautiful setting and vibe and well worth attending.

 Last year we ran an information stall for our Kitchen Garden program at Alawa Primary school and had pasta making demonstrations. There were discussion panels about permaculture, solar drier demos and so much more, we were pretty busy to catch it all. Gianna and I did a cooking demo of banana flower salad. There was also a cook off on the main stage with local stir fry ingredients, George Negus and Leonnie Norrington versus his son Serge and myself. It was great fun and so good to have local food in the lime light. It was all so good that local food this year is going to get a bigger appearance.  This year there will be a small community style cafe as the centre piece of the community garden area, where donated cakes and fair trade coffee, tea and home-made herbal teas will be served. Twice a day tasting plates will be released from the cafe and for a donation a few lucky customers can get a tasting plate of 4 dishes made from locally grown ingredients, served on a banana leaf, complete with recipes. It is going to be delicious and I look forward to seeing you there!

For more info visit www.greenlivingfest.com.au

Ps I am still on the look out for more local cooks to make delicious dishes for the tasting plates. You will be reimbursed. Email me for details! [see contact tab]

Thanks to Floyd for these great pictures of cooking in the hot spot last year:-