Food for thought

|PIC1|This Christmas, a typical dinner table might be laden with Turkey and roast vegetables, salmon, luxury cheeses and wine - and pudding to boot. For people in the world's poorest countries, however, dinner time is a far less appetising affair, whatever the occasion.

When Tearfund supporters and Brenda and Gordon Wilkinson were staying in Honduras in 2004, the food was as basic as beans and rice - every single meal, every single day.

"When you've eaten that for ten days or two weeks, then you really are thinking golly, this is what people are surviving on, there really is no choice," says Gordon, who travelled with his wife to the country to see the work that had been done there by Christian humanitarian agency Tearfund since the devastating Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

It was during this trip, the second of three trips with Tearfund, that the Wilkinsons started to think more seriously about the kinds of food people eat in other countries where Tearfund is at work. On their return to the UK they got to work gathering as many recipes as they could from Tearfund staff, supporters and partners, recipes that were in some way meaningfully connected to their experiences or personal encounters in a particular Tearfund country.

Thus, they began what would turn out to be 18 months of hard work to create a new kind of cookbook that would not only bring these little known recipes to people in the UK, but would also educate users on the very real needs and developmental challenges in the countries that the recipes originate from.

"It is more than a cookbook," says Brenda of their highly successful 68-page cookbook, 'Recipes for Disaster'. "It is opening a window into the reality of life in that country beyond the food."

Open up the book and it is the faces of people, not food, that jump up from the pages to greet the budding chef. They are people who are seeing their lives transformed by the work that charities like Tearfund are doing within their communities.

In the Cambodia section, a tiny girl in a dirty, worn out T-shirt stares forlornly out of the page from between two large storage jars. Beneath the picture, a short passage tells the reader that there an estimated 300,000 Aids orphans in Cambodia. The opposite page, meanwhile, carries a local recipe for sticky rice and mango picked up by the manager of Tearfund England, the Rev Andrew Cowley, during a 2005 study trip to the country.

Other recipes include green banana from Burundi, frijoles (kidney bean stew) from Colombia, and gado-gado (vegetable salad with peanut sauce) from Indonesia.

"The additional information gives you a sense of why this is a country where Tearfund has to support local partners," says Gordon. "It bridges Tearfund supporters in the UK to the people around the world who need their support and prayers."

By June 2006, 5,000 copies of the cookbook had been printed. By September, enough had been sold to cover all printing costs and send a £1,000 cheque to Tearfund. This Christmas, Brenda and Gordon will have raised nearly £20,000 for the charity.

Their hope is that the many Christians who have already bought the book will be inspired to act on some of the humanitarian issues raised alongside the recipes.

"It makes people aware of these issues in a completely different way - it's not your normal mailing from Tearfund or Christian Aid," says Gordon. "And you can't avoid reading the facts. They're there in front of you.

"If people are from the sorts of families that say grace, then once they have had their meal they will pray for these people, and I think that really does help and does raise awareness."

The response to the cookbook has been overwhelming. Some have bought it to use as a resource to talk about Tearfund and what it does. Home economic teachers bought it to use in their global citizenship classes as a prop to teach students about issues such as trade justice and poverty.

It is not only Christians who have bought the cookbook, however. It has also found appeal among non-Christians who are committed to fair-trade and global development.

Just Fairtrade, a fair-trade shop in Leicester, sold around 100 copies of the book. Staff worker at the shop, Janine Buckley-Hewing, expressed her support for the cookbook saying, "Projects like this one, to sell a book full of global information and great recipes, help us here at Just [Fairtrade] to feel even closer to the people who most need our help."

Gordon remarks, "Non-Christians have bought the book and told us that some of the stories were so moving. I think it helps them to understand why some of these charities do the work they do - that they are showing God's love in action, that they do this because of their care and Christian love for these people. That's what it's all about."

Although some of the recipes sound exotic, all the ingredients can be bought at the local supermarket and Brenda and Gordon ask that fair-trade products are used wherever possible.

The emphasis is on connecting more deeply with the people living on far less in one year than many people in the UK live on in one month.

"Rather than overeating on traditional Christmas turkey and pud and actually not giving much thought to people with far less than we have, we want people to just take one of these recipes and actually think about the people in Malawi or Ethiopia, the places where these recipes come from, and just think and pray about them," says Brenda.

She and Gordon are greatly encouraged by the movement in the UK towards fairly traded goods and ethical consumerism that takes into consideration the ones at the other end of the chain who are planting the crops and sowing the seeds.

"It was Christians who led in the anti-slavery campaign and it is Christians who have led in this drive towards increasing awareness about trade justice and fair-trade and maybe this book is part of that," says Gordon.

"Not only are you making a particular dish, but you are learning about a country and its problems. On the other hand, you are seeing something positive, because you are learning that there are lots of partners and local charities that are doing really powerful work to address some of the needs in those societies, whether that's caring for Aids orphans or looking after street children or re-housing people after a disaster."

He concluded: "At the same time they are hearing the Good News and they are seeing that it is Christians who are behind this work and it is Christians who are helping Muslims and Hindus and they are not just helping other Christians. That is, I think, presenting quite a powerful image."

To download recipes or purchase the "Recipes for Disaster" cookbook go to www.recipesfordisaster.org/index.html