THE ANARCHIST TEAPOT INTERVIEW
By Claudette Vaughan

The Anarchist Teapot has written a guide for cooking vegan, organic, affordable food for the anarchist hordes since 1998, not for profit or wages, but out of love and rage! Here we speak to Isy from the Anarchist Teapot on all things concerning mass cooking, whether in a squat or field and what have been the logistics, equipment, cooking tips, recipes and lessons learnt along the way.

Abolitionist: Tell us all about The Anarchist Teapot. How did it form, how long ago, why and when? And what drives the Anarchist Teapot to keep going, Isy?

Isy: The Teapot started off as a series of squatted cafes around Brighton from 1996-1998, run by an open collective, some of which are still Teapot cooks today. The squats provided both social and organising space, and each had a different atmosphere as this was very influenced by the buildings that were used. People started asking our collective to help cater for events. At the same time, friends of ours from Holland who were involved with the catering group Rampenplan at the time were encouraging us to set up as a mobile kitchen. Due to Britain's lack of a movement based kitchen that could cook meals outdoors on a large scale, Rampenplan were being asked to come over for events to cook and were losing money doing so. They 'trained' us and lent us money and equipment to set up in 1998, so we started cooking for events such as the Earth First! summer gatherings and action camps.

We are all volunteers and do this in our spare time, for love not for money! We are all, to varying degrees, into anarchist ideas, feminism, ecology, animal rights and more, and want to support the movements around these ideas with a practical contribution. Developing our own 'infrastructure' and alternatives is an important part of building effective movements to challenge the status quo.

What's the Teapot’s philosophy behind feeding the masses vegan food?

It always seemed to be a matter of course to be a vegan kitchen, regardless of different collective members' personal dietary choices. There are many reasons to do so, after all. One is that you are most inclusive if you are making vegan food, i.e. if it's vegetarian, it will exclude vegans, whereas a vegetarian or a meat eater surely can eat vegan. There are also issues around the practicalities and economy – we find it's easiest and cheapest to cook good vegan food on a large scale, and the logistics and food hygiene are better too. Then of course there are the animals to consider – and when cooking on a large scale, you bear more responsibility and are channeling more money to the food production industries – you want to take more care that you are not financing animal abuse and other exploitation. We also like to ensure our foods are GM free, and mostly organic, also preferably seasonal or at least not carted from the other side of the world.

In your own words, why is food political and a political statement?

Eating is one of the most fundamental things that we do. There's truth in the statement that 'we are what we eat' – and not just in a nutritional sense. How we live and how we organise society has a lot to do with our diets. From industrial agriculture to factory farming, genetically modified foods to artificial additives, flying food all across the world to corporate takeovers, and an over abundance of meat, dairy, fats and sugar in the Western diet and the resulting health issues, there are so many things to do with food that are a really bad state. With our cravings for cheap, easy, fast and addictive food within the capitalist frameworks of creating surplus and wealth for the few, we now have food production that is geared to profit, not to the well being of ourselves, animals, or the Earth. And I don't think this should be challenged just on an individual basis in our consumption choices – there's something just not quite sufficient about the idea that you can make the world a better place by buying the right things – but also collectively with communication, organisation and action.

What are some of the venues you've catered to?

We have cooked for demonstrations, action camps, conferences, gatherings, festivals, and local community events. They range from camps for home educating families, to a squat of a GM test site, from the Mayday conferences to the Alternative European Social Forum in London, from the Shamrock Farm (monkey breeders) demonstrations to the depot occupation of Brighton's striking binmen. And we regularly cook for the Earth First! summer gathering, for some of the Radical Routes co-ops networks gatherings, and the AR gatherings that have been held nearby in Sussex.

The biggest things we have cooked for were the G8 summit mobilisations, both of which we teamed up with our Dutch friends for. We helped organise the food for the camp in Stirling, Scotland in 2005, ordering supplies in for 5000 people, and cooking for 1500 ourselves; then again this year in Germany. The Dutch had formed a new kitchen called Le Sabot, and this time our combined kitchen cooked for 1500 to up to 3000 people for 7 days at one of the large camps set up for the protests. It was exhausting but exciting.

Share with us some secrets of vegan catering to large groups of people?

You need a good group of people who enjoy working with each other, good equipment such as decent sized pans and powerful burners, lots of food grade buckets to put things in, and good knives, utensils and chopping boards, and some good planning and organisation. We always plan what we do: what to cook, what ingredients we need, who's going to do what or be responsible for what part of the meal, and which equipment is allocated for what and in what timescale. We try to make meals that consist of at least 3 preferably 4 different 'parts', e.g. a grain, a sauce, one or two salads or side dishes; this makes for a more interesting meal (and if someone is say allergic to one of the dishes, at least they can have the other parts). Also, if we don't have the equipment we like to expand the meal with even more 'cold stuff' i.e. salads and dips and breads, that you can make lots of without needing cooker space.

Other tips: make sure you have plenty of herbs, spices, and 'flavouring' and thickening ingredients (mustard, yeast extract, soy sauce, stock, tomato puree) to hand to get some flavour in. Add as much of these as you can at the start of cooking, so the flavours can intensify (though be careful with salt and very spicy additions). Pay attention to your dish, and stir it a lot! Cooking 50 litres of a sauce, porridge, or similar is heavier than say 2 litres, which means it will sit on the bottom and burn very easily, so you need to be stirring almost constantly. To make this easier, we will often cook vegetables and pulses and a sauce separately (that you would normally cook in one pot), and then mix them together at the end.

It's also VERY easy to get stressed in a kitchen and you just have to work on a developing a more laidback approach. I've had to work on this a bit! And despite all the planning that is necessary, you also need to be prepared to be flexible, e.g. when something you ordered in doesn't arrive, when a recipe just isn't working and you need to change what you're doing, or when someone donates 50kg of courgettes out of the blue.

The Anarchist Teapot's booklet says it's the same if you are cooking for 10 or 100. How's that?

Well, that's obviously a bit of an exaggeration... But the point is that the effort is very similar. You need to plan a bit and pay attention more than if you're cooking for yourself, and you need some larger equipment, and enough time to do the cooking. The main difference between cooking for 10 or 100 is that you will spend more time or need more people to help on the veg chopping, and you need a larger pan.

Do you work to a menu and where do you get the food from?

We usually plan a menu in advance, then write up a big list of everything we need, from washing up liquid to 25kg sacks of potatoes to salt, and then source the ingredients. It depends on where it is we're cooking. If it's a local event we will just go to the market and the shops, and do an order via Infinity wholefoods co-op. Elsewhere, we try to find out who the local wholefoods wholesalers are, and if there are any local organic fruit and veg distributors and bakeries that can deliver what we need, phone them and check them out, and if they seem sound we will place orders. More seldomly we will get food donations. And for smaller local events, we like to use salads and herbs from our own allotment, which is great!

Why vegan and not freegan?

Being freegan would again be excluding some vegans from eating our food – if we are a vegan kitchen, all our food should be vegan! It may be the choice of some vegans to be freegan but it's not everyone's. Also, we mostly buy in our supplies rather than get freebies or use leftovers or waste. Personally, I think it is a positive thing to re-use what is thrown away. In Britain, around 40% of all food bought is never eaten (according to Joanna Blythman, 'Bad Food Britain')!! It's outrageous and such a waste.

Who are some of the regular people running the mobile kitchen?

There's currently about 12 of us loosely involved in the collective. We are aged between 21-40-something (they won't say). I don't think anyone is in full time employment. Some are students, some employed or self-employed or unemployed. Most of us also volunteer in the Cowley Club social centre in Brighton where there is a vegan cafe and radical bookshop, and a members bar and gig space. Some of us play in bands, some of us make zines, some of us build websites. We are involved in a range of activities, campaigns and projects between us, and all share the desire to cook for the movements we are part of.

What's the hardest thing about mobile kitchen cooking?

The actual cooking isn't so difficult, once you get a bit of experience. It's the unknowns and the unexpected that are difficult, e.g. worrying about numbers when you have planned to cook for 200 and the event has started and there are only 10 people there – throwing food away hurts! - or if you arrive somewhere to cook and the organisers told you they had sorted this that and the other for you and you get there and nothing is sorted at all. I also hate it when people try to interfere or infringe on our cooking. Cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner over a number of days can also get quite exhausting, you end up spending a lot of time carrying really heavy things around or stirring, and your arms ache and you never get enough sleep...

What's the most useful piece of equipment in your kitchen?

The handiest piece in our kitchen is probably a good Sabatier knife. We have a couple of sets, and if they're kept sharp they make veg prep so much easier and more enjoyable.

Our pans and burners are the most useful. The pans were welded by the Dutch Rampenplan people years ago out of stainless steel, and have a volume of 250-300 litres. The burners are also homemade by them, and are powerful propane burners without which it would take ten times longer to cook in the amounts that we do.

Why did you become a vegan?

I became a vegan when I moved out from my parents when I was 18. I'd been a vegetarian for some years before out of the simple desire to not want to eat dead animals, but thought it would be much more consistent to be vegan, especially as I began to be involved with some animal rights campaigning, and I realised veganism was a real option. This was quite a while ago, in a different country where vegans were a rarity, so I really ate badly – I didn't have a clue about vegan cooking and just ate bread!!! I went back to being vegetarian for a while, but am vegan again now.

What advice would you give to others who want to set up their own mobile kitchen?

It depends on what it's for... If you're in it for the money, I have no advice, as I have no idea how well that works! I think setting up a mobile kitchen is a bit of a commitment, as you have to acquire lots of equipment and you also need cash upfront to pay for your first lot of ingredients, as well as the need to build up experience. So people should make sure they have a good group of people to do it with, with enough time and the willingness to do it over a number of years. They should also assess whether there's a need for a kitchen, and events/actions/camps/gatherings that they would like to and could cook for.

I would also strongly recommend the kitchen being vegan, see question 2! It is good to work on non-hierarchical organisation, i.e. deciding things in the group on an equal footing, making sure everyone involved is happy, and watching out for the power dynamics that develop. The last thing is that good equipment is really useful, also things such as stacking hard plastic plates instead of china crockery, or enough good chopping boards and strong tressle tables to enlist lots of chopping help. There's lots more advice we would have which is mostly all in the Teapot Guide to Mass Catering!

I noticed in the Guide...you have a recipe for vegan sponge cake. That's not easy...how inventive - creative are you guys in the kitchen?

Actually, that's a fairly easy recipe that always seems to work well and is great for variations. I think because we are a larger, diverse group we all have different inputs and ideas to what we're cooking so as a group I think we're very inventive. For example, sometimes we realise we have ordered far too much of something, and we have to figure what to do with it – last year we spontaneously made lots of bread and 'butter' pudding at a gathering – or we get a random unexpected donation of lots of herbs so we incorporate it into our menu... When cooking, we also always argue over 'what it needs', and try out everyone's suggestions. There's an element of healthy competition in there sometimes.

What kind of feedback have you gotten back from customers?

Our very first meal that we cooked was so awful that people still complain about it to us, 8 years later. These days we usually get a very good response, in fact sometimes very very enthusiastic, for example one guy was so excited about our food he insisted on licking out our pan when we were trying to wash it up. People appreciate food especially when they have been working or thinking hard, and they also appreciate the fact that our food is healthy, varied, and vegan, and not just some veggie slop.

How can people get in contact with you, to find out where you'll be next?

We have a website – www.eco-action.org/teapot, and it's best to contact us via email, anarchisttpot@yahoo.co.uk.

Stop Press: Latest Update

Two of us at The Teapot are currently working on a vegan cookbook, provisionally called Revolt and Revelry in the Kitchen. It will include a wide range of recipes from basic to fancy, using simple ingredients and lots of flavour, and also consist of a number of articles and practical advice sections such as cooking on a larger scale, making your own beer and cider, gardening, gathering and cooking with wild foods, using seasonal produce, the impacts of industrial agriculture, nutrition, feeding children, and enjoying cooking. It will be available later on in the year through Active Distribution (www.activedistribution.org).