« Eat your Spinach », a blog story

Growing takes time…
And time is certainly what I needed to cultivate my inner garden and start to collect fruits.

The seed was planted 6 years ago 

I was living in Paris. It had been 6 years in this city with a tiny kitchen in which I could barely move, I was starting to earn a little money to eat something else than pasta. Six years ago, going out with vegetarien friends in Paris was still quite a deal. And if sometimes we started a conversation about food, or worth if they wanted to patronise me, I was rising my eyes while cuting my steak. I grew up near Bordeaux, to me vegetables were what is nice and colorful beside the meat, and I even felt almost like an offense to be offered a meal without my ratio of animal proteins. 

Until I tryed for real, and I ended up to a surprising conclusion: my god, it was GOOD. A complete different way to cook, different tastes and colors and a whole new world of flavours, the opposite of what I had imagined because of my ignorance. It was then with pleasure, curiosity and to make my culinary spectre more rich and joyfull that I started to develop an interest for vegetarian cuisine. For pleasure yes. But no I had not changed completly my diet and was without knowing what we call now flexitarian.
I didn’t change evrything, but my entourage judgement did from bith « sides ». Vegetarians considered me as a fraud, when my carnivore family didn’t want to hear anything about my recent discoveries, yes yes, animal pain, and what about the pain of the carrot?

Bref, I was neather this, nor that, and I honestly didn’t want to make a « clear » choice being forced to. My choice was to be both and I was finding good points in everyone way of thinking.

It was then at this moment, that I started to want to talk for persons like me, the one who choose not to choose.

« You don’t catch flies with vinegar. »

Vegetariens position really resonates with my feelings and I respect and value deeply their position. Yes, we must question our relationship to meat and more than that to animals in general. I started to read a lot, and I still do. You might call me many things but ignorant I’m not. As I have changed already I might change again in the future, but I think everyone needs to make its own journey through this.
Still with the environmental and social crisis we are facing, I have the strong convistion that alimentation could be a reachable oportunity for anyone to start to make everyday small improvements, small actions for a bigger impact!

My concern was to observe some persons around me, especially my very stuborn family, deaf to any proposal, change, idea, argument… The adknowledgment strategy is certainly not the best one for those who don’t want to know. The important message behind this remains unheard, and it can not be.

From this point came the second angular stone of my project: emphasize the pleasure, diversity and fun of plant-based options instead of guilt!

But 6 years ago, by lack of support from the others and trust in myself, nothing came out.

Time went by. 

Let my project grow and grow with my project

Six ans plus tard. J’ai déménagé 4 fois, de Paris à Bordeaux à Brighton, Toulouse et aujourd’hui Barcelone.
Plus que du chemin physique, j’ai surtout beaucoup fait de chemin dans ma tête, j’ai appris, continue d’apprendre. J’ai changé, et mon projet aussi.

A Brighton, j’ai été volontaire pour « The Real Junk Food Project », juste assez pour me rendre compte de l’impact social que peut avoir la nourriture. J’ai aussi pu vivre dans un contexte où le végétarisme est… la norme simplement.

A Toulouse, j’ai voulu prolonger mon expérience dans le volontariat en relation avec l’alimentaire, le réconfort et le lien social, malheureusement sans trop de succès… Le projet prend son temps.

Today

Barcelone 2021. 
Je vis à Barcelone depuis un an et demi. J’adore cette ville. Barcelone est ma vile de cœur. Parce que je suis venue ici, non pas « par », mais « grace à » l’amour. C’est mon chemin et il m’a amenée ici et maintenant. Après un Master en Design de Retail, malgré ou grace à cette p****** de pandémie, et avec des antennes toutes déployées vers ce qui bruisse de la capitale catalane, il est temps.

On dit que toutes les idées simples se résument en une phrase, mon idée m’a pris 6 ans, 6 ans pour essayer de dire : dans un monde compliqué, commençons avec la base: qu’on mange, et vous pensez que vous savez, mais vous n’avez pas idée !

Bienvenue sur « Eat your Spinach », où (j’espère) comment rendre l’indigeste mangeable, voire incroyable.

Bienvenue pour changer le monde à chaque coup de fourchette.