The project aims to rediscover and preserve traditions in cooking across Europe, whilst enhancing the possibilities of learning and cross-generational and cultural cohesion.
Today’s society sees people eager to learn about cooking and healthy eating, about sustainable living and are actively promoting the collection of traditional local recipies and encouraging sustainable living. Yet the associated knowledge and required skills tend to be de-valued and lost.
Traditional life, especially in rural communities, includes food production, preparation and cooking as well as activities and festivities that are linked to the seasons, products and aspects of social life. These activities ensure the community’s continuation as a living culture and help in the formation of identity and can enhance the authenticity of experiencing community, locality and tradition. Traditional cooking is geared to what grows locally, to local breeds and seeds, to local skills and resources. It is a key element in ensuring integrated, sustainable development at local, regional and global levels.
Younger people tend to have lost these skills and the ability to sustainably utilise traditional resources, disabling their potential in the traditional world. They also lack the advanced skills required to create a different life for themselves in the globalized world.
Elderly people and rural women have tended to become isolated in our fast moving, ready-made world. It has seemed that there is no interest in the skills and memory they possess and they do not think in terms of exact methods and measurements that are easily transferred or recorded in written form. Such isolation can cause related social, health and economic problems