From tawaka to leftovers: Shannon’s everyday kaitiakitanga
Based in Gisborne, Shannon juggles conservation work, whānau, and study - while still finding everyday ways to care for the planet.
“I like being outdoors and yeah, trying to do my part for the environment,” says Shannon. “So I try to look for ways that I can be a better kaitiaki in terms of food waste and things like that.”
When taking part in the Every Bite programme facilitated by Gizzy Kai Rescue, Shannon was working full-time with Eastern Whio Link, often spending three days a week out in the bush, trapping pests in the Waioeka Gorge to protect the native whio. She was also studying and solo parenting. This routine could offer challenges in terms of meal planning.
“We usually only do one big cook up for tea a week with the family, and being in the bush meant small windows to eat things before you’ve got to disappear for three days.”
“I’d find kai to take, using leftovers, but also just tried to find things in smaller portions so that I wasn't wasting anything.”
Tawaka mushroom growing on a tree. By TimClicks, Creative Commons.
Shannon would also get inventive about foraging while in the bush. “When it was tawaka mushroom season, whatever food I took out, I was very aware: does that go with tawaka? Sometimes I’d just take cream and an onion with me, knowing that there's going to be mushrooms out there to cook up.” She was often able to share the abundance. “In the summer, I was getting some huge hauls that I knew I couldn't eat and dishing them out to all my friends.”
Shannon is passionate about sustainable practices, but still found valuable reminders in being part of Every Bite.
“You get stuck in your routines, and can look for ways out of it,” she says. “A couple of my kids are pretty fussy eaters, so we're not the type of family that can just cook a home-cooked meal every night and everyone eats the same thing.”
Soup made from stock, and eaten on the go.
Consciously buying smaller amounts can be helpful, or planning specific meals. “Spinach might be two bags for $6, so that's a deal. But actually, I'm barely going to get through one bag. So when I buy that bag, I’m thinking, what other meals am I going to have to make sure I use this all up?”
Sometimes it was a matter of taking existing habits to the next stage.
“I'm really good at keeping veggie ends in the freezer and then making a stock. But I noticed the stock was just piling up in my freezer. I was like, I need to actually use the stock. It was good when we started coming into winter - okay, soup for days.”
One of Shannon’s realisations through Every Bite was that giving food to the resident chickens or cats, or composting, was still wasting food, if it had originally been intended for people.
This raised challenges at times. Fellow parents will be familiar with the difficulty of being the only one paying attention to food waste - and whether this often means eating the scraps yourself. “I’ll be like, am I going to shovel this in my gob when I don't actually want it or need it, or am I going to waste it, give it to the chickens? That's kind of the biggest one for me. You know, you're raised kaua e moumou, ‘don't waste your food’ and all that. But sometimes you've still got some left.”
During one Every Bite week where the focus was on eating leftovers, Shannon was away down South on a friend’s boat. This meant the programme challenge was a treat rather than a chore. “My friend’s family has cultural permits to harvest muttonbirds, so her Dad cooked up a boil-up of muttonbirds on day one. It’s usually a delicacy, with people paying $50 for one bird, and I just got to eat muttonbirds for three days straight - making sure those leftovers got eaten!”
At Every Bite, Shannon found a lot of fellow participants were like-minded, and committed to sustainability in their lifestyle. “It was really good in terms of getting other people's tips and how they operate in real life. But I guess you're also preaching to the choir.” In general, she’d like to see more people taking part in the programme to ‘get on the waka’.
‘The whenua, the taiao - it’s crying out for help,” she says. “So really, my ultimate goal is to be part of the solution.”
Shannon’s favourite food waste prevention tips:
Always blow on the leftover stroganoff pie! Photo: supplied.
Make a casserole, then turn it into a pie the next day. “This is my specialty venison and mushroom stroganoff - the venison I shot, and tawaka mushrooms gathered from the ngahere. Always makes a great pie the next day, and I usually drop a couple of pies off to friends and whānau.”
Or, make wrap pizzas with leftovers. “If you chop something leftover up small and sprinkle it on a wrap and cook as a pizza, it's a nice quick and easy snack.”
Use clear containers so you know what's inside. “You get that visual prompt to use that food up.”
Freestyling with your ingredients in substituting. “I think we talked about in our wrap up, how normally when I make my mushroom sauce with the tawaka, I'd use onions, but I had a piece of leek left that I hadn't used so I chucked that in with it, and it was perfectly fine.”