We convened in Córdoba to explore possibilities of collaboration with the Plata Lugar collective. After a few days of heat, gardening illegally, conversing with different characters in the agroecology circles of the city, and lots of curiosity, we decided to invite everyone we had significant exchanges with so we could have a moment to be together, to close on learnings and debate what our next move was. We called our new friends to join us for an evening picnic. Below is our invitation and what we read out loud as an introduction to the meeting and the food we were about to eat.

Invitation

We invite you to a communal experience, an evening on the river banks, on the plane (park), dining on the grass. One of the results of our renaturation and activation case study in Córdoba. We have been observing the culture; from the Muslims who are practicing Ramadan these days to the agroecological farmers who are looking for ways to excite the consumption of their products among city dwellers; the morphology of the soils of an abandoned lot in Axerquía Norte, in the Villaviciosa lands; we have listened to the white doves, where they gather in the square; we have planted a resistant garden, in the middle of a ruin, between streets; we have exchanged seeds; we have talked about the limitations that agricultural policies have on biodiversity; we have explored the local gastronomy, searched for the tastiest menus of the day, the markets where we could find the freshest produce; and we have collected recipes that are related to its most direct environment, in order to cook and present to you tonight, what you eat when you interact with your natural environment, what the shore of the Guadalquivir wildly provides you and the countryside, where our gardener and farmer friends work. What do these recipes tell us? What does the land where the vegetables and cereals on which they are grown tell us? What do you and the microbiome that resides in you tell us when you ingest this delicacy? How does it feel to live in an agricultural city? We will taste this dinner under the sky, as the sun sets, we will meet at 7:28 p.m. (time for the Maghrib prayer) and we will break the fast with you. Feel free to bring something you want to share, a story to tell, through ingredients, a traditional dish, instruments or drinks. Bring the utensils you need to eat, be it chopsticks, a container to drink from, a spoon, a fork or your clean hands.

Dinner speech

“As a final ritual of this investigative trip, we wanted to practice fasting on the day of our last meeting, to honor the Muslim roots and accompany those who celebrate Ramadan, we wanted to organize a meeting with you, and create a space of resistance, temporary on the physical plane and longer in our memories. We want to talk, to share recipes and ways of cooking food, that make us feel more alive, in tune with the vegetative cycle, and discover how each person practices their resistance and democracy. Let’s commune around food, the farmers who take care of the land around this wonderful city, let’s remember where we come from, those who had to leave and those who have been neglected. Let us be grateful that we are alive and that we can eat, that we can relate to the ecosystem in this way and let us promote continuity, the reharmonisation of agreement, of encounter. Let us host clandestine composting and soil samples, which have traveled to meet here. How do you feel?”