“One of these moments were you can be together”
In this interview you’ll meet Olivia Saxer, a Masters student at Sciences Po Paris. Together with her friends from the student association “Sciences Po Environnement” she has organised a cooking competition, the so called “Une Triplette presque parfaite” (= the group which is almost perfect) for more than 100 first year students. Interview by Max Ramezani from the YFoEE Food and Agriculture working group.
Olivia, what was the competition about?
In our everyday life, food is an aspect that has a major impact on the environment. With the cooking event, we wanted not only to contribute to Sciences Po’s tradition to carry out a competition among new students, but also we wanted to raise awareness about the environment in a funny way. Moreover, eating together is a good way to create a sense of community.
How did you organise the competition?
We started preparing the event well in advance in September last year. The most challenging task was to find a big kitchen as we wanted to reach out to as many first years as possible. We produced short videos to advertise the competition. Besides, we had to consider the rules of the game: Should students be allowed to choose their ingredients? What if they’d demand ingredients like eggplants or tomatoes which were out of season? In order to facilitate the ecological choice, we decided to provide the competitors with a vegetarian food basket that we had set in advance. To give an example, we included rutabaga, parsnip, celery root, black radish or Jerusalem artichoke. These are kind of forgotten seasonal and local vegetables and so the students had to rediscover recipes. This worked out very well: the dishes were very delicious and the participants enjoyed it!
All in all, 20 teams participated during four competition rounds. The groups had 1h15 to prepare their menus and had to submit them to a jury for which we could even win the school’s president. Of course, the groups were also able to taste each others creations.
Do you recommend organizing cooking competitions?
Indeed! Surely, the more participants, the more expensive it is to find a kitchen. But all in all, the action enabled us to engage with the first years in a conversation about vegetarian, local and seasonal food. However, the organic cooking competition wasn’t just environmentally friendly but also a nice social event! You can do it in a smaller group with friends, too. Cooking is one of these moments were you can be together. That’s the main point.
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