Hello and welcome to the Get Your Globe at podcast. I'm joined today by the lovely Melissa Hemsley,

food writer, sustainability activist and author of Eat Green. We spoke all about her vision of the future

of food, the stories that have inspired her love of cooking and how we can be more sustainable

in the kitchen. I absolutely

loved chatting Melissa. She is so positive and such a joyous human to be around. Her wonderful

smile and energy is contagious and I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode. Let's bring on

the wonderful Melissa.

Welcome Melissa to the podcast. Thank you, Madeline. Sure. Yay. I'm so happy to have you here.

I'm very excited to be here in your lovely home and I managed to wangle my way onto your podcast, but just a lovely excuse to see. Because we know each other for, I mean it's 2020. Is it 2020 now? This is 2020. So six years? Six years we've known each other. Yeah. You look exactly the same, very annoyingly. No, I I do. Your hair's even better now. It was, yeah, it has got better my hair, thank you gosh.

No, I mean it was stunning then. I am literally so excited to talk about your book, which I think has to be my favorite cookbook. I'm not going to lie.

What? Of 2020? Of all time. Stop it. It's so good. But I would love to know, like, where your passion for food came from. Where did it come from? Well, I think a bit like you, you know, I know a bit about how you grew up. Like my mum too just always prioritised food. She would always say,

she wanted one of us, me and my sister to be a doctor. So she'd be like, food is for brains,

food is for beauty, food is for pleasure. And she would always like my lunchbox instead of having,

I don't know, like my dream would have been a mint arrow, you know? I got smoked mackerel instead in a

lunch fox. So she would always tell us about oily fats, good fats, which obviously goes straight

over your head and you don't care when you're a kid. But if I look back, it was always loads

of broths and greens and there was always fish stock and fish heads and chicken bones and just lovely smells, which I'm ashamed to say at a certain age I got a bit embarrassed by because other people's houses,

smart of cupcakes and scones and flapjacks, like my best friend's mom was just this incredible baker and our house smiled at a fish heads.

But my mom used to say to me, you know what the Queen's favourite food is? I mean, Maddie, do you know what the Queen's favourite food is? No, tell me. Well, according to my mum, the Queen's favourite food is kejury. So my mum would be like, well, if the Queen's going to have fish for breakfast and rules a land, then you can have fish for breakfast and ace your GCSEs and become a doctor, but I didn't become a doctor.

So it came from mum. That's really beautiful. Your book is kind of based on sustainability, which I think has been really important for you, way before it became more of a trend, which I feel has kind of in the last few years. What does sustainability mean to you? Well, it is wonderful, isn't it, It's a bit of a mouthful of a word, isn't it, sustainability? But I do think, even though it is a mouthful, it is on the tip of everyone's tongue now. And I really think, do you know Lizzie from Plastic Patrol? Is it like plugging? It's like your plugging that you do, but it's on paddleboard and you go up and down the canals and you pick up plastic. I have always wanted to do that.

Yeah. Patrol. Is it like plugging? It's like your plugging that you do, but it's on paddle boards and you go up and down the canals and you pick up plastic. I have always wanted to do that. And so this amazing, amazing woman called Lizzie, Lizzie outside, she is on Instagram. And she has been recording the pick up the plastic as you paddleboard or whatever it is, drinks, cans, everything you can think of. Everything gets picked up. I mean, I've picked up nappies, and dog poos and everything. And then you log it. And so the idea is to find out where the worst sources are so that you can divert the cleanups and so on. And she's amazing. I can't remember how I got into subject. But oh, on their Instagram, they said something like, and I can't remember exactly, but it was this, I'll try and remember it because it's meaningful but it's something like sustainability is living the way you want things to last no

I've got that wrong I'm going to have to look it up and we're going to have to re-record us but something

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