Stacey Hanley from Port Melbourne brings her community together with her healthy herbs and preserves.I grew up in Queensland with a family of passionate home cooks and gardeners. Our family prepared fresh jams, cordials and chutneys from the fruit of my nanna’s mango tree. We also loved catching fresh fish, baking daily and coming together weekly over Sunday lunch.
During the 1980s, my love of travel, food and community drew me to vegetable co-ops and cooking in vegetarian restaurants in the UK and Mediterranean Europe. Wanting to share my skills, I returned to Australia and taught cooking, gardening and home producing. I got huge satisfaction working co-operatively with like-minded and inspired people. Our family moved to Port Melbourne in the late ‘90s where I set up the Dig In Community Garden and started running community cooking classes.
I now run Kitchen Survival Skills – an accessible cooking class for people with disabilities – at the Port Melbourne Neighbourhood House. The cooking class is about minimal fuss and simple fresh food. I hate the idea of overly salted and processed convenience food. Therefore, every week we start with the basics – what I often call pantry food – tinned tomatoes, whole seeds, dried and tinned beans and wholegrain cereals, and then work to build up the flavours. I try to include at least one element of home-grown produce even if it is only a bunch of parsley.
The garden and seasons are a constant inspiration for me. There is nothing like sun-ripened tomatoes off the vine, lemons picked from the tree, beetroots pulled from the ground. Our Dig in Community Garden supplies vegetables and herbs to the cooking class. We snip bunches of fresh basil and coriander to freeze to keep the flavours of summer through to winter. We grow rosemary, bay leaves and parsley for warm winter flavours. We preserve lemons in salt to add to soups and stews.
Five years ago, I came up with an idea to produce rustic-style condiments such as preserves, chutneys, sauces and home-made cordials to sell at the Port Melbourne Community Carnival to promote the strong sustainable food spirit that exists at the community garden and neighbourhood house. We use locally-grown produce and generous donations from food businesses in Bay Street and the South Melbourne Market. The aim is to inspire and recycle with less reliance on packaging, thus creating less landfill. In the future, we would like to increase community participation by running a gourmet pantry class and a series of seasonal workshops. We’d like to produce larger quantities of home-cooked healthy food options for people to take back to their families and communities.
Stacey Hanley and the Dig In Community Garden catering team will be running a preserves stall and a gourmet barbecue at the Port Melbourne Community Carnival on Saturday, February 25 from 12-4pm on Liardet Street, between Nott and Lalor streets, Port Melbourne. Visit pmnh.org.au/news or call 9645 1476.
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