Actors from Theatre Replika. Theatre Replika/All rights reserved.Over one third of all food produced in the world goes to waste. That’s more than enough to feed the entire world’s malnourished population. So I do my recycling, but that’s still nothing compared to my grandmother, who, with a forceful look, always required me to finish everything on my plate. To her, throwing away food, especially bread, was sacrilegious. She used to make her own cheese and yoghurt when homemade Bulgarian yoghurt was common practice, before the era of the supermarket.
Now, those times are gone and the plastic container has won out. My grandmother always says that the yoghurt from the supermarket doesn’t taste “quite right” but I can’t tell the difference. I ask her to explain – she cites the consistency and the taste. She can’t put it into words. We grow silent as I inspect the memory of my taste buds. Honey, from the times when you could buy it straight from Georgi, the beekeeper, and eat it with an old encrusted spoon, right out of the glass jar.
The last time I saw those jars, stacked neatly in rows of six in the kitchen cupboard, was the time they were dragged outside and discarded. Within an hour they were collected from their temporary resting place near the panel block apartment building rubbish bin. My grandmother sounded the alarm with, “Did you see?! They took them, I told you they weren’t rubbish”.
