Hi, my name is Hanneke and I am a rescuer. Of All The Things.
To give you an idea of the occasional absurdity of it – I saved a cooler box full of ice cubes from melting, not wanting to waste the embodied energy, so I lovingly (and freezingly) scooped it all out of the icy water and into bags to be put back into the freezer. Enough said.
Close friends and family joke about my picking up ‘Lame Ducks’ and the term ‘One of Hanneke’s Waifs and Strays’ gets bounced around a lot. I’ve been active in Animal Rescue and all my pets are shelter kids. There’s even a couple of ex-battery hens. Growing up in the Netherlands our parents brought us up to be thrifty and the progressively more commonplace concepts of Recycle, Re-use, Re-invent and their like were well entrenched at a young age. I rescue broken tiles for mosaics, old tyres for planters, plastic packets for crocheting mats – you get the drift.
I also love food. So is it any wonder that I rescue it, too?
Living in a country like South Africa which has such glaring inequality, poverty and widespread food insecurity has fuelled my innate activist nature over time and things came to a head when I helped out at a friend’s soup kitchen in 2015. What was meant to be a once-off 3-day stint escalated fast – I was just not able to turn away anymore.
What you are reading now is the beginning of the Nosh Food Rescue Chronicles. These ramblings may or may not see the light in chronological order, but either way I hope to catch up to the present day fast, as there are lots of exciting projects that are close to seeing the light and we’d love to have you along for the ride!
Hanneke