From Root to Table
written by Anni Mara
I live in a five-story apartment building in the West Side of Glasgow with a small indoor garden that majority of the residence don’t use. An odd person here and there hang their clothes there turning summer time but mostly it’s used for dogs to do their morning piss there before their owners can actually be arsed to get them out for a walk. I’m not judging, I’m doing the same.
Soon after I moved in, my boyfriend handed me the most precious Valentine’s Day gift yet to date- a greenhouse. Not the one that’s drawn next to my dream house on a piece of paper, hidden somewhere, but the second best that had to do. A 5 different sizes of metal poles and a plastic cover that smells like a factory somewhere in China. “Perfect” I whispered as I pressed my lips onto his. I fucking love it and I am going to make this my whole personality- I thought. And I did.
The thing is, growing up, food was survival- fuel for energy, not something to savour. I mean, I liked it, but flavour, texture, or provenance weren’t part of the conversation, caused on lack of interest and skills which my mother openly admits. And yet, even in that practical approach to eating, there were flashes of comfort and memory, like adding caramelised onions to mashed potatoes.
Therefore, most of the days it was oven-baked dishes made from fridge odds and ends- sliced potatoes layered in a round tin, topped with scraps of sausage, peas, cheese, all brought together with an egg-and-milk wash. Never crispy on top, sometimes still under-cooked and the only seasoning being fine table salt and dried dill.
My childhood was spent under the counter of my parents’ countryside grocery shop- literally. My mother fashioned a small bed for me, made out of plastic pallets used for bread, beneath the cashier’s desk, where I napped while she worked. The shop stood just across from our forest house, surrounded by towering pines. Beyond its walls, my parents grew nearly everything we ate. From fields (hectares and hectares!) of potatoes, rows of carrots, turnips, pumpkins, and mountains of cucumbers and tomatoes. Even after we- five children- had grown and flown, they kept growing them, as they always had. Because it wasn’t just a necessity, it had become a habit.
©George Barecca
Learning to cook early gave me an appreciation for ingredients we didn’t often have access to, like broccoli or olives. I remember looking at the cellar shelves lined with pickled jars my mother had made and at the time, I overlooked them. They felt cheap, without any value or flavour and eating them felt like a punishment rather than an actual joy. Many of them ended up tossed years later but now, I find myself paying £20 for those same flavours, craving the acidity and salt, the time and care preserved in each jar. Dreaming that I could have the access to the land, time and source to produce 16 jars of pickles on one go.
Living today in a city where most vegetables magically appear at Tesco’s shelves, it strikes me how disconnected we’ve become from food’s origins. It’s either that or a way to feel that you are better than everyone else when you can buy some tomatoes from the Farmers market and post about it in your socials. But all I can see is the dozens of 10-litre buckets my father would pick before sunrise, overflowing with tomatoes, waiting by the front door for my mother to transform them into the jars (that got never opened, obviously), only for the same cycle to repeat a few days later.
Now, I dream of a home with soil soft enough to dig my hands into. I think of my mother’s jars and how they’d now elevate a simple pasta sauce or turn them into a spread for a homemade focaccia.
So- I believe there’s a quiet kind of magic in growing your own food. It’s not about self-sufficiency or being trendy. It’s about reconnecting. It’s about the smell of tomato leaves on your fingers after you prune them, the heat of the soil, the joy seeing the first fruit on a plant you places into a soil from a seed. In a world of convenience, we forget the satisfaction that comes from slowness.
So even if you don’t have a unused garden or a lovely boyfriend to gift you a greenhouse- but just a sunny windowsill or a patch of ground- plant something. And watch it grow.
Things that grow well on your windowsill
HERBS
Basil, parsley, mint, chives, rosemary, thyme, and sage are all great choices.
TIP: Buy fresh herbs from your local super-market, still attached to the stem and place in water. You see roots forming in a few days, indicating they are ready to be potted.
VEGETABLES
Lettuce (leaf or microgreens), radishes, pea shoots, and even some small tomato varieties can thrive on a windowsill.
TIP: Choose small tomato varieties, like 'Patio Princess', 'Tiny Tim', or 'Micro Tom'
