A Co Down woman is on a mission to prove that you don't need to pay rising prices for many items in supermarkets, when you can simply make them at home from items found in the wild.
Ahead of World Environment Day arriving on June 5, Belfast Live sat down with local business owner and Comber native Debora Mulholland to discuss foraging, local sustainability, and the rising popularity of her locally sourced produce.
Debora’s enthusiasm for foraging started early in life, only turning her passion into a business in 2021, single-handedly creating small batches of chutney, jam and relishes from naturally growing produce foraged locally around Northern Ireland's countryside.
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“I’m now 57 and I’ve been making chutney for 30 years, It never occurred to me to buy ingredients. If I can make something and stop it going into landfill, I'll do it” said Debora when explaining her passion for food sustainability.
“I’ll never be rich, but I love what I do”.
After launching Tiny Batch Treats in 2021, driven solely by her passion for local produce and foraging, Debora has seen interest in her zero-waste products greatly increase, being invited to sell her hand-made produce at local markets and pop-up shops.
Members of the public have even started coming forward to ask her advice on sourcing their own ingredients while roaming the countryside in Northern Ireland.
“You can eat everything in a dandelion, the roots make coffee, the leaves make salad, and the petals make tea. Mix the petals with sugar, you make jam. What some people call weeds, you can eat. It's so much fun." she explains.
National interest in minimizing food waste shows no signs of slowing down, with popular food-waste apps like Olio reaching 6.3 million users worldwide in 2022, and more local initiatives like the Zero Waste Freecycle NI Facebook group hitting 28,000 members earlier this year, where people like Debora share their recipes and foraging knowledge with fellow waste-conscious locals.
After being a hobby for most of her life, Debora has now set her sights on educating the Northern Irish public on the natural herbs and spices that grow naturally throughout the country that can be put to use creating unique flavors in homemade dishes.
“It's an invasive species, but tastes fantastic,” she laughs when describing wild garlic, a herb that naturally grows in abundance throughout Northern Ireland, and often forms the basis of her signature creations.
Despite its popularity, Tiny Batch Treats remains a small-scale operation intentionally setting aside monetary income to raise the public's awareness of the potential we have to live sustainably and independently.
You can find out more about Debora's work via her Instagram page.
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