Our Year in Living Food

There’s a particular kind of tiredness that doesn’t get fixed by sleep.

It’s the tiredness of being fed but not nourished. Of eating quickly, often, and still feeling like something is missing. Of living in a world where food is everywhere - yet the relationship with food can feel thin, rushed, and strangely disconnected from nature, culture, and body wisdom.

This year at Grove & Meadow, we kept returning to one quiet question: what happens when you let food lead again?

Not food as “fuel.” Not food as “rules.”But food as a living language - of land, craft, flavour, and vitality.

A year of making (with intention, not noise)

In a world that rewards speed, we’ve tried to stay committed to what we believe actually works: patient processes, whole ingredients, and the kind of taste that leaves you feeling better after you’ve eaten.

We launched new products this year, but the bigger story isn’t the product itself. It’s the why beneath it: we’re designing food that supports real life. Food you can reach for in a busy week and still feel proud of. Food that brings pleasure and steadiness. Food that doesn’t ask you to choose between health and joy.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from watching people taste our food in real time - at markets, around workshop tables, in kitchens - it’s this: Flavour is not separate from vitality. Flavour is often the doorway back to it.

The wider world: where the questions got bigger

We also stepped outside our usual rhythms this year - travelling, listening, learning.

In the UK, we went deeper into regenerative grain farming and the world of stone-milled whole flours - food systems that are trying to rebuild life in the soil rather than extract from it. These aren’t abstract ideals. When you stand in those fields, speak to those farmers, and taste bread made from grain grown with care, you feel something shift: Living land makes living food. Living food makes living people.

We had the honour of speaking at the OMVED Chef Manifesto too, in a space where the conversation was less about trends and more about responsibility: what kind of food culture are we building, and who gets to shape it?

We came home with a sharper sense of purpose and a deeper respect for how powerful food culture really is.

Chefs, home cooks, and the culture-makers among us

One of the most meaningful choices we made this year was reworking our chef curriculum.

Because what we need isn’t just more people who can cook. We need more people who can lead - through kitchens, through menus, through sourcing decisions, through the stories they tell.

We need chefs (and home cooks too) who can hold two truths at once:

• that food should be deeply delicious

• and that it should support human and planetary health

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We’ve become more convinced that food culture doesn’t change through information alone. It changes through practice, repetition, and delicious proof, the kind you can taste and then never quite forget.

The campus: where it all became real

If we had to name the heartbeat of our year, it would be the Living Food Campus in Tigoni.

We hosted dozens of workshops - moments where people arrived curious and left more awake to their own senses. We watched strangers become friends over shared chopping boards, shared fermentation jars, shared “oh wow” bites.

Something happens when you slow down long enough to taste properly. You don’t just learn a recipe, you remember you have an instinct. And that instinct matters. Because vitality isn’t a product you buy. It's a relationship you rebuild.

A gentle invitation for the year ahead

As we move into a new year, we’re not here to sell you perfection. We’re here to invite you into practice. If you’ve been enjoying Grove & Meadow from your kitchen, consider this your open door: Come visit us at the Living Food Campus.

Meet he people behind your food. Ask the questions you’ve been carrying. Taste things slowly. Learn something practical. Leave with a little more trust in your ability to eat with intuition - for energy, steadiness, and joy.

Thank you for being part of this with us - for choosing curiosity over cynicism, flavour over fear, and food that feels like life.

We’re building something brave and delicious here, and you are an essential part of that journey! We look forward to seeing what 2026 has in store!