recipes — Dig Food Blog — ELEANOR SCOTT ARCHAEOLOGY

This blog piece is part of a series that explores the relationship between food, well-being and inclusion in the field. It focuses on 7 actual main meals that can be cooked in basic field conditions, as well as sides dishes and desserts. The key thing about these meals is that they are all vegan and gluten-free and Type2-friendly, and can be cooked in challenging conditions such as on a Dig. In other words, the Dig Cook doesn't have to be cooking lots of separate meals. It's a broad brush overview of what can be achieved, on a budget, to make sure that something that every participant in fieldwork has to do several times a day - eat - is not only physically sustaining them but also supporting their sense of well-being and belonging. It's also about making a rainbow of inclusive food that looks like you want to eat it and will be satisfied by it in a fieldwork setting.

Dig food is dig fuel - never underestimate its importance for powering an excavation. If you're gesticulating at a massive Iron Age bank that you want to be quickly sectioned, and your workers aren't getting fed properly because they're supposedly 'fussy eaters' (e.g. vegetarian), that's not a dig - it's a shambles.

Of course conditions for cooking on digs can be difficult and cramped, with limited facilities and storage space - but it can be done, and done well. Everything pictured here was cooked in basic conditions, without food processing gadgets and measuring scales - and if you like the look of anything in a photo, the recipes are at the end of the page or they'll appear in my next blog post next week.

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