CHANGING LIVES
One dish at a time By Melissa Walsh Photos Garry Sissons
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It is so important to me to deliver local sustainable ethically farmed produce to everyone
arlene Hoff is a chef, hospitality trainer, entrepreneur, cooking school teacher and owner of 100 Mile Foodie. She is a vocal advocate of Mornington Peninsula produce and uses her growing social media platform to sing the praises of using local, sustainable and ethical food and wine. Marlene is a force to be reckoned with and her passion for community is inspiring. Peninsula Essence talks to Marlene at her brand-new cooking school and kitchen-garden about how she got to where she is today.
“Ever since I had my children I began to think about where our food comes from, I wanted to give them the best quality food without preservatives. It started me on a mission to buy locally, hence the 100 Mile Foodie name”. “In truth it is more like a 50-mile foodie,” she laughs. “When the children were little, we would sit around the dinner table and talk about where food comes from. The kids always grew up in the vegetable garden with fruit trees and chickens, and anything we couldn’t grow was bought locally.”
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February 2019
The idea of knowing where our food came from, how it was raised and the miles it had travelled was, and still is, extremely important to Marlene.
“I read that the average food basket travels 70,000 miles,” she said. “That has a detrimental impact on our local economy, the environment and on our health, both mental and physical. I thought ‘why can’t we just eat like our grandparents used to?’ For them, everything came from within a small radius.” For Marlene, who always loved food and cooking, making the life changing decision to quit an international banking job and follow her dreams turned out to be one of the best decisions she would ever make. “It’s funny…I just knew it was time…so when I was 35 I enrolled in a Certificate III Hospitality course in commercial cookery. I started off at Morning Star Estate, Mt Eliza, and then did a whole range of jobs to learn lots of different skills. I always wanted to teach and cook but had no idea the difference good, fresh food could make to people’s lives,” said Marlene who found her passion for teaching by helping create change when she worked for Peninsula Health facilitating community kitchens.