Making Wilden | Tempi di Recupero

Starting from simple things to revolutionize the way we live. Behind every tiny cultural act, there’s passion. Most of all it’s the respect for nature that encourages researchers and professionals to share ideals close to Wilden. herbals’. The common thread between them is the desire to see the world with new eyes. This is their story.

Tempi di Recupero restarts from sharing ideas and from “networking”, overcoming clichés and hackneyed expressions, more like a driving force to imagine a brand new world based on a simple principle: reuse, here reimagined in endless forms and ways.By putting reuse at the center of our discussion – in an economical landscape of consumption – it means to reactivate research and cultural innovation. It means regaining possession of what we already have (both physically and culturally) which, never as before, needs a “recovery time”. That’s the topic of our questions to Carlo Catani, co-founder of Tempi di Recupero.

How the project was born?

It was born in an informal way, as a theme of a series of dinners organized with friends at the Osteria della Sghisa in Faenza in 2013. To date, we have organized over 80 dinners throughout Italy: creative chefs, osti and azdore (an old term of Romagnolo dialect used to indicate the woman who presides over housekeeping matters) have shared their idea of food ​​recovery and reuse by offering dishes based on offal recipes (or, as the Italian tradition called it, the famous “fifth quarter” of meat), leftovers or traditional forgotten recipes.
Our book “Tempi di Recupero. Scarti, avanzi e tradizione nelle cucine dei grandi chef” is a collection of those interpretations and recipes based on food recovery, together with cultural insights, we’ve experienced in the first years: the book has been written by me with contributions from many friends and published in 2018 by Quinto Quarto Edizioni.
Since 2019 we have organized the “Tempi di Recupero Week” – now in its third edition – a week entirely dedicated to food recovery with the participation of 180 projects and companies including restaurants, taverns, ice cream parlors, pizzerias and private individuals all over the world. We’ve also supported projects close to our philosophy. such as the non-profit organization Food for Soul founded by Massimo Bottura and Lara Gilmore, and the Food for Change initiative by Slow Food.

Since the beginning many things have changed, most of all everyone’s awareness. Tempi di Recupero tells a story about the importance of enhancing ingredients in their entirety, about food reuse and how the philosophy of recovery can be integrated with daily eating habits – even with a little creativity. Food sustainability is now a must and we like to think that some seeds in this revolution are just ours.
As a project, Tempi di Rupero has become stronger and stronger also thanks to an important milestone: in 2020 we became a cultural association. Speaking with many friends, we collected a lot of stimuli and signals going in the same direction so we wondered “Why don’t we connect all the dots (initiatives, people, messages) and we express ourselves in a more solid way?”. That was the starting point to give our network a precise shape in order to connect all those players who turn reuse into a culture and make sustainability a real philosophy. Beyond the “historical” figures like creative chefs, hosts, and azdore, there are also ice cream makers and reuse artisans who are super careful to raw materials’ quality and sustainable production, as well as winemakers with sustainable practices, custodians of the land and of the ancient vines. POP members complete our network: they are all those people who don’t necessarily work in the food industry, but who practice sustainability everyday.

What’s your mission? 

Our mission is to enhance sustainable productions, to support products in their integrity, to spread a more ethical food culture, to raise public awareness about themes like reuse and food and wine recovery and to give value to people and their work. All of this is possible by sharing ideas and by strengthening our network which allows us to create new relationships and initiatives, including convivial ones, in order to promote a sustainable vision of the world.
Our goal is to enable synergies with other sustainable projects and to give voice and evidence to a network of professionals and enthusiasts who share the same set of values. The heterogeneous network encourages ideas exchanges and connections among various spokespersons who can support each other and share experiences, always in compliance with sustainable good practices.

Where do you think recovery and reuse are needed the most?

I feel the urge to recover cooperation and sharing to support one another – now as never before. We have to promote valuable people, ideas and projects in order to promote a new sustainable vision of the world. We really are facing a turning point that confronts us with an important choice: do we want to pick up where we left off keeping the same course or do we want to rethink a new, more sustainable path? That’s why I believe that confrontation and sharing must be recovered in order to build a new path together. And this is what we believe our network can do: to create an open dialogue, to convey a powerful message and to make a change – together.

What does it mean for you to be “Healthy and Wild”?

We really think this motto fits us perfectly!
Healthy: because people’s and planet’s health is what we really care about. Healthy can also means being clear, open and transparent in what we do and how we tell our story.
Then there’s wild: we are convinced that the image of wild nature where everything is useful and has a purpose is the only one able to show us the way to live in harmony and to adopt a healthy lifestyle. Moreover we feel fearless to speak about our passions and to express our ideas: that’s why being wild really resonates with us.