Tibetan people love to party, and there's nothing they love more than a party in nature. The winters are long and harsh in Tibet, but the summer, when the sun is bright and the wind is low, is marked by months of picnicking. Every village celebrates the summer season with its own lingka, or picnic festival. Between June and September, friends and family congregate under the shade of a tall white poplar, on the banks of a beautiful river, or out on the green grasslands. Picnics can be hugely elaborate affairs. Our own tent is based on the traditional Tibetan summer picnicking tent, inside which it is all about food. People sit out on traditional Tibetan handwoven rugs, eating momos and yak me
Our momos are beginning their travels! This week we are off to Cambridge for the Queen's College Ball. There's a clash with our regular Wednesday market stall day, so, regrettably, we we will not be in Oxford's Gloucester Green this Weds, June 21st. Spread the word! Over the summer there will be a number of Wednesdays that we cannot make as we are setting up at festivals near and far. Our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are a good place to follow our news, but an even better way to make sure that you know where we are, and where we are not, is to sign up to our mailing list. Our weekly email brings you Taste Tibet news, news from Tibet, recipes, photos and freebies! And for those of you Oxf
Food packaging is one of the few things that really gets our goat. Anyone who has visited the market in Oxford's Gloucester Green at the end of a busy trading day will have noticed the bins piled high with polystyrene food boxes and plastic forks. Back in 2015 the Council announced a ban on non-recyclable food packaging, hoping to reduce litter levels and to promote the use of biodegradable and recyclable materials. But the ban was reversed before it was even enforced, with city councillors citing the fact that the EPS (or expandable polystyrene) boxes that are widely used across the city are in fact recyclable (if not biodegradable). You can make CD cases out of them, apparently! Sustainabi
These are troubled times, and this month, the most important festival for Taste Tibet is not Glastonbury, but Saga Dawa, or the "million multiplier" festival. Saga Dawa runs for the entire fourth month of the Tibetan lunar calendar, and Tibetan people believe that everything we do during this auspicious month, whether positive or negative, is multiplied by a million times. And so we give to the poor, we free captive animals, we abstain from eating meat, and so on. This Friday, June 9, is Saga Dawa Düchen, the most important religious day in the Tibetan Buddhist calendar. On this day, Tibetan people observe the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and entry into nirvana, and we believe that the effe
