Mary Rolph Lamontagne believes we don't understand how hard farmers work to provide food for our plates.
Since the softly spoken Canadian woman moved to Constantia in the Cape, she has grown her own vegetables.
"I always tell people to just grow one vegetable. I don't think people appreciate how hard it is. If you aren't tending to your plants, they will die."
Lamontagne's book, Eats: Enjoy all the seconds, is a collection of 135 recipes that rely heavily on fresh produce, and she gives practical advice on how best to buy and store your food to avoid wastage.
"Around the world we waste 40% of our produce. One in four people lack food security in Africa.
"It is not that we have to produce more food, but that we have to learn not to waste," Lamontagne says.
"I want to change the way people think about food, they way they treat it, the way they buy it."
- 'Eats: Enjoy all the seconds' is published by Random House Struik. Exclusive Books R230