[Transl.note: The previous chapter narrates the story of how the Rampenplan (Emergency Plan) group got its name. Rampenplan was an activist group famous for their collective kitchen and could be described as one of Wam Kat’s most famous projects. It is certainly the reason he has written a ‘political cookbook’.]

So in the beginning there was a name, and the name was “Rampenplan”. It was the name of a group of activists protesting against emergencies that humans were bringing about themselves, be it nuclear weapons and nuclear power, chemical factories, military bases, or unemployment – the choice was ours. All of these and more were present enough where we lived in the region around Sittard, in the Netherlands. The only thing the region didn’t have was a real emergency plan in case anything went seriously wrong.

“We are the Rampenplan,” exclaimed Nigel with his wonderful British accent, “and we’ll make sure nothing goes wrong!” We had met him at an anti-nuclear demonstration, where he was handing out flyers to promote his idea of a “Resistance Circus” – a mix of information, clowns and fun! We liked the idea and had been in correspondence with him for months, developing ideas and making plans. Now I was visiting him for a couple of days; he lived in Sittard in a vegetarian restaurant and New Age centre called “De Nieuwe Horizon” (The New Horizon).

A friendly printer had just dropped off 40,000 leaflets against nuclear power, which meant we were up late into the night folding them into the right format. While doing this, we had a lot of time to discuss our ideas, and anyone else who visited had to join in.

“We should run some tests on the water in the River Meuse!”

“We could develop an alternative area usage plan for the chemical factory extension!”

“We should proclaim an independent nuclear-free state and sell passports!”

“From the proceeds we could buy land next to nuclear power plants and build permanent protest centres. Then we couldn’t be evicted by the police!”

“We ought to open a bookshop in Sittard selling alternative, political books.”

“And a printers’ workshop!”

“And a pub!”

“We should produce our own badges and stickers so we don’t have to order them from the same suppliers that produce badges for large companies.”

Just about the only idea we didn’t have during those leaflet-folding sessions was cooking.

Two weeks later, I went to a large meeting to prepare for a blockade of the nuclear reprocessing plant in Utrecht. It wasn’t my intention to say anything on behalf of our little group, but suddenly I found myself asking a question to the main group: “Has anyone thought about what we’re going to eat?”

It turns out that nothing had been organised for the 5,000 demonstrators expected to show up – apart from a sausage stand that one of the left-wing splinter groups used to set up for picketing strikers. In particular, vegetarians were going to go hungry – at that time these were still looked down on as hippies or kabouter. I really don’t know what I was thinking, but I responded by saying that Rampenplan would take on the whole job of feeding the protestors, including organising a marquee. And, of course, all the ingredients would be organic and the coffee would be ‘solidarity’ coffee. The rest of the participants at the meeting looked at me with a mixture of surprise and amusement – the same way you look at a lunatic.

I got the same looks when I returned to my Rampenplan friends in Sittard – except they were evidently less amused. They had just finished their folding marathon, but still had the energy to pelt me with piles of carefully folded leaflets! As we cleared up the mess together after the paper fight, they made it very clear that I had simply promised too much.

After all, there were only four of us and although we had great plans, we had no money. So where were we – Nigel, Jopie, Judokus and I – going to find a marquee, pots and pans, burners, plates and cutlery? And one more minor matter: Who was actually going to cook? “Me,” I heard myself say – not that I’d ever cooked for more than a group of scouts. “It can’t be that difficult, can it? Cooking is cooking – we just need bigger pans.”

“And me,” said Jopie. She was Nigel’s girlfriend and cooked in the New Age centre restaurant. It has to be said, however, that they hardly ever had any customers, apart from the six people living there.

We spent the next two weeks on the phone, madly trying to track down everything we needed. Vegetables and staples such as pasta and rice were relatively easy to find since I knew the organic scene quite well, with its farmers and wholesalers. Cooking equipment was more of a problem, but through the Scouts, Friends of Nature and student unions, we eventually gathered enough together. However, finding a large tent or marquee proved to be a real headache. In the end, we managed to persuade a circus director to help. I’ve no idea how we did it, perhaps he was just fascinated by our story, but he even sent six of his workers to help put the big top up. Our debut meal at the blockade – a rather watery vegetable soup – was certainly not the most delicious meal in Rampenplan’s long catering history, but, in spite of that, most people in the movement subsequently referred to us simply as ‘the kitchen’.

Our group grew. We rented an old print workshop in the centre of Sittard and put our original ideas into action: the “Nuclear-Free State”, the bookshop “Katastrofe” and the production of badges with our brand name “Geet njet” (Limburgish for “It won’t work”/”No can do”).

Our first cooking endeavour made such a big loss that we had to work for months to pay it off, selling badges and other action material at markets throughout the Netherlands. Huge amounts of crockery were broken, the police eviction led to supplies being left in the rain and going off, and we had run up a phone bill of some 7,000 guilders. Nevertheless, a couple of months later we signed up to cook again – at the blockade of a nuclear power station near Dodewaard. This time the blockade participants had more faith in the kitchen’s abilities and they filled the donations box.

The next time we got asked to cater was for an ‘anti-nuclear caravan’ tour – like a political circus. Slowly we started to take a real interest in the actual cooking – at least, Lylette and I did. Lylette was still at school when she started to cook with us (and a quarter of a century later she’s still part of the team).

More and more groups, camps and demonstrations called us because they had heard that we could cook, but two years went by and we still didn’t have any kitchen equipment to call our own. It was 1983 before we started to build it.

Experience had shown that the standard 50-80 litre pots were very cumbersome to transport if you have ten or more of them. Furthermore, even the best propane gas burner on the market needed an hour to bring 50 litres of water to the boil. What we needed was a giant version of typical camping cookware, with the pans designed to fit inside each other and pack down very compactly. The smallest pot we needed would be 50 litres, the largest at least 300 litres – in the end we based our choice of diameter for the largest pot on what would just fit through the door of our old Mercedes 407 van. Sjaak, who was setting up an office for sustainable energy at Rampenplan, designed both the pots and our first burner and thanks to his contacts in the local car factory – I think it was Volvo at the time, but it changed owners frequently – he was able to get some workers in the night-shift to roll large steel plates for us. The first burner we built even passed a safety test performed by the station commander of the volunteer fire department in Sjaak’s home village. Today, people who see Rampenplan’s cooking technology are still astonished at how fast it can bring 100 litres of water to the boil.

The only problem in the early days was ignition: none of the cooks in the first years had any hair left on their arms thanks to the fiery jets given off when lighting the burner. So anyone who cooks with Rampenplan now gets a very thorough lesson in how to use the burners before they are allowed near them!

Over the years people regularly developed and built new systems, with the constructions getting ever bigger, but they have all been based on this initial design. The very first kitchen set left Sittard years ago when it got donated to another group wanting to set up a mobile DIY kitchen. It can be used to cook for up to one thousand people.

We soon realised that we had to learn how to use these new pots properly. At first we tried to cook pasta and rice the way we always did, but this failed miserably: just the weight of the pasta itself was enough to compress the bottom layers into an inedible, sticky mass, and the rice burnt on the bottom. Luckily these initial disasters happened at a festival with a lot fewer visitors than expected. And one visitor who saw us struggling with our big pots came over and shared his knowledge from helping out in large-scale kitchens: you have to use much more water and stop cooking before it is fully done. Then you rinse the rice or pasta in cold water, put it to one side and cook off smaller quantities as needed. We were lucky – it could have taken us a while to come up with that idea ourselves!