Stephanie Alexander on food, children, politics and the Canberra Writers' Festival

"But give them an eggplant and say make a dip, they'd just look at you," says the much acclaimed cook, restaurateur and food writer.

In her latest book, The Cook's Apprentice (Lantern, 2018) she writes: "I see you in cafes and food stores and bakeries and I know that you are adventurous and interested in eating well. But I hear that many of you do not feel super confident in the kitchen."

We talk about how crucial those years are, when young people have to start cooking for themselves, many for the first time.

When I left home my mother gave me a copy of The Commonsense Cookbook and inscribed on the inside cover, "May you become a better cook than me." I've tucked away my copy of The Cook's Apprentice for my own daughter when she leaves home, and I'll add the same inscription.

For maybe that's where it starts, suggests Alexander. When children see their parents involved in cooking and eating interesting food and revelling in the joy sitting around a table can bring.

"It's very powerful when children see people around them, whether it be their own family at home, or elsewhere, eating things they don't know about. They'll think, well that person I really like quite a lot has just tackled a globe artichoke - maybe I can have a go. It's about good food being treated as something special, but at the same time knowing there's more than one way to eat a potato."

At 78, Alexander shows no sign of slowing down. She's about to become an ambassador for stamp collecting week, and she still travels the country checking up on the Kitchen Garden Foundation schools.

She was in Canberra in April and ducked into Majura Primary School, the demonstration school for the ACT. First planted in 2009, the school's garden is still thriving and children are still reaping the benefits, which extend far beyond the garden or the kitchen.

"Majura is a great school and it reinforces everything I think is important about the program," Alexander says. "They have very enthusiastic kitchen and garden specialists at the school, and they really get it and of course that enthusiasm rubs off on the kids. It's a very powerful program."

Alexander launched the Kitchen Garden program in Melbourne in 2001. Her vision was always to see children form positive food habits for life. It would be interesting to catch up with some of those first graduates to see if they know what to do with an eggplant.

Not everyone shares her vision. The foundation hasn't had federal funding for some time, she says. Before the March election the Labor Party promised $6 million to restore funding. Then shadow minister for education and training Tanya Plibersek said the foundation directly addressed the childhood obesity problem, where one in four Australian children are overweight or obese.

"It's a successful initiative that teaches kids about food in a fun, hands-on way - setting them up for a healthier life," Plibersek said. Plibersek said it was all about preventative health, and Alexander agrees. It appears the current government doesn't.

"We are constantly hopeful we'll get more funding, we haven't given up," she says, grateful for the partners and collaborators the foundation does have. "One of our biggest challenges is that while everybody acknowledges childhood obesity is a major problem not everyone agrees on how to tackle it.

"I have to be able to convince anyone with any purse strings that there is value in the Kitchen Garden program, but it's a slow process. A lot of people would like to think you can solve a huge social issue by designing a lovely poster, or handing out apples on a Tuesday. These things aren't even band-aid solutions.

"To really get to the bottom of how you change kids' attitudes to good, fresh food and what will make them want to make better choices, that is not cheap. It's got to be a proper program and it's got to be every week or every fortnight and every week of the school year and it has to be seen as being as important in their schooling as other subjects."

Alexander will be addressing some of these issues as the keynote speaker on the opening night of the Canberra Writers Festival, coming back to Canberra on August 21. In previous years, Matthew Evans has addressed the concept of paddock to plate, and last year Maggie Beer spoke about the state of food in aged care in the festival's opening dinner.

In conversation with journalist Malcolm Farr, Alexander is looking forward to the event.

"I'm not usually worried about being short of a few words," she laughs, even though she says writers festivals can be scary "because there are so many high-powered people about".

In her decades of cooking, and writing about cooking, she says the writing process has become just as important, and it's something she loves.

"I relish the opportunity to write, to express myself, on the things that I feel strongly about which does seem to be concentrated on young people and food and travel."

She initially trained to be a librarian, and says the seminal Cook's Companion would never have been written if she hadn't had that background.

"One of the secrets of its success was the organisation of it all - the cross referencing adds tremendously to its usefulness for everybody. When it came time to turn it into an app, which we did in 2013, the cross referencing was marvellous. I tend to use the app a lot when I'm in the kitchen rather than use the big book ... but I shouldn't say that should I?"

She nominates former Canberran Emiko Davies as a food writer she enjoys reading, "and she takes beautiful photographs, I love her blog", as well as American Richard Olney, the Chez Panisse books, Judy Rodgers' Zuni books and Elizabeth David.

Despite all the joy her years of cooking and travels and working with young children have brought her, one thing that still makes her sad is the number of young children she meets who don't regularly eat around a table with their family.

Just last week she had some friends around for dinner. Someone had donated a whole scotch fillet to one of her guests and he had no idea how to cook it, so Alexander volunteered.

"He invited all these people, we were nearly bursting the seams of my dinner table. Before people had even arrived I washed bunches of spinach from the garden which had been heavily rained upon and were full of red dirt," she says.

"I washed them leaf by leaf, and the result was this most perfect spinach puree which everyone was thrilled about. We simply served cheese with some muscatels and fresh pear, it was a glorious meal. And that's how I like to eat.

"Friends around a table, a certain amount of ceremony, served nicely. But too many of the young people I meet aren't sharing a meal and that has to change."