Cooking HubNews

From Frittata to Feta

It’s been a while since our last update, but we’ve been as busy as always – not just with cookery classes, we’ve got lots of other exciting things to share too.

Most weekdays, during term time, we work with a variety of schools. Some have been attending for a few years now, some attend for a shorter time – maybe a few weeks or one term. What’s great about working with these students is seeing their skills and confidence develop and watching their knowledge grow as the weeks go by. We love teaching young people the importance of preparing and eating healthy meals and we regularly discuss the Eatwell Guide and how we can incorporate each of the food groups into a healthy and balanced meal. We have recently worked with students from Co-op Academy Grange, Bradford and Pivot Academy, Huddersfield and we continue to work with students from West SILC, Leeds and High Park School, Bradford. We have even been extending our skills with High Park School to growing seeds (more about our Grow Kits later on) and hopefully soon we’ll be able to use some herbs and maybe even vegetables that we have grown together in class.

In November we welcomed around 40 guests from Living Well for a team away day. This involved a variety of activities such as a team cooking session making Thai Green Curry, visiting the new Darley Street Market currently under construction and preparing some Christmas hampers for twenty two Shaw House, our FoodSavers social supermarket. If you’d be interested in an away day for your team or organisation, do get in touch.

Christmas was quieter than usual this year as some schools didn’t finish for the holidays until the end of our week of cookery workshops, but we still had some lovely sessions making frittata and stir fry. Thanks to funding from the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme we were able to offer some great gifts for everyone to take away with them including measuring spoons, a whisk, a recipe book, some Kitty’s Kits bread mix, vouchers to spend on food items on Oastler Market and a wonderful Grow Kit which contains everything needed to grow a variety of herbs.

After a well-deserved break over Christmas, our first job was to give the cooking and café area at The Storehouse a makeover. We had lots of help from some amazing volunteers including staff from Virgin Media O2, Virgin Money and our two resident volunteers Adrian and Marjery. In total they gave over 100 volunteer hours helping to make our space look great, and we want to say a huge thank you to everyone who was involved – we love our updated space.

Montage of photos of The Storehouse café area looking bright and welcoming

We have recently been working with a group of ladies from Neesie who have completed a course with us gaining skills in customer service and barista training, learning some new recipes and completing a Food Safety award. At the end of this course, the ladies hosted a fantastic café for around 30 guests. It was hard work but such a lovely day, with the ladies receiving some great feedback from many of the guests. They should all be very proud of their planning and cooking skills.

Finally, we’ve had another busy but good half term – a week of cooking classes teaching families and young people some lovely recipes and the benefits of eating healthy and nutritious food. We’ve discussed The Eatwell Guide and how we can ensure we’re eating all the food groups to keep us healthy, while at the same time enjoying the meals we make. We’ve seen some lovely new people in our groups and welcomed back lots of people who come on a regular basis. We’ve encouraged people to try some new ingredients including pomegranate, snowball melon, asparagus, feta cheese and peanut butter – and a few even tried olives (and liked them!) We were very lucky this week to have received some funding from Feeding Britain, for which we would like to say a big thank you, which has enabled us to provide heavily-discounted classes and send families away with more gifts including food items, kitchen equipment and vouchers to spend on food in Bradford Oastler Market.

As always, we’ve got lots more things coming up. We will be running a new adults cooking course from April, and we’re already planning our Easter and Summer holiday classes for which we have more HAF funding so will be able to offer free places to children receiving benefits-related free school meals. These classes will be available to book on the HAF Parent Portal nearer the time – keep an eye on our Cooking socials (bottom of page) for more information.

Handwritten feedback notes from cooking classes