National Burger Day and Afternoon Tea Week
It’s the end of summer, so it must be time for an update on our cooking hub. We’ve packed loads into the past few months. In addition to our regular work with school groups, adult cookery courses and school holiday workshops, we’ve also been nominated for awards and attended the awards ceremony, we’ve taken part in anniversary celebrations, made it into a Big Issue magazine and more…
We’ve continued working with several schools including Bradford Academy, Pivot Academy, Co-op Grange, High Park and West SILC. Students have made a variety of recipes, discovered new skills and tried new ingredients and we’ve had lots of discussions on healthy eating and ways to eat a balanced diet. As part of their weekly sessions, the students from West SILC have also studied food safety with us and we were so proud to present them with certificates when they passed their tests. Learning continues outside school for some young people as we’ve held evening sessions for Bradford Inclusive Disability Service (BIDS) Teen Zone where they made some exciting recipes to share with their families.
In April this year we ran a new Jamie’s Ministry of Food Cooking Course, our eight week course for adults where we teach cookery skills in a relaxed environment. Whether you’re new to cooking or just want to learn a few new recipes, we provide all the ingredients to make a tasty, nutritious meal each session, and learn about the Eat Well Guide and balanced diets at the same time.
When the schools take a break for the holidays, we start our holiday kids’ cooking sessions, and as always this year we welcomed back lots of familiar faces and met lots of new young people too. We celebrated Yorkshire Day, National Burger Day and Afternoon Tea week, and taught lots of healthy and nutritious recipes including sweet potato chilli, chicken curry, tomato gnocchi and roasted vegetable Mediterranean parcels. This summer we introduced our “Have You Tried Anything New Today?” board, which has been a fun addition, encouraging lots of people to try new foods. We were again grateful to Bradford Council’s Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme, funded by the Department for Education, which enabled us to offer many of our sessions to families in receipt of free school meals at no charge. We also continued to run sessions with BIDS, HALE, Carers Resource and Ravenscliffe Youth Centre.
Throughout the year we’re always thrilled to welcome staff from companies and organisations who very kindly volunteer some of their time to help us with various tasks. These have ranged from helping out in our social supermarket, looking after our garden at Shaw House, and helping the warehouse team at the Storehouse. Groups also spend some time learning about what we do as an organisation, before cooking and eating lunch together – maybe gaining some new skills as they do. This year we have been joined by White Label Loyalty, Amey, and Virgin Money – who also gave some of their time to help get our outside area ready for summer. A huge thank you also goes to our regular volunteers, Adrian and Marg, Rachel, Najma and Sylvia.
Another organisation we’ve had the pleasure of working with this year is Neesie. A bunch of wonderful ladies have come into our Shaw House kitchen to learn cookery and other life skills over a number of weeks, which they’ve then put into practice to produce a delicious three-course lunch for invited guests. There’s been some fantastic feedback on their recipes and cooking skills and they’ve had a great time creating a fine dining experience.
Along the way through the year, we’ve also take a little time to celebrate. As part of Inn Churches, we were delighted to have been nominated for two awards at the Social Enterprise Yorkshire and Humber (SEYH) awards 2024 in York. We were also invited down to London to be part of the Jamie’s Ministry of Food 15 year anniversary celebrations, and earlier in the year the work we do with the students at High Park School was featured in a fantastic double-page spread in The Big Issue. Finally, you can read about our Dragon Boat racing exploits elsewhere, with Julie and Soraya literally ‘banging the drum’ for our work as the pace setters.
Thank you for your continued support and #keepcookingskillsalive.
