Cook & Connect Cooking Classes

Thanks to Oxford Food Hub who provided us with some gorgeous surplus food, we made

🧡Lutenitsa - Bulgarian dish, roasted red pepper and aubergine dip
🧡 ⁠Teriyaki sweet potato rice bowl, topped with avocado and crispy onions
🧡 ⁠Guacamole
🧡Coleslaw with grapes and walnuts
🧡 ⁠The kids made a dark chocolate and pear crumble topped with oats and seeds (YUM)
🧡mushroom and tempeh stroganoff

What a wonderful day with wonderful people again.

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We visited Oxford Food Hub yesterday to pick up some surplus produce for our cooking class today.

We’re so delighted with what we came away with!!
🍅 HUGE beef tomatoes
🍄‍🟫 Chestnut mushrooms
🥑 Lots of perfectly ripe avocados
🧄 Garlic
🥚 Eggs
🫑 Plenty of peppers
🍆 Aubergines
🧅 Onions
🍐 Pears, pears and more pears (so juicy!)

And lots of other bits and pieces like seasonings, sauces, kilos of rice, tempeh, tinned beans, sweet potatoes… the list goes on. Our car was full! They have such an impressive team and system going on over there, Oxford and its surrounding areas are so lucky to have them 🥰.

We cannot wait for today’s cooking course where we are going to be working together to make a menu with all this fabulous surplus food. Stay tuned to see what we end up making!! 🤤

Thank you Oxford Food Hub!

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We are more or less fully booked for 11th August - we may be able to squueeeezeeee one or two more people in so let us know if you’re interested.

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18th August has a few spaces left still but is filling up quickly - don’t miss out! It’s going to be a lot of fun and VERY yummy 😋 get in touch

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📣‼️NEW DATES ADDED 🥰🧡👨🏻‍🍳👩🏻‍🍳👨🏾‍🍳👩🏽‍🍳

🍅🥕 Cook & Connect is back this August! 🥕🍅

Looking for something fun, friendly and completely free this summer?

Come along to our Cook & Connect sessions where we’ll be cooking with surplus food, sharing simple, delicious recipes, enjoying some music, and spending time together in a relaxed, family-friendly environment. Everyone is welcome, whatever your cooking experience 🧡

📅 Tuesday 11th August and/or Tuesday 18th August
🕙 10:00am - 12:00pm
📍 The Kitchen, Abingdon Baptist Church, 35 Ock Street, Abingdon

Whether you come on one day or both, we’d love to see you there 🥰

You’ll learn new recipes, help reduce food waste, and leave with some yummy food to take home with you.

📩 To book your place, please send us a message. Spaces are limited, so booking is essential.

[email protected]

Please share with friends, family and anyone who might enjoy coming along! 💚

Our lunch table keeps getting bigger and bigger 🧡🥰

A huge thank you to Abingdon Baptist Church for funding the last two sessions, and to SOFEA for continuing to partner with us and provide us with the surplus of their surplus (we don’t like waste 😂)!

These sessions were a little different. We brought the surplus food with us and on the day worked together to think about how it could be used. We had people for all over the world there, bringing knowledge and flair from their cultures. What a mix of flavours! Just dreamy 🤤

We ended up with gazpacho, stuffed peppers, aubergine in tomatoes, leek & courgette flatbread parcels, salad, refried beans, avo-pasta and to finish, a cucumber, apple and pineapple fruit salad with coconut yoghurt.

We’re currently discussing August dates…. Stay tuned! 🧡👩🏻‍🍳👨🏾‍🍳

Thanks to our ongoing partnership with SOFEA Nourish and Flourish, we spiced up our sessions a bit this time. 💃🏼

They provided us with a fridge full of colourful, beautiful quality fruit and veg as well as tinned beans and pulses, all of which was surplus and would have been thrown away had they not saved it and distributed it.

Looking at all of our lovely ingredients on the day, we planned a menu of Waldorf salad, potato salad, guacamole, green salad, spicy roasted peppers with olives and bean burgers topped with cheddar cheese. Alongside that, our friends cooked rice, spinach and courgette dishes from Afganistan, followed by a super refreshing yoghurt, mint and cucumber drink called doogh .

We brought together different communities, which brought together different flavours and it was AWESOME 🤩

Beyond the food being delicious, it was really special working alongside people from different walks of life, working towards the same goal - preparing yummy, nutritious food from surplus ingredients, to be ready for 12.30pm so we can all eat together 🥰

Special thanks to One Planet Abingdon as always for their support and to Abingdon Baptist Church (ABC) who have funded this July’s sessions 🧡💚🌎♻️

🍳✨ Fancy a cooking challenge? Think Ready, Steady, Cook… but with a twist! Every ingredient has been rescued from going to waste, so every session is a surprise.

🥕 What’s on the menu? We won’t know until the day!
🧅 What ingredients will we have? That’s the fun part…we’ll find out together!

Thanks to the amazing support of Abingdon Baptist Church (ABC), 35 Ock Street, we’re delighted to offer these cooking classes totally free of charge!

Come along, get creative, pick up new cooking skills, and discover how to turn surplus food into delicious meals. It’s fun, friendly, budget-conscious, and a great way to help reduce food waste.

Places are limited, so don’t miss out. We would love to see you there! 💚♻️

Get in touch via Facebook or at [email protected] 📧

April’s recipe, session 2 🌶️🌶️🌶️