To support the Mayor’s Fund for London Kitchen Social programme and their delivery of nutritious meals to children across the capital, we delivered informative and engaging workshops at London community hubs.
Created in response to a national drive to tackle food insecurity in the school holidays, Kitchen Social aims to give young Londoners a safe place to socialise and receive a free healthy meal.
With an aligned mission between both organisations to provide healthy and sustainable meals to communities outside of term time, our expert culinary team provided an interactive cooking workshop to volunteers from across Kitchen Social’s community hubs in London, giving them an opportunity to develop their food education and to learn how to cook a range of delicious, nourishing recipes, to take back and serve to their communities this summer.
Taking place in our development kitchen in Lewisham, Executive Chef, Dan Lucas and Charlotte Harris, Regional Training & Development Chef delivered workshops to 10 London-based hubs from the local area. During the workshop, they learnt more about the importance of nutrition and reducing food waste, as well as learning some of Chartwells’ popular recipes.
Once they had been shown how to create each dish, the volunteers were able to practice their cooking skills, as they took to the kitchen to make the recipes themselves. Finally, after all the cooking was complete, the volunteers were then able to tuck in and enjoy their delicious creations together, with our team providing recipe cards for each of the dishes.
We have previously supported the Mayor’s Fund for London Kitchen Social programme by providing educational food and cooking resources to volunteers that they can access online. Looking forward, we will continue to support the Fund’s food programme by running more in-person cooking workshops with volunteers from across the capital.
Dan Lucas, said: “We are committed to working with the Mayor’s Fund for London Kitchen Social programme and being part of the solution in resolving food insecurity. We know the summer holidays are a particularly challenging time for many families, so ensuring holiday programmes have the training and resources available to support in the delivery of high-quality, nutritious food is vital. Our chefs work tirelessly to put health and wellbeing at the heart of all their dishes. By opening up our skills and knowledge to Kitchen Social, we hope to promote the importance of healthy and sustainable eating, to many more children across the capital."
Chaneti Stevens, Global Generation, one of the community hubs supported by the Kitchen Social Programme added: “The day was really helpful. The dishes were delicious and Dan and Charlotte answered all of my questions in great detail. The beetroot burger was amazing and had a great flavour and texture with the feta and spices. Beetroot is not normally my thing, but it tasted great - I’ll definitely be trying it again!”