Budget saving cookery courses help council tenants in Salisbury
Families get help to plan low cost nutritious meals
Council tenants in Salisbury have been taking part in cookery classes, aimed at giving those involved the skills and confidence to eat healthily and on a budget.
Wiltshire Council commissioned the Pantry Partnership CIC to run the six week course.
Held weekly at St Michaels Community Centre, Bemerton Heath, it's aimed at helping families plan low-cost nutritious meals to help with household budgets.
The Pantry Partnership is a social enterprise based in and around Salisbury who work with the local community, providing low cost, nutritious meals from surplus food that normally would go to waste and offering cooking workshops and food related activities that engage people around food and the benefits of low cost and healthy cooking.
It's separate to the social supermarket in the city with a similar name.
Director of The Pantry Partnership, Fiona Ollerhead, said:
“The course has been designed to include both parents and their children, helping families to make finances stretch to meet smaller budgets as well as aiming to ensure healthy eating is not only experienced but enjoyed by young people.”
“One of the approaches that we aim to instil is a love of food using basic and simple (and often also low cost) ingredients to create delicious food, thus inspiring people to continue to cook easy, yet tasty meals at home, on a budget. We are also keen to save food from going into the bin, so we show people through demos and activities how to make the best of fruit and vegetables, bread and odds and ends and to create healthy meals from them.”
“Session one began with a couple of takes on a healthy ‘left over’ soup and our last session will be all about celebrations; meaning never a party may be missed, just because finances are tight.”
As well as recipe ideas, and shopping tips and techniques participants are also provided with aprons and knives to get them started back home.
Cllr Phil Alford, Wiltshire Council Cabinet Member for Housing, said,
“Supporting communities to live safely and healthily is a key priority in our business plan and with the current cost of living crisis, and the ever more important need to save money and budget effectively, we are delighted to team up with The Pantry Partnership to deliver these cookery courses to some of our Salisbury families."
Cllr Phil Alford added;
“Our housing resident engagement officers are always looking to work with residents to provide opportunities to be involved in positive activities that promote skill development, as well helping them to adopt healthy behaviours while keeping costs down.
“We hope to be able to offer more of these courses in the future.”
Siobhan, one of the course participants, said:
“Thank you so much for such a great start to the cookery course. We love our aprons and knives!”