Podcast
Food Stories Episode 10 : Carnival Cook Up with Cracking Good Food
Podcast
Happy World Food Day! To mark this special day, we’re taking you back to May this year when 90 corporate volunteers got their aprons on, rolled up their sleeves and got busy cooking 1,500 meals for people experiencing homelessness across Greater Manchester.
The event, organised by Cracking Good Food and supported with surplus food from FareShare Greater Manchester was held at Freight Island in central Manchester. Teams of volunteers from different businesses signed up to spend the day chopping, grating and cooking piles of veg to support charities working with people experiencing homelessness in every borough of Greater Manchester.
Homelessness affects over 7,000 people in Manchester, making access to nutritious food a significant challenge for many individuals and families. Simultaneously, the UK wastes 4 million tonnes of food each year. By participating in the Carnival COOK-Up, local businesses released members of staff to help address both of these critical issues, providing delicious meals to those in need and preventing perfectly good ingredients from going to waste.
There were three dishes on the menu, Vegan Bean Chilli, Potato and Bean Stew and Vegetable Stronganoff. At the end of the day organisations who support people experiencing homelessness with food came to pick up the meals. Among those who received them was the Booth Centre – their chef Claire appeared in this podcast episode.
Our thanks to everyone who spoke to us for this episode including Alex & Tracy from Cracking Good Food, Caroline from Slalom, Ellie from Dunsters Farm, Claire from the Booth Centre, textile artist Wendy Roby & the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham.
To find out more about Cracking Good Food, you can find their website here.
Catering groups make up a small but hugely important part of our Community Food Membership. Increasingly, we receive larger amounts of catering sized packs of food, so we are looking to sign up more catering groups to our books.
If you’re cooking for your local community and think we can help you with food, please get in touch with us. Contact our Membership & Information Coordinator Karina on membership@emergemanchester.co.uk or give us a call on 0161 223 8200 (Option 4).
