Cooking and learning together

Blog by Joanna West, Northern Membership & Community Council and Tanya Noon, MCRO.

What a pleasure to be working again with Reach Community Grocery in Derby. Reach help families and individuals to access food and provide educational workshops. Alongside the grocery is a Community Hub where you can get a drink, relax and learn something new.

The Northern MCC has worked with Reach for a few years and we were pleased again to support their Healthy Eating Cooking Course, along with Ruth.

Joanna wrote: "It was a real delight to attend the first Simple Nutrition class. The Northern MCC were pleasd to support by not only attending this initial sesion but by provididng the food so that attendees could go home; we're looking forward to hearing how they got on at the next session.

We will be delivering our Healthy Choices workshop later this month as well as supplying ingredients for the other sessions. It is fantastic to support such a great scheme again".

There was a presentation and learning how people currently eat and cook, which was insightful and how good fats like our Malawi Macadamia nuts was on the healthy fats list, in moderation of course! The ingredients were prepared by all those attending to make a Vegetarian Chilli. Some chopped the carrotts, onions, celery, peppers, etc., whilst we prepared the spices which included the Malawi Chilli Grinder, which is a real boost to any cooking. We were able to talk about the important of how Our Co-op makes a difference around the world and in particular in Malawi where we support co-ops to thrive. Also, the ingredients included some dark chocolate so we added our Fairtrade 85% 'chocolate for change' to the pot.

Once cooked we all enjoyed eating together and learning from each other. Just a pleasure to support such a wonderful programme. The attendees also enjoyed learning about Our Co-op and our educational work in the community.