Celebrate family food project brings families together
Park Wood families are benefitting from a hands-on recipe box course designed to help families on low incomes build confidence in the kitchen and create nutritious meals on a budget.
Celebrate Family Food provides participating families with weekly recipe boxes containing fresh ingredients, easy-to-follow instructions and practical cooking tips. Over six weeks, families learn how to prepare balanced meals, reduce food waste, stretch ingredients further, and create healthy habits that support long-term wellbeing.
Golding Homes has supported the project, providing £7,700 to help with the food ingredients, packaging, kitchen equipment and volunteer costs for two courses.
Helen Critcher, Golding Homes Community Investment Manager, said:
“We’re proud to support Celebrate Family Food. Rising food costs and financial pressures mean many families are struggling to put healthy meals on the table. This course offers practical, empowering skills that make a real difference to people’s daily lives, and we’re really happy to help bring it to more households in our community.”
Celebrate Family Food participants not only receive ingredients and recipes, but also nutritional guidance and tips tailored to a range of cooking abilities. Families have said:
“I learnt how easy it is to make tasty food and how quick the meals are to make.”
“I will keep all my favourite recipes and use them again. I will know what ingredients to buy to make healthier meals for my family.”
“It helped my girls to cook together as a family.”
Scott Olliver, coordinator of Celebrate Family Food, said:
“This project is designed to keep families out of extreme food poverty and all of the negative impacts that this has on their health and wellbeing, as well as bringing the community together to make positive connections with each other.
“We provide recipe cards for each box which have been written and tested by us with our own families. By the end of the course, families have been able to make 36 different healthy, low-cost meals from scratch. We’re very grateful for the funding from Golding Homes. It came at the right time and means we can deliver the project to the end of the year.”