Charity City Catering aims to make a ‘tangible difference’ in people’s lives by serving School Food Plan and Food for Life compliant meals in over 40 of Southampton schools. They deliver more than 8,700 hot lunches to children every day during term time.
In 2020, City Catering Southampton launched the Cooking at Home project to ‘support and inspire’ families at risk of food insecurity to cook healthy, low cost and enjoyable meals at home. Since the summer of 2020, the charity has distributed over 14,300 Cooking at Home boxes to Southampton families.
The boxes will contain all the ingredients to make four simple, tasty, easy to cook and energy efficient recipes. One Pot Veggie and Cheesy pasta; One Pot Tomato, Chickpea and Orzo; Pan-fried Brie, Tomato and Onion Toasties; Bean and Veggie Goulash Style Soup.
City Catering Southampton spoke to their suppliers Harvest Fine Foods and Bidfood to ask them if they would consider working alongside the charity to co-fund the Cooking at Home boxes for a Christmas distribution.
Gary McMahon, chief executive at City Catering Southampton, said: “I’m blown away by to things both related to the speed of responses. Our suppliers have blown me away by the speed and sincere enthusiasm at which they said ‘yes’ to the idea. I’m seriously blown away and concerned at the speed with which the food parcels were allocated – indicating to me a huge unmet need for support by our most vulnerable families.”
City Catering Southampton has a range of recipes on their website and cook-along-videos on their YouTube channel for anyone to access.