The ThunderBlogs

We all need a little food comfort in our lives, especially if you’re unsure of where you’re next meal is going to come from, and that’s where the Renfrew/Collingwood Food Security Institute comes in.

Through their Community Kitchen located in the Collingwood Neighbourhood House (CNH), the Institute provides a place to learn about cooking healthy food—for free—and then distributes the food that is made to the community.  Volunteers engage to learn a new cooking technique in the hopes they’ll share their new skills with others, often using ingredients from the roof top garden or other local and sustainable growing practices.

Once a volunteer, Stephanie Lim, Program Coordinator, says the Community Kitchen has been around for four years and she has been leading cooking classes for two.  She said volunteers get to keep some of the food they make but most of it is donated back to the program. On Saturday mornings, for example, the Institute provides a nutritious meal to homeless people, along with a shower and more amenities provided by the CNH and Homelessness Committee.

In the kitchen, four volunteers stand around the large kitchen island chopping vegetables while Lim pours out mason jars of expired or burnt jam preserves from a year ago into the garbage.

“Botulism is silent in all its various forms,” she says. Jars are hard to find in the cluttered kitchen but necessary for the day’s workshop canning spaghetti sauce.  Aprons are hidden in a boiling pot on the counter along with the other pots, pans, plates, colanders and bowls.

Thirty pounds of tomatoes sit waiting to be scored, and then they will be blanched and peeled to make nine pints of sauce. After the tomatoes have boiled, Lim returns them to a commercial-size mixing bowl. Dousing them in cold water the tomatoes are returned to the table and all at once the volunteers grab steaming tomatoes to slip off the skins.

The volunteers represent a portion of the cultural make-up of the area. Recognizing that the Institute hopes to develop community food leadership teams and develop a sustainability food security plan based on local assets, according to their website.

But for now, everyone’s focused on learning a new skill, meeting new people, and helping out the community—one jar of sauce at a time.