Cooking to connect with the community

Hands up if you love heading out for a meal with friends, we sure do!

One of our community outing groups recently researched outing ideas involving food as they are always looking for new ideas to explore. This is how the group stumbled upon ‘Cook to Connect’.

‘Cook to Connect’ is run by a dietician from CoHealth and is hosted fortnightly at the Carlton Library. This is a social, no cost session where all experience levels are welcome. It seemed like the perfect fit for our Tuesday outing group! We headed to the other side of town and rocked up at the library very keen to roll up our sleeves, pop on some cooking safe gloves and get in amongst this wonderful initiative. It was fantastic to be able to meet so many people from different walks of life, who were all there on the day for various reasons. Food might have been the draw card but the social side certainly added to the appeal when it came time to sit down and ‘break bread’ with new found friends at the table.

This shared experience was a brilliant way to step into a new community space that the group had previously not even heard about. They were welcomed just like anyone else who had booked tickets for that day and felt like it was the perfect opportunity to showcase cooking skills that they had learnt at Bayley House.

Upon arriving, six tables were laid with ingredients and a recipe, and they all headed to the table they chose to work at. Everyone was mixed with other members of the community, and all contributed to pulling together the lunch. After the cooking everyone sat down and  enjoyed sharing the food with fellow cooks and chatting, learning about each other’s backgrounds.

The unexpected side story of the day was ending up on ABC News, who were there filming a story on this community based program. You can watch it here.

Do you know of any other community based programs we could try? Send your suggestions via email.