Popular West Boldon chef helps a Cleadon church to support a local foodbank
A renowned chef has teamed up with a local church to help support a South Tyneside-based foodbank.
A popular West Boldon chef has teamed up with a Cleadon chef as they look to support a foodbank in South Shields.
On the back of refurbishing its kitchen earlier this year, the All Saints Church, on Sunderland Road, is working with chefs across the borough to help the Key to Life Foodbank.
The first chef to work alongside the church with Pete Zulu, the man behind West Boldon’s The Black Horse and Fireplace Pizza at The Wheatsheaf.
The former Toy Dolls singer has worked with the church to create recipes for meals that are easily prepared - with Pete set to be videoed making the food so others can follow along at home.
Supporting Key to Life
Beverley George, a former churchwarden, has said that All Saints wanted to support Key to Life in other ways than just collecting and donating food.
She said: “We wanted to help as many people as possible and have been supporting the Key to Life Food Bank for some time.
“Rather than just collecting food to donate to the food bank, we thought we could work with them to support their users to create affordable, nourishing and tasty meals.
“So, we started talking to them and local chefs as to how that might work.”
Simple to make recipes
The Key to Life foodbank is now planning to prepare bags of necessary ingredients that users will be given so they can prepare tasty nutritious meals at home.
Pete has revealed that he is planning to create recipes using items that he knows the foodbank will be well stocked with.
He commented: “I’ve known Beverley for a while so when she explained what she wanted me to do, I said yes straight away.
“I’ve been thinking about recipes for meals and want to make them as simple as possible, but interesting, affordable, wholesome and tasty.
“I made some videos a few years ago about creating different meals with bread, so I might do something around that – a savoury bread pudding, for instance.
“I know that the foodbank is always well stocked with baguettes so I might look at something with baguettes and vegetables.”
‘Could make a huge difference in people’s live’
Marie Burnett, Poverty Prevention Team Leader at the Key Community which runs the Key to Life FoodBank, has stated that the videos could make a “huge difference” to people’s lives.
She said: “We’re really grateful to All Saints for supporting us in this way.
“We’re planning to send out links to the chef videos and print out the recipes so our users can create easy to prepare, affordable and nutritious meals.
“We’re hoping to work with the chefs in advance to put all the ingredients together in bags which we can then distribute with food parcels.
“It’s a lovely, simple idea that could make a huge difference in people’s lives – people who don’t know how to cook a healthy meal or couldn’t afford the ingredients without help.”
Other restaurants who have pledged their support to the scheme so far are Cleadon-based Romano’s and Luci’s.
If you wish to get involved, then you can contact All Saints Cleadon on: [email protected].
You can find out more about Key Community at: https://keycommunity.org.uk/.