Help for Foodbanks

Are you a Food Bank operator?

We have great recipes and resources for you and your clients

We can help you to assist your clients to eat well and spend less
This site and all the recipes and resources on it are FREE.
You can help us keep it that way by buying our books as gifts, putting copies in your church libraries or recommending them to friends

When using the information on the site we ask that you abide by the following guidelines:

When you print off recipes you must credit us and include our logo and website details
You may NOT charge for anything you have taken from our site – we don’t think you would anyway, but just thought we’d mention it
Please don’t reproduce recipes to distribute to large groups.
If you want to include a particular recipe to insert in a bulk delivery of food parcels or leaflets, please contact us first to discuss – it’s usually not a problem but we need to protect our copyright or we’ll be in trouble with the publishers.
We may also be able to suggest other useful material or images.
You may print individual recipes to give to individuals or households up to a maximum of 5 recipes
Sorry we cannot provide free cookery books as we have to buy them from the publishers. We don’t get free copies that we can give away

What cooking skills do your clients have?

Low Skill:

These clients have very few skills in the kitchen and little idea about nutrition. We might like to give them lots of fresh vegetables and other healthy ingredients as they are a “good choice” – if the client can cook or won’t eat those foods we haven’t helped them at all and they’ll still be hungry.

Help them by supplying foods that are nourishing but require little or no preparation:
Canned foods
Fresh or canned Fruit
Cereals – weetbix, ricies, cornflakes
Crackers
Bread and spreads

• Recommend basic recipes – simple mince dishes like burger patties or savoury mince, one pan meals, recipes based on instant noodles and baked beans.

• Aim for a hot meal that has some nutritional value, is less expensive than take aways, but is easy to prepare, “stepping stones” towards preparing what we might call proper meals. They can fill in the gaps with the bread, cereal, fruit and other snacks

You could try one of these ideas:

• Some food banks run a weekly cooking class for food parcel recipients, teaching them basic recipes like scones, vegetable soup, a basic mince or rice dish.

• One group tagged the cooking session onto the end of their mainly music classes and found the mums, not all of whom were needy, really enjoyed it, the sessions need to be well thought out with a fair bit of advance prep so they don’t take too long, but you can make a great impression by showing someone and easy dish, letting them taste it then providing the recipe.

• Some groups make subsequent food parcels conditional on attending a cooking workshop. Graduates of a certain number of classes receive a cookery book at a graduation dinner – put on for their families.

• Some groups send parcels with a “demonstrator” who demonstrates in the clients home, how to make a meal using some of the ingredients that may be less familiar to the client – that might be a simple soup, or pizza base or homemade burger.

These recipes require little in the way of skills, equipment or ingredients:

Fried Rice
Chilli bean and potato bake
Omelettes

Basic or average skill:

These clients can be introduced to more economical ways of preparing meals that they already make or buy.

• Teach them techniques to make their ingredients go further and reduce dependence on ready prepared foods.

• Encourage them to use our “shop smart” techniques and eat in season to save money.

Our super stretcher recipes can be helpful here as can the section on cooking with pulses and beans

Red lentil bolognaise
Chunky sausage and bean bake
One pan peanut chicken and rice

Skilled:

Get them motivated, provide them with the tools to feed their household and give them some resources and goals. Our recipes are all inexpensive but the super stretcher recipes could be a great asset to these clients

• Select recipes that are interesting enough that they are inspired to stick to their budget.

• Supply them with staples like flour, vegetables, sauces and seasonings so they can make “proper” food will help them retain their dignity

• Influence their shopping so they shop better – i.e. show them around a local discount butcher and fruit and a good veggie shop the compare prices at their usual shop.

• Give them our top 10 money saving tips as a print out to stick to the fridge

• Help them choose healthy inexpensive recipes and snacks will save them money

Super stretcher sausage carbonnara
One pan pork and peanut rice
Magic chicken pies