A recipe for success: Building confidence and community in Ballarat

At our Ballarat Community Food Centre, budding chefs are cooking up a community where everyone is welcome. And a whole lot of pizza.

We arrive at the Ballarat Community Food Centre to the smell of freshly made dough and chatter about whether pineapple belongs on a pizza (the anti-pineapple camp is heavily outnumbered). Thankfully, there are plenty of other toppings prepped and ready to pile on our pizzas.

It’s all part of our new community cooking program that provides practical cooking skills across four hands-on cooking sessions. For many of the participants here today, the classes offer much more than simply learning new recipes. They’re an opportunity to build confidence, community and a place to belong.

“For me, the social element has been the biggest thing,” Rachel* shared. “I don’t know a lot of people in Ballarat, so it can be quite lonely. To come here each week and get to interact with new people has been the highlight of my week.”

On the menu this week: homemade pizzas and apple crumble. Plus, oat and raisin cookies baked specially for the CFC’s community cafe. Over the month, the cooks also had the chance to step outside their comfort zones and broaden their culinary horizons.

“I’ve loved it,” shared Sharon*. “I love cooking, but I’ve made things I usually wouldn’t have made before, like sushi. I can’t wait to recreate the recipes at home.”

Mastering cooking skills is even more essential when every dollar needs to go that little bit further. New national research from ACOSS found that 95% of people on income support payments are struggling to cover grocery costs, with three in four cutting back on food or going without.

It’s a situation that Julie, a mum of three, feels deeply. “When you’re on Centrelink payments, it’s normal to have to get creative to get the most out of your money,” she says.

For Julie, the biggest highlight of the course was discovering new ways to scale up recipes to help make meals and her budget stretch. “With the current cost-of-living crisis, it’s becoming harder to make ends meet so this has taught me how I can use basic ingredients and make them go further,” she says. “The whole experience has been really valuable.”

For Jess*, who is living with the effects of a stroke, cooking has become more challenging than it once was, but the hands-on approach of these classes has made the recipes easier to follow and recreate at home.

“Since having a stroke, cooking has become more difficult, especially living on my own. Even though I love cooking, I easily forget things, but actually the okonomiyaki recipe is the one recipe I keep coming back to.”

With the pizzas and pudding now out of the oven, everyone gathers around a table. We sit down and share the meal – and a whole lot more about our lives outside of the kitchen. It’s the fourth and final session for this class, so the chefs are each presented with a recipe book, a certificate, and a hamper filled with the ingredients they’ll need to continue cooking and building on their new skills at home.

“[This course is] more than just cooking,” says Rachel. “It’s helped me learn some great technical skills, but it’s also helped me meet people in the community and made me feel like I belong… The only downside is four weeks wasn’t long enough!”

*Some names have been changed.

Interested in our community cooking program?

Whist we don’t have any dates locked in just yet, if you are wanting to join our next cooking class program please reach out to the Ballarat Community Food Centre team.