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Making meals, making memories
The kitchen is often considered the heart of the home, where meals are prepared, stories are shared, and connections are strengthened. It serves as a focal point in family life and is where nourishment and bonding take place.
Here at the Centre for Hunger Relief, our Community Kitchen has been just that for Chef Grant Longman who has been at the helm for 10 years and together with an army of volunteers has helped to produce more than half a million meals since its inception in April 2015. Many happy and fun memories have been made here for the thousands of individual and corporate volunteers who have walked through the Community Kitchen Doors since they opened.
Whether strengthening bonds during corporate challenges, or simply like-minded individuals wanting to make a little bit of a difference, our Community Kitchen has been a hive of activity each and every day with volunteers prepping, chopping, cooking and packaging meals that were made primarily from ingredients that were saved from landfill and donated.
Each Monday was like the ultimate Mystery Box challenge, or in his case, mystery pallet for Chef Grant who would have an array of commercial quantity ingredients from which he would create a healthy and nutritious meal. Sometimes this would mean that a lasagne would have a Mexican twist – with beans – or that his mushroom sauce was made from gourmet quality exotic mushrooms – not your standard white cup mushrooms – because that’s what was donated. From pizzas, to curry, various pasta dishes, soups, and even Patagonian toothfish – Chef Grant has cooked it all over the past 10 years.
Over the years Chef Grant has had some ‘out-of-the-box’ ingredients to play with including vegan Cream, Tri-coloured Quinoa Seeds and lobster. Coincidently, these ingredients also produced some of his most memorable and favourite meals including slow cooked lamb shoulder with tri coloured quinoa and black barley, Green Thai chicken curry made with vegan cream and a delicious lobster mornay.
Chef Grant who handed over the mixing spoon to Melissa D’avoine this May, said that working in the Community Kitchen for the last ten years have been some of the most rewarding of his entire career and that he feels privileged to have been a small part of the history of Foodbank and the community kitchen.
Over the years our Community Kitchen has gone from strength to strength with many corporate volunteers returning because they love the impact, they can make in just a day. Thank you, Chef Grant, for your dedication, vision and create flair. We wish you all the best with your next adventure.