FoodCycle

Tonight’s meal at FoodCycle Walker will be the last meal served there for the foreseeable future. The warning signs were on the wall when the food delivery was only cauliflowers and salad. There isn’t much surplus food going around at the moment. Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe that means there is less waste but I think that’s unlikely. We always have surplus food. Having less surplus food means people are buying more and more than they need and it is causing people without the privilege to live more than day to day to suffer. Anyway…

Thank you so much to everyone who showed up tonight to make a nutritious takeaway meal for the community in Walker. It was a tall order to create a meal out of cauliflower and salad but with a little help from the pay what you feel foodbank in the community centre and our saved staples Louise had the great idea to make a vegetable curry with rice. We were soon joined by Emily and created a chopping station to make sure we could have a meal ready to be collected by the time we usually put out a starter!

We were soon joined by a FoodCycle veteran, Dom. Dom works with food everyday and is an invaluable font of knowledge. He taught the team how to create a curry paste using ingredients we had in storage. We were then joined my Will, Elliot and Rob. Rob joined in the cooking while I went on a shopping trip with Will and Elliot to get some dessert because I have never heard of a cauliflower dessert. Although, googling it, turns out you can make cinnamon cauliflower gnocchi which doesn’t sound too bad. At Aldi Elliot and Will picked out a selection of swiss rolls to give out with our curry and rice. While paying for them I realised I didn’t have my card with me and had to sheepishly ask Elliot to buy me 5 swiss rolls, I could have ran off with 5 free swiss rolls, which would have been a pretty elaborate scam just to pocket some pastry.

Meanwhile, back at the community centre the few guests who had came were working on moving some books out of the back room to the foyer - there plan was to create a non contact library for people in the area to use. It seemed to happen so suddenly but everyone was helping out, a real community spirit. Back in the kitchen the cooking team were tasting their creation.

Considering what they had to work with, the cooking team had made an amazing meal. We started boxing up. We had no boxes. We borrowed some boxes from the community centre. We continued boxing up.

We then started serving. We served the guests that had been waiting in the community centre while cleaning the kitchen. Emily helped my collect guests contact information so we can keep them up to date with what is happening at FoodCycle in these uncertain times.

And then it was quiet.

We didn’t know if anyone else was coming but we didn’t want to close without serving everyone who needed it. Emily and I decided to wait it out until 7 to make sure everyone was served. There was one guest who came slightly later. It was his first time there and was expecting a community meal so we had to explain the situation and fill his boots with curry.

Emily and I had a mountain of curry to wait with and it wasn’t long until we began to eat it ourselves. We spoke of ways to ensure we were at least 2 meters away from people at all times and began to reminiscence about the time in the distant past where we were allowed to go outside.

Then we heard the familiar tune of the ice cream man.

What a time to be an ice cream man.

I love you.