It’s been a busy summer at Westbank Community Health and Care’s Community Cookery School at Exminster, near Exeter. A baking one too, in more ways than one!

Our community teaching kitchen is now in its second year, and it continues to evolve, helping children and adults gain knowledge, skills and confidence in cooking while learning to produce healthy, cost-effective meals. 

In recent months, we’ve enjoyed seeing new fledgling cooks using our excellent facilities, and we’ve launched several new free-to-attend workshops to support even more individuals, families and community groups. We couldn’t do any of this without the help of our fantastic volunteers.

Our Family Baking Sessions have been a big hit over the school summer holidays. For a modest fee, we provided the facilities and all the ingredients for one adult and up to two children per family to learn how to make chocolate muffins, pizza and cookies, either to eat then and there, or take home to share and enjoy later. There were some very aromatic smells wafting along the corridors at Westbank after those sessions.

Earlier this year, we launched our community Cook and Lunch sessions, which have proved popular and are a wonderful way to socialise as well as cook. These sessions, which continue most Fridays in September and October, are open to everyone, in particular, to people who feel lonely or socially isolated, those with caring responsibilities, families with young children, teenagers aged 14-18, and anyone struggling with the cost of living. Two people share a work station, and together the group prepares a delicious lunch, which everyone is invited to stay and enjoy in our newly refurbished Community Hub. All ingredients are provided, and any leftover food can be taken home. We suggest a donation of £5 - £10 per session to help us cover our costs. Donations also enable us to continue to provide these and similar services to support more people in our community.

We’re delighted that the supermarket chain Lidl has given us £5,000 to fund a series of cookery workshops for Young Carers. We plan to provide twelve sessions in total, with eight young carers in attendance at each one and some weeks allocated for young people who are homeschooled. We have already held several cooking sessions for Young Carers, in which we made macaroni cheese, garlic bread and raspberry and white chocolate muffins. Some participants are returning because they enjoyed it so much and asked to come back again.

We are booking now for our Baby Weaning Workshops, which restart in September, for new mums and their little ones.  Check our website for dates of all our upcoming courses. westbank.org.uk/community-cookery-school

This article was first published in The Moorlander.