TORONTO COMMUNITY KITCHEN PROFILES

Latch-Key Program at Faith Community Presbyterian Church
Frugal Gourmet
Lakeshore Village Neighbourhood Association
Evangel Hall Community Kitchen
Corvette Family Resource Centre

These profiles offer just a few examples of how community kitchens can be organized. The most important thing is to find out the needs of your group and Toronto Community Kitchen Profiles

These profiles offer just a few examples of how community kitchens can be organized. The most important thing is to find out the needs of your group and to tailor the kitchen accordingly, taking ideas from a variety of sources to meet these needs.

The Latch-Key Program at Faith Community Presbyterian Church

The latch-key program is an evolving initiative of the parent-child drop-in at East York/East Toronto Family Resources. In 1996, Myra McCleave, Director of Programs at the Family Resources Centre and Rev. Robert Syme, minister of the Faith Community Church decided to try a community kitchen model to address the after school needs of local children. A needs assessment of the area had shown that family income was 27% below the Toronto norm and a seed grant was provided by the Toronto Presbytery.

Initially, the 8 to 14 year olds came after school three days a week and prepared a meal with assistance from one staff person and two volunteers from the Family Resource Centre. The church provides free use of the kitchen. Due to increasing demands from other church programs such as guides and brownies, however, the meal project is now limited to 4 to 5:30 pm on Wednesdays. Since this is not enough time to prepare a full dinner, a volunteer cook comes in the afternoon to start the meal and prepare such delights as home-made bread, bannock or other baked goods. The youth still have an opportunity to help make salads, vegetables and some desserts. They also make requests and their food preferences are taken into account. Parents are invited, many of them working poor, and as many as 40 have partaken of the drop-in meal. Extra meals are taken home by participants for their families.

Although the youth and families make small donations, the Family Resource Centre largely subsidizes the meal program, sometimes buying and freezing a whole side of beef for it. 4 of FoodShare's Good Food Boxes are delivered on Wednesdays and the fruits and vegetables contribute to what is to be made. The church sometimes makes small food donations as well.

Most of the young people are graduates of the parent-child drop-in and have continued to come to the latch-key program at the centre for after school craft and board games on days it is open. The Centre's computer is available for homework projects and for job search resumes. On Thursdays, 25 are signed up to go to the local bowling alley, with a volunteer driver, where a meal is provided for which participants pay $4.00, subsidized by the Resource Centre when necessary.

The Centre's parent-child drop-in program on Tuesday to Friday mornings also provides a small lunch. Parents prepare the fruit, cheese and crackers or often more substantial meat or pasta dishes provided. Each parent or caregiver and child has a nutritious meal for the day.

Frugal Gourmet

The Frugal Gourmet Community Kitchen has roots in the, now non-functioning People's Market which was run by the Riverdale Partners for Food. The kitchen was started over two years ago by Bev Brockest, and WoodGreen Community Centre, St. Michael's Hospital and the YWCA. At the same time Bev was also co-ordinator, with the Public Health Department, of the Cooking Healthy Together Program. Some members of the Frugal Gourmet were participants in this course as well as in the Fred Victor Mission's culturally sensitive cooking classes and FoodShare's Community Kitchen Training. They are well versed in food safety issues and possess a great variety of recipes and cooking skills.

Cooking sessions are held in the large, bright kitchen of the WoodGreen Pape Neighbourhood House and are facilitated by members of the group with staff support from Colleen Hua. The kitchen is well equipped, due to start-up funds provided at its beginning by a Toronto Food Policy grant. The four to six members originally gathered due to flyers posted in the Woodgreen area and buildings, although one is a friend from outside the neighbourhood attracted by the friendly atmosphere of the Kitchen. Rather than formal planning for the cooking sessions, which are held every second Thursday from 12 to 4 pm, a couple of the members visit in each other's homes to decide what to cook, then check with the others by phone. Each person pays $5 a month but also brings ingredients from home. Costs are worked out to be relatively equal. Everyone shares cooking and cleaning. Occasionally some catering has been done to make a little money.

Recipes are based on low cost, low fat, low salt, heart healthy food and foods that wouldn't necessarily be tried at home. The women know how to substitute and cut fat from interesting recipes. Two meals are usually made; one to eat together and one to take home. Take home food is packed in reusable foil TV dinner containers with separate compartments for different items, one container for each person in the family. One menu was salad, a hot egg dish and dessert to eat together and a fish dish with vegetables and potatoes to take home. The group has invited people in to talk about different kinds of food. For example, a session was held on typical food for the Chinese New Year and another on ethnic dishes for Black History Month. Native Indian dishes, such as Three Sisters soup, have been made.

This is an active group and members are involved in planning activities and keeping the community informed through the Neighbourhood House's newsletter. With the Woodgreen Community Centre and the South Riverdale Community Health Centre, trips have been made to pick-your-own strawberry, raspberry, blueberry and apple farms and to watch maple syrup being made. Some participate in a community garden at the Leslie Street Spit. A new children's cooking program is about to start. A second Community Kitchen called "the Veggie Pot", all vegetarian, is also held at the same location. New members are welcome to all Kitchens. For more information call Colleen Hua at 469-5211, extension 1135.

Lakeshore Village Neighbourhood Association

According to Jasmin Dooh, the prime mover for establishing a Cooking Together project in the Lakeshore Village area, "the best community development happens when people are committed to the communities in which they live". It is always more difficult when you don't have financial resources behind you but it's still very satisfying to initiate projects which help the community.

The Lakeshore Village Neighbourhood Association is very grass roots, made up of people working together to respond to needs and interests of their neighbours. The community has 865 affordable housing units. Activities change and develop according to what works and is wanted, and are seldom the same from year to year. It is critical to have volunteers to carry out the new projects. With no money for rent there is no longer office space but room has been found for a filing cabinet in one building, storage space for equipment in another. Funding comes in little bits here and there.

A Trillium grant a few years ago helped buy equipment and start two Community Kitchens. This year a one-year action grant from United Way has enabled Cooking Together to carry on three Community Kitchens. A new project in the works is to make available a Community Kitchen kit that is transportable. This mobile kit could enable other groups to pilot their own Community Kitchen workshops. Public funds such as Trillium and United Way grants are well spent helping small local groups to carry out their ideas. It is more difficult for these small groups to access funds because they are not established agencies with staff to support the funding process, yet the projects are more likely to continue, although volunteers rotate, once established in a community.

Community Kitchens are benefiting the community in several ways. People who may not otherwise have the resources are enjoying good, healthy food with the opportunity to try interesting recipes and new, multicultural foods. Participants come away with more food than they could make at home. Neighbours enjoy socializing together.

When the Kitchens started, a steering committee of participants and facilitators met every month to discuss issues. Now that some of the problems have been solved, full meetings are quarterly or when needed. Jasmin, as the main organizer, meets monthly with the leaders. A drop-in Community Kitchen in the Robert Cooke Co-op building has evolved into a regular group of 5 or 6, but flyers are inviting more participants. The volunteer facilitator does some of the basic shopping herself and will sometimes start a dish at home, but everything else is divided up. This group eats together and also cooks food to bring home. Lessons have been learned such as having a locked cupboard for equipment and supplies, since the kitchen is in the building's party room and items have gone missing in the past.

The second group meets in a senior's building managed by Parks and Recreation and though the kitchen space is free, meeting times must be co-ordinated with other programs. A lesson learned here is that looking after little children while cooking, is too much responsibility with computers and other costly equipment in the building. The group, now dwindled to about four, is going through changes and welcomes new members. Neither Kitchen has formal planning sessions, but both meet twice a month to cook, decide on recipes and plan for the next session. Recipes brought from home or planned around store specials, aim at not only heart healthy, low fat, low cost food, but emphasize really good taste and quality. Both groups have a standard fee of $3.00 per session but are flexible if someone is short of money. Ingredients can be brought from home instead of paying.

A graduate of Lakeshore Collegiate's excellent food preparation course, who lives in the Co-op, along with the cook at the neighbourhood Metro Daycare Centre are leading the third project, a youth cooking group, held in the school's kitchen. This is the second year for this group which meets once a week for six weeks. For $3 each, the young people prepare and eat a meal together, taking home whatever is left and planning for next week's feast.

A new Saturday morning cooking workshop is in the planning stages, where soups, salads, baking and one dish meals will be made. Community cooking is just one of the activities at Lakeshore Village. When buses can be booked for low cost, trips are made for apple picking, with the children participating in hay rides and activities on the farm. Jam making and Easter chocolate treats are other group projects as well as cake decorating, baking and barbequing.

Evangel Hall Community Kitchen

The spacious, white painted kitchen on the 2nd floor of Queen Street West's Evangel Hall, decorated by brightly painted dishes on top of the cupboards, is well equipped with 3 stoves, a microwave, a dishwasher, many cupboards, enormous pots and pans, a large work table in the centre of the kitchen and a huge eating table with seating for at least 25 or 30 and a pot of geraniums for colour. The room is used for many activities at Evangel Hall, including community suppers and snacks for drop-in street people, a food pantry, sewing, quilting and craft groups, pie making and other demonstrations.

A food access grant a few years ago, helped initiate the Community Kitchen, started by Helen Smith who now supplies staff support for Carol, a volunteer facilitator and participant in Evangel Hall's programs, who has recently graduated from a hospitality training course. The 6 women and 2 men, usually present every Monday afternoon from 2 to 4 p.m., are sometimes joined by 5 or 6 members from Streetlight, a task force initiative which provides support services for prostitutes. New participants are welcome and the Kitchen has been advertised in the Queen West Health Centre, Scadding Court, LINK and housing units in the area. Most current members attend other Evangel Hall activities, one for over 40 years, and the atmosphere is social and congenial. The Kitchen has been running, with breaks, for about four years. Each person pays a loonie per week or $4 a month, subsidized by Evangel Hall when costs are higher or due to inability to pay. Donations from the food pantry are often used. Two dishes are made each week, one vegetarian, and participants bring containers to take them home.

The members have evolved a set of experience-proven rules, including "no nasty comments about another's cooking", and "we will co-operate, following the leader for that day". Others are: "people must participate in order to take food home, we will all help clean up and total amounts will be divided up according to households". Planning is done together after cooking each week and member preferences are taken into account. Since one person is diabetic and another has heart problems, particular attention is paid to low fat, low salt and low sugar. For this reason the Flemingdon Health Centre's Wellness Cookbook is often used. Shopping is usually done by the facilitator. Hearty, nutritious, multicultural meals, not usually tried at home, are made, such as stuffed peppers and borscht, lemon chicken and fried rice.

Corvette Family Resource Centre

Located in Corvette Public School in Scarborough, this Community Kitchen was started by Myrtle Henry, the Growing Healthy Together Coordinator at the Family Resource Centre, and current members are six mothers from the parent-child drop-in program. Though Myrtle is available for advice and sometimes attends the planning, the group operates on its own without a facilitator. The Dellcrest-Hincks Kraft Fund provided start-up funds for cooking equipment and some food staples.

Due to difficulty finding a babysitter for the several young children in the daytime, the group decided to cook in the evening. The nearby church where cooking sessions were held limited them to one and a half hours, which only gave time to make a quickly put together, one dish meal to take home. Myrtle has now successfully negotiated the use of the Corvette school kitchen once a month in the evening with a 3 hour time limit. Knowing that the teachers are overburdened and do not want responsibility for looking after their supplies, plans are being made to store equipment and staples in a plastic container in the Resource Centre, also located in the school. The women are hoping to try perhaps three meals on cooking nights and experiment with interesting recipes they probably wouldn't do at home. At the monthly planning session, recipes are decided on and two people designated to shop. Expenses are divided equally and have averaged $6 a person so far. A rotating work plan is being discussed so that each person comes to the cooking session knowing just what her tasks will be, to prevent confusion and promote a more efficient use of time. Being part of a "Growing Healthy Together" program and at least one having attended a Cooking Healthy Together workshop, the group is well aware of nutritional needs.

Community Kitchen members took part in a Food-Health Fair, sponsored by the Growing Healthy Together Program, designed to reach families in the Corvette school in need of nutrition and health information and promote awareness of resources such as the Community Kitchen and the Baby Food Making Club. The women cooked a sample menu, along with a questions answered by a public health nurse and a demonstration by FoodShare's baby food making coordinator. to tailor the kitchen accordingly, taking ideas from a variety of sources to meet these needs.