River Cottage support for youth cooking and HALFF

The sessions, also funded by the Gibbons Family Trust and Devon Community Foundation, provide vital hands-on cooking experience for the youngsters aged 7-16 years, and everyone gets to sit down together and enjoy the main meal and pudding they have prepared.

“We choose dishes that will appeal to the young people as well as introduce new ingredients. Our cooks work with the group to follow the recipes and prepare the meals” said Project Co-ordinator Hannah Newman. “It can be a great confidence boost to see the results of your hard work being eaten, the feedback is usually very positive with plates scraped clean!” These sessions also really help the young people to develop other essential life skills.

River Cottage also presented an ice-cream maker to HALFF, for use across all their projects and to enable the charity to offer some healthier options for iced treats from their shop The Food Hub in South Street, Axminster.

Charity Director Tiggy Parry said “we are grateful for the continued support of River Cottage and thrilled with this new piece of equipment. Our homemade healthy ready meals are already very popular and to be able to homemade ice cream alongside these at the shop this summer will be very exciting.”

To try out the ice-cream maker Gelf Alderson, Head Chef at River Cottage, visited the Millwey youth groups and led a session creating lovely iced treats with the youngsters.

‘We are really happy to continue supporting HALFF in their brilliant work within the Axminster community and in particular with the Millwey Youth Group. I have joined a couple of youth club sessions and love cooking with the gang there, using local, seasonal produce from the HALFF store and coming up with new recipes for them to try. We hope the donations of the ice cream maker and money towards future cookery sessions this year will further strengthen and build on HALFF’s achievements.’ Gelf Alderson.

For more information on HALFF’s projects, including cooking courses and demo’s for parents, carers, people suffering from heart disease or diabetes and anyone cooking for one please visit their website or connect with on facebook.