We had a chat with Barnet Homes’ resident, Jill to find out more about her favourite pastime
I’ve lived on the Grahame Park estate with my 17-year-old son for the past 12 years. I took early retirement because of my arthritis, after that I decided to help look after my grandson (my daughter’s son) until he started school. Then I found myself with some free time, so I signed up for activities that were taking place on the estate.
I started going to the free healthy eating classes run by the Bread n Butter Project back in 2018 and have been a regular ever since. They have a kitchen in the community hall on the estate and once we’ve finished the cooking session we all sit down and eat our meals together, which is so nice. I’ve really enjoyed meeting new people, learning a lot of recipes, and working at my own pace.
I’ve cooked so many new foods with ingredients that I wouldn’t have otherwise bought or tried like seasonal pumpkin and tinned jackfruit; they showed us how to use them with simple to follow recipes that were so delicious!
Sometimes the arthritis in my hands has been really bad and I couldn’t chop fruit and vegetables, which meant I was missing out on healthy eating. The teacher encouraged me to buy the small bags of ready cut foods, so I could eat well and the smaller portion bag sizes meant there was no food waste – that’s important to me because I’m a single mother on a tight budget.
I have also learnt how to make my food go further by freezing it, it’s taken out for another day, and now very little is ever thrown away.
During the pandemic in person classes were cancelled and we switched to online classes which was fantastic for me because I found the loneliness difficult.
We’re back to in person classes now. This month is cultural cooking, I’ve learned how to make risotto, which I’d never attempted before and I’ll be learning how to make Pakistani Biryani rice this week- my son loves spicy food so he can’t wait to try it. Before I started these classes he used to moan that I cooked the same food all the time and now I’m doing all types of cooking he takes a real interest and looks forward to our dinners together.