Join the party. Can you help create a Leith picnic blanket specially designed to celebrate the most culturally diverse part of Edinburgh?
Continue reading “Make a picnic blanket for Leith”Category: Food
Rapid response: social enterprise shows the way
Nurses and doctors working flat out in intensive care units do not have time to plan or cook healthy meals. They barely have time to eat.
It’s one of the startling facts galvanising an extraordinary social enterprise. National governments could learn from grassroots innovation. At local community levels there is a rapid response to the urgent needs not just created but also exposed by Covid19.
Continue reading “Rapid response: social enterprise shows the way”Cooking, eating and sharing food – a virtual feast from a safe distance
Onions sizzle in the pan. When Rana adds her mix of whole spices a tantalising aroma fills the hall and a small crowd gathers round the table.
Continue reading “Cooking, eating and sharing food – a virtual feast from a safe distance”Feeding the 1000 ‘ a food waste’ feast
So there is such a thing as a free lunch! On Sunday 6 May Changeworks sets out to feed a thousand people in Leith with food that would otherwise go to waste.
Continue reading “Feeding the 1000 ‘ a food waste’ feast”Making and breaking bread (without Bake Off)
How to make bread? Here’s a long overdue Friday food story to share a basic recipe which produces good, tasty loaves. But first a confession:
Continue reading “Making and breaking bread (without Bake Off)”Feeding community spirit in Leith
Food features in many of the stories on the Wall of Success. But this week we pay tribute to two local enterprises that combine home cooking with great community spirit – and more than a pinch of entrepreneurial spice. Welcome to Punjabi Junction and the World Kitchen in Leith.
Perhaps we should begin with a disclaimer. Leith Open Space is privileged to be among the founder members of the World Kitchen in Leith (WKiL), a voluntary group which launched with a multicultural spread during summer thunderstorms in the Leith Festival of 2009. Punjabi Junction began life a little more formally (or at least undercover) in 2010 as Punjab’n De Rasoi in the community cafe near the foot of Leith Walk.
The opening of the cafe was the fulfillment of years of dedicated work for Trishna Singh and Sikh Sanjog. As she commented when we first visited the cafe seven years years ago, ‘The day that sign went up was when I realised we had finally done it. It is a huge achievement for the women of our community.” [See story HERE]
There are clear differences between these two warmhearted projects. The women of Punjabi Junction run a social enterprise which means meeting the daily challenge of sustaining a viable small business in a harsh economic climate. At the Side by Side Gathering in December 2016, Trishna Singh underlined the need for investment funding to support such innovative projects which enrich local life while developing skills and opportunities.
In contrast, the members of World Kitchen in Leith are part of an informal voluntary venture, catering at local events, which means sharing skills and recipes in their spare time – while also meeting demands of the day job.
working, preparing multicultural brunch in Out of the Blue kitchen –
Rooted in community
Yet both WKiL and Punjabi Junction are founded on a firm belief in the importance of community and that also has deep roots in the cultural diversity of Leith. And both provide opportunities for developing skills and confidence. (Note, below, the shared priorities for collaborative working.)
The idea for World Kitchen in Leith beganwith Gurmit Singh, another active member of the Sikh community in Leith who was then a member of Leith Festival Programming Committee. Keen to promote community integration, Gurmit sent an invitation to every minority ethnic community group he could think of inviting them to take part in a cookery demonstration to celebrate their culture.
First to respond was Mridu Thanki, a keen vegetarian cook in the Hindu tradition, working on her first cookery book (Mridu has moved to live in London but still keeps in touch). Leith Open Space met Gurmit and Mridu in Out of the Blue to write their story for our blog…and somehow ended up joining the WKiL team!
“Food can be a creative art as well as a necessity of life. But it is also a social event. Food not only brings pleasure, it brings people together.’ Mridu Thanki.
Punjabi Junction is open Monday 12 pm to 5.45pm (cookery classes 6pm-8pm), and Tuesday – Saturday 12-10pm [See HERE for new menu]
World Kitchen in Leith produces imaginative multicultural menus, catering for local events and organisations.
For more about Side by Side, The Gathering see Facebook.com/SBSGathering
1. Punjabi Junction is run by Sikh Sanjog for the community. Our vision is to inspire and empower Sikh and other Minority Ethnic women to advance their own life opportunities, through the building of skills, confidence and social inclusion.
2. Since 2010 the social enterprise community care has generated jobs for over 150 women from Sikh and other ethnic and white Scottish backgrounds. We workalongside Learn Direct/Remploy/Intowork/SCVO/ and Edinburgh Community Food
3: Celebrating South Asian-Chinese heritage – hosted MECCOP’s Exhibition in Punjabi Junction Cafe an inspiring intergenerational oral history connecting families and creating links with wider community
Priorities for future:
1. Opportunity for women working together
2. Need for social investment fund
1: Cookery demonstrations for a Sheltered Housing collaborative memory project in North Edinburgh
2: Catering for 200 people at Elrec’s multicultural eco celebration as part of Communities For Conservation project 2017
3: Being Human Festival 2016 – planning and providing a meal for an event exploring issues of food, faith, identity and taboos
Priorities for future
1. Celebrate cultural diversity with fun, through cooking and sharing food
2. Collaborate with other community groups for covered market in Leith
Junction contributed delicious pakoras to the Open Space community discussion
events
A plate full of memories
Alice had never eaten lamb before she came to Scotland. In the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe she had grown up learning that it was a forbidden food, ‘I think it comes down to the ‘lamb of God” she says, ‘But then in Scotland everyone around me was eating lamb… and I ended up eating it too!’
Food is often highly personal. What we eat can say a great deal about who we are, and what we believe in. So when World Kitchen in Leith members took part in Festival of Humanities they found themselves sharing much more than recipes.
Continue reading “A plate full of memories”Faith and food taboos: what can we cook?
How does converting from one religious faith to another (or none) change family relationships? What happens to individual sense of identity and belonging? And how does that affect simple choices in everyday life?
Continue reading “Faith and food taboos: what can we cook?”Share your secrets of success at The Gathering
What does success look like? How does it feel and taste? Who makes it happen? How long does it last? Maybe you have some or all of the answers. If so we’d love you to come and share the secrets of success at The Gathering.
Continue reading “Share your secrets of success at The Gathering”Lets Eat This: a tasty ‘foodwaste’ challenge
What have you got left over in your fridge? No, we’re not just being nosey, this is a creative question for the Lets Eat This ‘food waste extravaganza’ challenge, a really imaginative and generous event organised by the Himalayan Centre for Arts and Culture with our equally enterprising colleagues at the World Kitchen in Leith.
Continue reading “Lets Eat This: a tasty ‘foodwaste’ challenge”