Over the past few months, we’ve been working with a wonderful group of people in Portobello to develop a community meal at Bellfield. We wanted to bring people from the local community together around a free, nutritious hot meal. A big thank you to the Action Porty team for bringing us on board for the project. It was a real pleasure to work with the group and watch the idea develop from those first conversations into three fully booked community meals.
We began with a cooking class in our kitchen, designed to give the group some essential skills and techniques to improve their cooking and build confidence.
When you’re putting on a meal for your community, good food matters. If it isn’t tasty, people simply won’t come back! We worked on practical skills, techniques and the things that make food enjoyable when you’re cooking for a group. We then agreed to support the group with three meals, helping them develop the skills and confidence to plan, cook and host them themselves.
Before the first two meals, we had planning sessions where we talked through how everything would work and, importantly, gave the group the chance to make the decisions and plan the menus. There was plenty to think about. Would they cater for different dietary requirements? How many menu options would they have? Who would do the washing up? Would the focus be on healthy and sustainable food, or simply on bringing people together? Would alcohol be allowed? And could children come along?
The group decided on two courses followed by tea and coffee, with meals offered on a donation basis and a limited number of places available. The meals would run on Sundays from 5–7pm, with preparation starting at 2pm. Children were welcome, but alcohol wasn’t permitted.
We also provided the necessary hygiene oversight to get things started, teaching the group some of the basics of food hygiene and how to keep everyone safe while meeting the relevant requirements.
The project didn’t quite go according to plan for Kirsty, who was running it for us. She’d had a bike accident at the start of summer and managed to break one wrist and damage the other — not exactly ideal when you’re supposed to be helping people cook!
But we persevered. For the first meal, Pawel came along to give us an extra pair of hands. We helped with the cooking and kept things moving, while the group got stuck in. After that first meal, we were able to step back and take on more of an overseeing role, giving the group the space to lead the meals themselves. And they were very good indeed. It was brilliant to watch their skills and confidence grow as the project went on.
So, a big thank you to the group for bearing with Kirsty’s wrists along the way!
For the first meal, we loaded up our cargo bike with equipment and some ingredients and headed from Craigmillar to Portobello. It was the furthest trip our little cargo bike had ever made! The potholes made things rather exciting, and after a full day helping with the meal, we were very grateful for the battery when it came to the big uphill journey home. Our cargo bike usually sticks to trips around Craigmillar, with a bike delivery company helping us deliver our catering elsewhere, so this was a bit of an adventure for it. We brought lots of equipment to help get things started, but it was lovely to see the group gradually gathering equipment of their own too. Slowly, the project was becoming theirs. And it wasn’t just equipment they brought. One of the participants brought produce from her allotment to use in the meals. By the final meal, all of the plums for the pudding had come from her allotment. The pudding was a plum compote with mascarpone cream and toasted pastries, using pastries that were left over from Lidl. Root Down also deserves a shout-out as they donated some of their lovely vegetables to the project.
There was another thing this group were particularly good at: cleaning! Usually, getting everyone involved in washing up and cleaning down can be one of the challenges of putting on a community meal. Not this group. They were all over it. The kitchen was cleaned, everything was put away and everyone mucked in. It might not be the most glamorous part of putting on a meal, but it is a big part of it. It takes a whole team to make a community meal happen. There’s the menu planning, shopping, preparation and cooking, but also arranging the room, laying the tables, serving, clearing up and washing up. Everyone has a part to play.
The middle meal was a particular highlight. The sun was shining, so we took the meal outside and enjoyed it in the garden. There was something rather lovely about seeing everyone sitting around tables, eating together and enjoying the sunshine. And every single meal was fully booked. It’s been a real pleasure to watch this group take an idea and turn it into something tangible for their community. They started with a cooking class and a plan, and finished with three fully booked meals and a growing confidence in their ability to bring people together through food. What a delightful group of people — and what a lot they achieved.
We hope more people in Portobello get involved, that the group keeps the meals going, and that even more people get the chance to connect over cooking and eating together.
If you’d like to get involved with the community meals in Portobello, you can get in touch with the team at communitymeals@actionporty.com.
And if you’d like to help us with our community meals, events and projects, we’d love to hear from you at hello@edinburghfoodsocial.org. If you’re looking to do something similar in your own community, get in touch to find out how we can help make your project a success.
