Ladywood café – Marie

“It’s absolutely fantastic to come here. It’s so welcoming.”
Marie

Marie has volunteered at our Ladywood Café for around a year after being welcomed in whilst passing through the Ladywood Community Centre. She has no dependants or ties and offered her help with the boutique.

She says, running the cafe and cooking food for the public is a difficult job with lots of regulation involved. We are all in a community and we all need to work together if we want to get things done. It requires organisation. Supporting each other is a strong value for Marie who says even if people have no money, they are made to feel welcome to eat here in exchange for their help.

The café gives people a place to go despite their issues such as isolation and depression, something that Marie appreciates a lot. There are good days and bad days.

The café is open Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 12 – 2pm and some have asked her why the café isn’t open throughout the week.

Marie has a sense of meaning and purpose since taking up her role at the
café and enjoys meeting the people that come in to eat including those most vulnerable such as women with babies and the elderly. She is especially keen to give her time to the elderly who are more vulnerable and prone to becoming isolated and lonely. She is drawn to give them company and help build up their trust. She wants to help where she can including taking shopping home for them.

Marie is inspired by the people who work at the café. Ann, the volunteer coordinator for the Real Junk Food Project Birmingham, has been a real inspiration for her as Marie has seen how much Ann manages in her diverse role with the project.

We want to thank Marie for her work as a volunteer and her time to speak to us.

Working With Waitrose At Hobs Moat

The Real Junk Food Project Birmingham would like to say a huge THANK YOU to

in Solihull for partnering with us and supporting our Hobs Moat Community Café and Food Boutique, which we launched in May.

Our dedicated volunteers collect items that Waitrose can no longer sell, and deliver them to our Hobs Moat community café. Anything that can’t be used by the kitchen goes to the boutique for
customers to take home, or to our Sharehouse in Winson Green. In this way nothing is wasted as TRJFPBrum’s motto is #feedbelliesnotbins!

Anyone is welcome to eat or shop with us, we just ask for a donation of cash, time, or skills on a Pay-As-You-Feel (PAYF) basis. This makes for a fantastic welcoming environment, breaking down barriers for all members of the Hobs Moat community to attend and get involved.

The Hobs Moat Café and Food Boutique run weekly every Thursday 12pm-2pm at St Mary’s church hall. You can download and print off posters and fliers here:

Hobs Moat Poster

Hobs Moat Flier

For more details about this, or the many other venues run each week by The Real Junk Food Project Birmingham, please check out the venues page on our website trjfpbrum.com/venues.

We’re still happy for you to have nappies – and baby milk too!

Hello all!

We’ve had a great response to our nappy pant surplus. Lots of people have requested them by email (see details below for what we have and how to get some), but if you haven’t been in touch and would like some (or would like more!) we still have plenty left!

We also have quite a bit of baby milk (formula), if that’s something else you need, and baby wipes too (though not masses and masses of those).

The nappy pants/pull-ups, milk and wipes are at our Sharehouse in Winson Green.

They are sample packs of two Pampers Premium Active Fit Nappy Pants per pack. These are pretty pricey in the shops. We’re asking for donations of just £1 per 7 sample packs (14 nappies), with no restrictions (until they’re all gone!) on how many packs you can take.

We’ve already passed lots on to local charities, women’s shelters and hospitals, but we have plenty left for the general public, so please feel free to forward this information onto anyone this could help.

We only have size 4 (8-14kg) and size 5 (11-18kg) available, and we don’t anticipate getting any other sizes, so please check that this is the correct size for your needs.

The baby milk we have is lots of different ages, stages and brands, so please specify what you’re looking for and we’ll tell you if we have it.

For wipes we ask for a donation of £1 per 3 packs or £1 per 2 packs of Water Wipes.

If you’d like any nappies, milk or wipes, and are able to get to our Sharehouse: trjfpbrum.com/venues/sharehouse/ to collect, then please:

email trjfpbrum.collect@gmail.com

giving your name
a contact number
if you’d like nappy pants (size 4 or 5) the size and number of packs you’d like (there are 2 pants per pack)
if you’d like formula milk, the brand and stage you’re looking for
if you’d like wipes
approximate times you’re able to collect

and we will get back to you.

Extended Sharehouse Opening Hours!

Have you visited our Sharehouse* in Winson Green yet?

(*a Sharehouse is a Pay-As-You-Feel supermarket – for more information click here)

If no, is it because our opening days/hours didn’t work for you?

We have good news if that’s the case; we’re going to be extending our opening hours and opening on more days!

Some of our volunteers with TRJFP founder Adam Smith — Some of our volunteers at the Sharehouse with TRJFP founder Adam Smith

Tuesdays

9:00am – 4:00pm

Wednesdays

10:00am – 6:00pm

Thursdays

1:00pm – 7:00pm

Fridays

9:00am – 4:00pm

Saturdays

Volunteers Only – check the volunteer Facebook group or WhatsApp for times!

Hopefully this means even more people can join us to #feedbelliesnotbins – we look forward to seeing you there!

Amber

No Freegan Boxes 28th April

Sorry

Hi everyone,

Due to preparations for the upcoming elections, some of Ladywood Health and Community Centre will be out of use for us for a few days – including the hall we use for Freegan Boxes.

We looked into alternative spaces, but there were just too many logistical issues to overcome in time, so we have had to take the decision to temporarily suspend some of our services:

There will be no Freegan Boxes (deliveries or collections from Ladywood/Kings Heath) on Friday 28th April.

The Café will be serving lunch only on:

Wed 26th April (Front Hall)
Thurs 27 April (Downstairs)
Fri 28 April (Front Hall)
Wed 3 May (Downstairs)
Thurs 4 May (Downstairs)

The Boutique will be run from wherever lunch is being served.

Thank you to all our volunteers for their patience and flexibility, and apologies again; we really don’t like disappointing anyone!

Amber

So spaghetti doesn’t grow on trees and pasta isn’t made from meat?!

One of the best April fools jokes ever was played by the BBC when they reported on the growing of “spaghetti bushes”, showing bushes covered in spaghetti that was said to be drying in the sun after harvesting. Considering this was 1957, people could be forgiven for being taken in by this. However, it seems that there are still worrying gaps in knowledge about food and its origins.

Just over two years ago the British Nutrition Foundation carried out a survey amongst 27,500 five-to-16-year-olds to find out how much they knew about food and where it comes from. There was some confusion about the source of pasta among younger pupils, with about a third of five-to-eight-year-olds believing that pasta is made from meat (or did they mean wheat!? So, we thought we would do our bit to clarify this.

The aim of The Real Junk Food Project is primarily to use food destined for the bin to feed people on a ‘pay as you feel’ basis. However, we also feel that it is important to help people to help them
selves; to help them use the food and ingredients they have at home in a more sustainable way so that less food is wasted. To this end, two pasta making workshops have been delivered at Ladywood Community and Health Centre over the past few months. The first of these was attended by Ladywood residents with both adults and children alike taking part, the second one in September was attended by adults from further afield to learn more about this lovely Italian carbohydrate.
In line with the aims of the project we used eggs donated by the time Union and pasta flour that was close to its use by date and destined for the bin. So, effectively we made some healthy pasta from waste food. We even used leftover beetroot and herbs to flavour it.
The results were amazing! In addition to taking some tasty food home, the main benefits according to our attendees included the therapy gained from kneading the dough, not to mention the gym membership fees saved (pasta dough is quite stiff, very good for working those biceps). The opportunity to get together with others to share the experience of being creative and learning new skills should not be under estimated either. All this and free aromatherapy from the mix of parsley, chives and tarragon. Look, a tagliatelle tree! We have plans to run more food waste workshops soon, watch this space!