“What do you want me to do with that?”

Waterford Food Bank has produced a series of recipe videos, available for free on YouTube, after getting feedback from recipients.

The idea is to support people in receipt of food parcels in Waterford city to produce healthy and nutritious family meals with the contents of those parcels.

Recipes range from creamy morning porridge to chicken fried rice, while an ingredients list and step-by-step guide is underneath each recipe. Maria Chester, a community nutritionist, provides an easy-to-follow commentary as she moves through a demonstration of each recipe.

“We believe that good, hearty food should be accessible to everyone. These videos will help food parcel recipients to make the most out of their Waterford Food Bank parcels,” said Liam Quinn, CEO of Buíon Phort Láirge (formerly known as Waterford Area Partnership) which manages the food bank. The videos were filmed in his home.

Some people know very little about food preparation and that’s what makes the videos valuable, he said.

“A few people we delivered to, particularly single men, older men, they’d say – ‘A packet of pasta, pasta sauce and a bit of chicken, what do you want me to do with that?’ There was a bit of feedback from people who didn’t know how to prepare the food,” he said.

“Nutritionist Maria Chester did up menus based on the contents of a standard parcel, and we filmed those being made up (in Liam’s kitchen). There’s a QR code on the parcel and if they scan that it’ll bring them to our website where the videos are.”

They were going to put leaflets about their wider services into food parcels, but then got the idea of QR codes “to reach out to those who might need our support but not necessarily seek it out.”

“Everyone has a phone and, once they scan it, not only will they see the videos, but they’ll see the other services and supports we provide. A lot of the clients of the food bank wouldn’t be known to us, they are living on the margins, and this might alert them to other supports they can access.”

Learning by doing

Liam said that, unfortunately, the food bank is very busy.

“Most weeks we deliver about 150-200 food parcels around the city. It spikes around Christmas week to over 1,000, but ordinarily it’s around 200 a week. We just operate in the city currently,” he said.

“When the food bank started people came and collected it from the depot, but there was no control over who turned up. Now it is all done on a referral basis. Most of the referrals come from St Vincent De Paul, MABS and so forth.

“We don’t have any personal details on who we deliver to. The parcels are based on the make-up of each household and we just know the number of adults and children in the house,” said Liam.

The food is made available as part of an EU Programme, administered in Ireland by the not-for-profit Food Cloud.

“They have two depots in Ireland, one in Dublin and one in Cork. We go down to Cork once a week, we get a load of non-perishables – tinned food, packaged food, things with a long shelf life. We take that back and we supplement them with fresh products, meat, dairy, vegetables, that kind of thing, which we purchase with the money we raise from fundraising and donations.”

Then volunteers and people on a Tús scheme pack the parcels and Friday is delivery day which is carried out to people’s home in unmarked vans, thereby preserving their privacy.

At this stage, Waterford Food Bank is well established and lessons they have learned can benefit others

“We made a lot of mistakes, but we learned a lot too, and if anyone wants to get in touch feel free to do so,” said Liam.

Grateful

John Barrett, manager of Waterford Food Bank said they are grateful to South East Technological University’s School of Culinary Arts, for supporting the production of the videos, and to local organisations and businesses for ongoing support. He also paid tribute to the volunteers and staff that help to pack, prepare and deliver the parcels.

A link to watch the videos on YouTube can be accessed at https://buion.ie or go directly to: https://www.youtube.com/@BuíonPL

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