It’s been a long haul, but we are delighted to be able to announce that our Lunch Club Kitchen upgrade is now completed & the lunch club is open again Monday-Friday every week (except bank holidays) serving a tasty hot two-course meal, cooked from fresh, for just £7 per person, and a full roast dinner & pudding on Fridays for just £5 pp!
Included in the price is free seated sports on Tuesdays before lunch, free craft activities on Wednesdays after lunch with local volunteer Andrea, music & singalongs and Colin’s special bingo session on Fridays after lunch.
We also run raffles & quizzes, jumble sales & more with our Clubbers. The sessions are supervised by a qualified Care Assistant, food cooked in a kitchen recently re-rated 5 by Environmental Health, and the team is DBS checked as appropriate and aided by volunteers from a wide variety of backgrounds as well as students on work experience including those studying for a diploma in health & social care.
Help is on hand daily to assist with taxi-cards, travel passes, welfare benefits & more, including providing public health information & guidance to access health services. If you know someone who might like to give it a try, get in touch!
We celebrated this long-awaited return this week with a trip to RHS Wisley, a trip that was so popular last year that we ran it again this year. Manager Christine, with volunteers Val and Pat were busy the evening before preparing a picnic for everyone on the trip and the day was much enjoyed. With thanks to RHS Wisley for the Community Outreach Programme that allows us to obtain free tickets from time to time for some of our groups. We know this Programme has welcomed Ukrainian and other refugees as well as low-income local families with children and it is very welcome.
This week we have collected more fruit from Wimbledon Abundance and have given away apples (‘eaters’) from a box in the entrance, reminding people that these real apples come from real trees and may contain bugs! We also collected a crate of ‘cookers’ with which we are making an apple crumble for the Lunch Clubbers next week. Do get in touch if you fancy doing some cooking with us!
We were also lucky to meet a kind gardener from the New Addington Allotments who has given us some of her potato glut for the lunch club and food bank – new potatoes just a few hours old taste so much nicer! And take less time to cook, it seems.
Christopher and Muhammad have been busy in the Garden Plot and we have great crops of hardy spinach, basil, tomatoes, beetroot, mint as well as somewhat questionable courgettes (you live and learn). We are planning some winter crops, including brussels sprouts for Christmas!
