It has been almost a year since I volunteered at the Triangle Community Garden Growing Health group in Hitchin. Wow! the year has flown by and I wanted to write about my time there. For those of you that do not know, Growing Health is a guided support group set up to help its learning disabled members lead healthier, more active lives. Activities include cooking, learning about healthy eating, walking and sport. The group meets every Tuesday morning at the Pavillon at Ransom’s Recreation ground. The morning session focuses on Nutrition and the afternoon focuses on Horticulture.
Many of the members suffer with obesity or conditions such as Type 2 diabetes and so I every week I try to help them understand what sort of foods they should include in their diets which will help them to balance their blood sugar levels. We also discuss Nutrition related news such as “the sugar tax” or “low fat versus high fat diets” and we look at food labelling and educate them about products that are not as healthy as they seem. Initially, our kitchen equipment was sparse and so when demonstrating how to cook we were limited in our range of menu as we only had a kettle and a microwave. However in February this year (2016) we were awarded some funding (£450 from CDA Herts) and have been able to buy a variety of kitchen equipment, namely two induction hobs, chopping boards, knives, pots and pans. The Growing Health group is now running a 12 week programme of recipes which they are preparing, cooking and eating each week with support from the staff team Liz and Charlotte and myself.
Here is what our Project Manager, Liz McElroy reported recently on the Triangle Garden Blog…
The group has so far made chickpea and chilli cakes, cottage pie with lentils and sweet potato (as well as beef and potatoes), stir fry vegetables with noodles, tomato and basil bruschetta with homemade pesto. We are looking forward to making a salad Niçoise, parsnip and carrot rösti served with poached eggs, falafel made 3 ways with; spinach and feta, chick peas and sweet potato. We will end our programme with a picnic using some of the recipes that we have made in the previous weeks.
The outcome of this programme has been to show the members how to cook and prepare the ingredients, as well as, learn about basic health and safety and food hygiene in the kitchen. We also discuss a concept known as “From farm to fork”- This is a direct link with cooking, eating and growing vegetables helps the group to reconnect with where food comes from, helping them to develop a healthier diet. Recognising what and where the ingredients in our food comes from, can make us appreciate and enjoy the food and will hopefully lead to better, healthier choices when choosing what to eat in the future.
Salad Nicoise
Every week we ask the members to offer their feedback on what they have prepared, cooked and eaten and each week we have seen positive feedback about foods that thought they did not like or perhaps have never even tried. A case in point was last week’s Salad Nicoise – everyone enjoyed the flavours, including the anchovies and they all agreed that when they next visited Pizza Express they would order this instead of a pizza as it was a healthier option. This is definitely progress. Each week the members continue to lose weight and work towards their health goals by adopting healthier lifestyles from what they have learnt during the group.
As a Nutritional Therapist, it has been eye opening to see the local community come together to support one another to improve their health together. The Triangle Garden is really a superb local community facility and is making a huge difference to people’s lives in North Hertfordshire.