Our kitchen hero for this newsletter is Ros Benstead, a Monday volunteer at our ETNA cafe. Ros is a longstanding member of the TRJFP team, joining back when the ETNA venture had only just started

At TRJFP, we’re all about saving as much food from bins as we can, but some waste is inevitable – I’m yet to find a way to grind avocado stones into a tasty snack for example! The good news is we can still lower the environmental impact of unavoidable waste by using food recycling caddies rather than rubbish bins.

After volunteering at a food bank in Paddington during Covid, former IT consultant Dave was keen to find an organisation focused on minimising food waste and fostering community spirit closer to home, which led him to join TRJFP in September 2022.

Our kitchens produce a lot of veg peelings, used coffee grounds and eggshells, and we usually find a few pieces of mouldy fruit and veg among the donations! Although we can’t eat this product, it doesn’t end up in landfill. We turn it into something much more valuable - compost!

TRJFP was born out of the simple idea of reducing food waste – making what we have last longer and go further – or as we like to say Feeding Bellies Not Bins.

Learn from Judith the secrets of her Spicy Thai Butternut Squash soup

Not only are they a great way to turn surplus fruit and veg into something delicious, but for the charity they are also a really helpful way to connect with (and raise funds from!) our local communities throughout the summer months as we offer them on a ‘pay as you feel’ basis at the many Summer Fairs we attend across the borough.

Week in, week out you can take your pick from ancient grain loaves to sesame bagels, and from tiger baguettes to packaged sliced white.

In 3 years of volunteering at the brilliant Real Junk Food Project I’ve seen a lot of bananas.

Louise has been at the centre of the ETNA Friday cooking team for the last two and a half years.