December 20th

No post last week. I had a bit of a collision on the way to the Wellspring and was a tad upset so they told me to go home. But I was back in their kitchen this week. Not that much needed cooking; tis the party season and excesses of food lead to big donations to the Wellspring. 


The intention with mains was that we had chicken curry with rice. I was in full swing with the chicken curry and stumbled across some fresh chicken breasts in the fridge! Trust me, that doesn't happen often, so I took advantage and chucked them in. Over the course of the afternoon, donations from about 3 different parties turned up and so instead of rice with the curry, the visitors got pizza (5 huge ones were donated), sandwiches (2 massive buffet trays came in and needed using) and a load of random buffet-style snacks. 


For puds, my mum had sent me with 5 ready-made sponge flan cases. However, more donations meant that those were left for another day (sealed pack, longer shelf life; seemed to make sense) in favour of several cakes that had been donated. The choice included lemon drizzle, apple, yule log and carrot and walnut cakes. But no pudding (except rice pudding) at the Wellspring can be served without instant custard. So guess what came with the cakes? Yep... instant custard. There was also fresh fruit up for grabs that had come in with one lot of donations


Again, I don't know how many people came in to eat because I left early. We had another influx of volunteers tonight so my services at pot wash weren't needed. However, the volunteers did also get a Christmas treat from me in the form of gingerbread Christmas trees.

December 6th

Dinner last night was chilli con carne. Pudding was bread and butter pudding with custard.

Number fed; no idea, I left just as service started. We had lots of volunteers last night from about half an hour before service so I made the food and then left.

The chilli con carne featured; 3 fresh onions (chopped), several tins of tomatoes, a few jars of tomato-based pasta sauce, an unknown number of cans of ready-made chilli con carne and some tins of stewed steak or mince and onions, kidney beans, sweetcorn, chilli powder, OXO chilli seasoning granules and instant beef gravy. This was served with plenty of rice and bread.

The bread and butter pudding (a favourite of the team leader before me; it was the pudding EVERY Tuesday night. They haven’t had it on a Tuesday since September so I thought it was about time it was done again) consisted of; 72 slices of bread (sad that I know the exact number), spread, currants, condensed milk, 4 eggs and caster sugar. This was of course served with instant custard.

I’m not feeling very imaginative at the moment so I’ve no idea what they’re getting for dinner next week.

November 29th

For dinner this evening we served up baked beans with hot dog sausages and bread, and banoffee pie with custard for pudding.

Number fed: 44. It felt like a quiet one tonight but I was pretty relieved as we were short-handed in the kitchen; much thanks to my mum for stepping in to help!

The baked beans... well, this is mostly self-explanatory; lots of baked beans! This was suped-up with several tins of hot dog sausages and my secret ingredient.... tomato-based pasta sauce.

Pudding was made with several packets of rich tea and digestive biscuits and some melted butter for the base, 600g butter, 600g granulated sugar and 4 cans of condensed milk for the toffee and 10 chopped bananas (donated by my mum) to top it off. This was of course smothered in custard; a combination of instant and ready-to-eat.

The pudding went down well, which I was glad of because I’d got myself worried that I’d been a bit over ambitious with the toffee, which I stood stirring for about half an hour. Overall, the night went quite well, especially considering that we managed with 3 people; thank you lots mum and Hannah!

November 22nd

The fodder of the evening was meat and veg pie with mushy peas, with rice pudding or stewed apples for pudding.

Number fed: 60. This included a massive rush at the beginning of the evening as a result of certain football matches being on.

The pie was made from; 6 tins of stewed steak, 2 tins corned beef, 8 fresh potatoes (peeled and chopped), 6 fresh carrots (peeled and chopped), an unknown number of tins of vegetables that included carrots, peas, mushrooms and other root veg, gravy granules and 4 packs ready-made shortcrust pastry. It was a nice surprise to find some fresh vegetables to hand when we arrived at the Wellspring. The pie would also have been a bit more of a stew without the pastry that my parents donated.

The rice pudding came from tins... again, an unknown number. This is the one pudding at the Wellspring that doesn’t get accompanied by instant custard, but it does get the odd dollop of jam.

The stewed apples were made from fresh cooking apples that we also happened to find along with the potatoes and carrots. A donation arrived while we were preparing the food, so we also had clementines and Egyptian dumplings to hand out. The volunteers weren’t too impressed with the dumplings, but they seemed to go down well with the visitors.

Biscuits, juice, coffee and tea were also to hand, as was bread to mop up the pie juice.

Despite serving 60, the rush at the beginning meant that we escaped early. Not bad for a nights work.

November 15th

Tonight’s meal consisted of pasta bake with sausage and cornflake cake. I’ll see if you can guess from the trends set in the past 2 weeks what additional things we also had...

The pasta bake consisted of; 3 onions, half a marrow, 6 cartons of passata, 5 tomato-based pasta sauces, 2 tins of mushrooms (not something I’d come across before, but it turns out you can put anything in a tin...), 6 tins of sliced carrots, 4 tins of peas, 1 Carbonara pasta sauce, 1 packet of instant cheese sauce, 6 tins of hot dog sausages and 2kg pasta.

And this was served with... yep, you’ve guess it; bread.

The cornflake included; 900g golden syrup, 750g cornflakes, 400g butter, 200g brown sugar, a pinch of salt and 2 jars of jam (a mix of raspberry and strawberry). This was of course topped with a load of instant custard. Didn’t feel this dessert went down as well as others have done so I might not bother with this one again.

Biscuits were on hand and were made all the nicer tonight by a donation of home-baked butter cookies.

There was also the odd bit of tea, coffee, juice and hot chocolate.

Number fed... I’m not sure because I forgot to ask, but roughly 40.

November 8th

The meal of the moment was fish pie, accompanied by mushy peas and bread. Pudding consisted of miscellaneous flans served with the mandatory custard.

Total number fed: 50

Fish pie contents; a variety of tinned fish/seafood including salmon, tuna, mackerel and crab, white sauce, parsley sauce, honey mustard sauce, French style sauce, leek and potato soup, cream of mushroom soup, sweetcorn, peas and carrots. Topped with a combination of instant mash and mashed new potatoes (from tins)

Flan contents; 5 ready-made sponge flan cases (donated by my parents), 1 jar strawberry jam, 1 jar raspberry jam, 1 jar marmalade, 1 can cherry pie filling, 1 tub chocolate hazelnut spread, 1 tin mandarins, 1 tin pear halves

Instant custard... fairly similar to last week; instant custard powder and boiling water

Followed by yet more biscuits, tea, coffee and juice

November 1st

The culinary delights tonight were chilli con carne with rice and bread (every main meal is served with bread... don’t ask me why) and pineapple upside-down cake with custard, or fruit salad for the latecomers

Total number fed: 48

Chilli con carne contents; 1 monster brown onion (chopped), approx. 8 tins tomatoes, 8 tins chilli con carne or minced steak, several miscellaneous jars of pasta sauce, red kidney beans, sweetcorn, carrots, peas, a little chilli powder, and instant beef gravy granules to thicken

3kg long grain rice

... And I lost track of the amount of bread. It filled two trays; that’s all I needed to know.

Pineapple upside-down cake contents: golden syrup or honey to coat the bottom of the tin, 1 ½ large tins pineapple, 1kg caster sugar, 1 kg Stork (bought by me), 1 kg self-raising flour (donated by my parents), 12 eggs (donated by my parents)

Instant custard: ... custard powder and boiling water. A Wellspring staple, served with every pudding, regardless of whether it really needs custard or not

Oh, and plenty of biscuits, tea and coffee. Another Wellspring staple

48 fed, washing up done... and we’re already looking around the store room to come up with ideas for next week

Tin can cuisine

Hello world! My name’s Emma. I’m an enthusiastic cook and I’m currently training to be a pastry chef. I’m also passionate about volunteering in my local community and, since January 2011, I’ve been volunteering at a place called the Wellspring in Stockport, North West England. The Wellspring gives support to homeless and disadvantaged people. It also serves meals 365 days a year, and I happen to volunteer on Tuesday nights, helping to cook meals for anywhere between 20 and 70 evening visitors.

The centre relies on donations and volunteers to keep it going and, what with our stocks of food being made up predominantly of tinned or dried goods that we receive mostly at Harvest or Christmas time, we have to be a little bit... *ahem*... imaginative with our cooking. So, I thought it might be fun to blog about some of the stuff that we cook for our Tuesday-night punters, and to give the wider world an idea of what we do at the Wellspring and why the donations we receive are so important. It should also be a bit of a laugh... prepare yourself for tin-can-cuisine!

For more information about the Wellspring, please visit their website: http://www.thewellspring.btck.co.uk/