A catering charity is set to deliver thousands of cooking kits to local schools for the festive season.
City Catering Southampton will distribute cooking kits to more than 40 schools in the region, including the six recipes, in the Cooking at Home Christmas boxes.
The Cooking at Home recipes are inspired by the school menu, with Butternut Squash Macaroni Cheese being one of the favourites.
Other recipes include Homemade Tortillas, French Toast with Fresh Fruit, Christmas Biscuits, Build Your Own Veggie & Bean Fajitas, and Butternut Squash & Sweetcorn Cakes.
Each box comes with a recipe card for every dish, and the charity also provides recipe videos for families.
This initiative, now running for four years, aims to support vulnerable families during the school holidays, particularly those who are entitled to free school meals.
Gary McMahon, CEO at City Catering Southampton, said on behalf of the charity: "Our Cooking at Home project is extremely close to our hearts at City Catering Southampton. We want to help tackle food insecurity and know many families are feeling the pinch this Christmas.
"The rise in food and energy costs are forcing families to make impossible decisions between switching the heating on or buying food. It’s distressing to think of families going hungry, especially at Christmas - we want to do everything we can to help."
The initiative was launched following a report from the Food Foundation tracker, which indicated that 15 per cent of UK households faced food insecurity last January.
The charity provides support to these families in the form of free grocery boxes, which are distributed via a member school network.
Co-funded by City Catering Southampton, Bidfood, and Comax UK, Harvest Fine Foods Ltd has packed and delivered all 1,531 boxes.
Each box, which will be delivered to schools next week, contains enough ingredients to make 16 meals, providing more than 25,000 meals in total.
The boxes are distributed to families by the schools, ready for the Christmas holiday.
For more information, visit www.citycateringsouthampton.co.uk.
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