Eating Better
Winter recipes from five fantastic Bristol food organisations
By Jaque Taylor
Find a new favourite recipe or two and discover how these local organisations are dishing up a whole lot of good. Jaque Taylor writes the latest tasty Bristol Good Food story.
Bristol food organisations do so much to help fight food insecurity in our community, and as if that weren’t enough, many are also sharing free online recipes. We’re rounding up some of the best hearty winter recipes that you can enjoy now while the weather is chilly, while introducing you to the organisations behind them!
Up first is Team Canteen, a community interest company formed to connect Bristol hospitality and events businesses to reduce food insecurity in the city. Team Canteen co-founded Anti Banquet, an annual event held in Bristol that started in 2023 and has raised over £100K each year to support local food charities. The organisation also participates in a slew of other projects throughout the year, including Fish and Chip Fridays, Recipe Kits for Food Clubs, Caring at Christmas (wth Caring in Bristol) and festival events, too. Team Canteen recently published a set of budget-friendly vegetarian recipes, with their winter Italian minestrone soup recipe being a particularly nice option on these cold winter nights.
Feeding Bristol also offers a variety of simple family recipes, including this cheesy mushroom pasta recipe that is sure to please. The Children’s Kitchen is a city-wide Feeding Bristol and Bristol Early Years project that focuses on encouraging children to explore, cook, grow and eat fresh food. They offer a wide variety of recipe booklets that promote seasonal eating, cupboard cooking, eating together, sensory cooking and more, hoping to get children hands-on in the kitchen from an early age.
Square Food Foundation, a Bristol-based charity with a 25-year legacy of combating hunger and promoting health through cooking education, strongly advocates for the transformative power of home cooking too. They offer free and subsidised programs that teach essential cooking skills to individuals and families. In addition to their hands-on programmes, they are kind enough to provide some incredible recipe resources, including a comprehensive 4-week meal plan that takes the guesswork out of grocery shopping as well as a YouTube channel that offers plenty of easy-to-follow recipes. To support the work they’re doing, you can donate here.
Viva!, based in Bristol, celebrated 30 years last year and they serve as the UK’s leading vegan campaigning charity, specialising in undercover investigations and high-profile animal campaigns. They offer hundreds of recipes, ensuring that there’s something there for everyone. A particularly popular recipe is their Gambian stew (Domoda) recipe with easy peanut hummus. It’s deliciously nutty and creamy, featuring satisfying sweet potatoes and a kick of heat — a great choice if you’re after something a little different. Veganuary has been more and more popular over the last few years, and these recipes make giving it a go easier than ever.
And if you’re low on time or don’t feel like cooking tonight, Heart of BS13 offers a range of ready frozen meals you can order, with every meal purchased directly supporting their work towards tackling food poverty in BS13. Their creamy cauliflower, chickpea and sweet potato curry is pictured at the top of this story. Heart of BS13 ran a Slow Cooker Club starting in 2022, as a way of supporting BS13 households to eat well in the winter months. Since then, they have supported 40 families, providing them with a slow cooker, plus a weekly recipe and the ingredients for one big family meal each week for six weeks. Sign up for Heart of BS13’s newsletter to find out more about their work in Hartcliffe and Withywood.
We hope you find plenty of recipe inspiration through scrolling the sites of these five incredible Bristol food organisations.
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So, what change do you want to see happen that will transform food in Bristol by 2030? Do you already have an idea for how Bristol can make this happen? Join the conversation now.
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