It has been lovely working with the women at the Minority Ethnic Elderly Care Centre (MECC) in Govanhill exploring their favourite traditional recipes and hearing about the stories that go with them. A total of 6 recipes will be collected and, along with their stories of growing and cooking, will be used to create a recipe book.
- The women gather to reminisce about growing and cooking in their home countries before migrating to Scotland.
At the same time Urban roots are running a series of gardening workshops over the summer, where the women will grow ingredients for the recipes and care for the growing spaces outside the MECC centre.
Finally, there will be six cookery workshops at harvest time, where we will cook some of the recipes together, using herbs and vegetables from the gardens and share a meal.
A day trip to Botanic Gardens was also organised for women to explore the herb gardens and make connections with plants and herbs they may have grown in their home country (Paskistan and India) before migrating to Scotland. Next week we will be visiting Pollok Park to have a look at the vegetable gardens. We will also be conducting the same project with a group in Preisthill. In the end the groups will be brought together to share and cook one anothers recipes.
Home Grown Recipes is funded by Glasgow City Community Health Partnership and run in collaboration with Glasgow Women’s Library and community gardening organisation, Urban Roots.
‘Oh the cotton plant! We used to grow so many in our field in Pakistan. As a young girl I used to go with my sisters to help our father look after the plants and collect the cotton which we would weave later. Such good memories if fun times!’
