Cookery Course

Cooking ‘The Kiwi Way’

 

Every Thursday throughout Term 1 2011, cooking classes were organized in Nelson Intermediate School, especially for women of refugee background.

“Refugee women who traditionally used to spend hours in the kitchen cooking meals, are now very excited and happy to have learnt to bake in the oven and cook the kiwi way” says Beda Dahal, a former refugee who works as a cross cultural worker with Refugee Services, Nelson.
 

 

Late last year a group of former refugee women came together and identified some skills they would like to learn, one of the first mentioned was learning to cook some ‘kiwi food’.

 

Claire Nichols and Denise Hutterd  from Settling In Family & Community Services and Gabrielle Humphreys and Barbara Whitaker from Refugee Services volunteered to teach the refugee women  how to cook food like banana cake, pizza, pasta, biscuits, muffins, and soup.

Refugee Women learnt to make healthy lunches for their children in the cheapest and easiest way, as well as learning the nutritional value of different food groups. The final class for the term involved a trip to a local supermarket where the newcomers could stroll the aisles and learn about some of the thousands of different products for sale.

For Beda, the trip to the supermarket was something special, as they learned to find the varieties of groceries in different sections which are new to refugee women.  They were all guided on how to buy things on special,  and on how to use the new items in their daily meal.

 

More photos from some of the 2011 Cookery classes

Article in Refugee Services July 2011 Newsletter