Calling all Early Birds!

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Do you like to try new things and be ahead of the curve? Do you also live in the Reigate and Banstead area? Then WE NEED YOU!

Casserole is launching its brand new website a week from today, Thursday 24 May!! We are looking for people who want to be the first in line to sign up and start sharing and ordering meals straight away! The new website will allow you to create a Casserole profile, search other cooks in your area, upload meals you are cooking and order locally cooked food (sound exciting? It is!).

We are working hard, finishing off all the details before going live first thing Thursday morning, but we want to make sure we have a brilliant group of people using the site from the very beginning. If you want to be one of the first to sign up to use the new site and live in the Reigate & Banstead area, get in touch any way you can (Twitter, Facebook, email hello [at] casserolehq.org, carrier pigeon, shouting from rooftops, you get the idea) and we will send you all the details you will need to get started!

Our name in print!

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When I rang up one of our Casserole members last week, she greeted my call with an exclamation, “Oh! I’ve just enjoyed reading your banana bread recipe in the paper today!”

When the Surrey Mirror caught wind of our Lunch Table event a couple weeks ago, a reporter and photographer braved the wind and the rain to snap some shots and interview us for a spread in this week’s Surrey Mirror (as well as the smaller recipe feature in last week’s paper that our member read about – if anyone tries the banana bread recipe, let us know!). We are pretty chuffed to have gotten the attention of the local press and hope that it brings us a few more members to the service as well as some more visitors to this very site!

Our Surrey Mirror reporter Chris

In other Casserole news, we are hard at work preparing for our website launch in a couple weeks, so watch this space for updates!

Now sit back with your afternoon cuppa and read what the Surrey Mirror had to say about Casserole!

A Lunch Table Video!

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As you may know, last week we staged a Lunch Table event in the centre of Redhill, handing out free lunches and talking to passersby about Casserole. Well, you’ve heard the story and seen the pictures, but now, thanks to our very clever project lead Murtz, you can watch the video as well!

Here’s a little peek at what we got up to:

(PS If any are wondering, the song is “Shuffle” by Bombay Bicycle Club)

A Food Filled RhymeTime

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Who doesn’t like a good sing-along? And when you add songs about food into the mix, you can guarantee the Casserole Crew will be up for it! In the wake of our rainy but exhilarating Lunch Table in Redhill Town Centre, we organised a lovely little collaboration with Redhill Library, infiltrating their friday RhymeTime with a food-filled theme. We are really interested to see how young families can benefit from Casserole, both by cooking and receiving meals, and through building up a community within their own neighbourhood, and thought what better place to find young families than at a RhymeTime!

So friday morning, we headed to the library with flyers, magnets, and some very special Casserole stickers to join in on some sing-along fun. We spoke for a couple of minutes at the start, aware that there were babies and toddlers antsy to get rhyming, and thanked the library for letting us take over their RhymeTime for the morning, and explained Casserole in a nutshell – and then the singing began! “Oranges and Lemons,” “Patty Cakes,” “Hot Cross Buns,” and our personal favourite, “Bananas in Pajamas” were all quite big hits amongst the crowd of tots, and certainly made us pretty hungry in the process…

After a half hour of songs and a raucous rendition of the Hokey Cokey, we got to hand out our Casserole stickers to some very shy and some very jovial little guys, and chat to their adults about how Casserole could work for them. One of the most exciting moments for me was when one of the mom’s said she’d already heard about us from a friend – the word is spreading!

We want to thank the library again for letting us come in and commandeer their RhymeTime (the staff there are brilliant by the way, so if you are ever in Redhill, stop in and say hi)!

What a Day!

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Well! What a day we had yesterday in Redhill, handing our free lunch in the town centre at our Lunch Table, spreading the ethos and word about Casserole to anyone and everyone willing to chat and eat with us.

Waking up to tempestuous winds and icy droplets of rain falling from the sky, we bundled up our Casserole gear and headed to Redhill – not even this weather was going to keep us from our mission! We’d barely arrived when the guys from Furnistore rocked up with our borrowed dining sets for the day. Lucky for us, there is a big covered area in Redhill, so we shuffled the tables under some shelter and started to set up shop.

Setting up began after the delivery of our furniture from Furnistore!

We’d barely set our chairs down when Chris from Chalk Hills Bakery turned up with two of the most lovely bags of freshly baked bread you’ve ever seen!

The Bread Man himself! Chris from Chalk Hills Bakery delivering our wonderful bread

With our tables set and our bread arrived, we could start to create a bit of ambiance, adding in a splash of gingham and a few Casserole leaflets for good measure.

The last piece of the puzzle was the food, cooked and served up by Munch in Marylebone, who soon arrived with colourful salads galore!

Naomi from Munch sets out the salad spread

With everything in place, it was time to start serving! We’d been getting some funny looks all throughout our set up – after all, who wouldn’t stare at a group of people setting up a picnic dining area in the middle of a town centre…. in the pouring rain no less!

Wouldn't you do a double take if you saw this set up in your town square?

We soon had the curious, the bemused, and the hungry stopping by to see what all the hullabaloo was about, and enjoy some tasty lunch, while finding out who on earth would be crazy enough to give out free lunch to anyone and everyone, especially in this weather…

We were chuffed to have several people recognise the Casserole name, with plenty more telling us stories about how they cook and share food already, and would be interested in a project like this. We met Ron, a man who used to do the cooking for his army troop of 100 men in World War II and still makes an “army casserole” every week, Roy, who runs a youth project in Merstham where one of their activities is food growing (we are excited to see where that link might go!), and several others who live right around the corner from existing Casserole members!

Digging into the feast!

 Our goal for the day had been to serve 50 meals and speak to as many people as we could. Over the course of lunchtime, we ended up serving well over 75 meals for hungry passersby, and chatted to even more about the project. The Surrey Mirror picked up the story as well, sending down a photographer and reporter to cover the Lunch Table and write a little feature about Casserole (you’ll be able to see the story in next week’s paper!).

Most had a really positive response to Casserole, and many were asking when the next Lunch Table might be…ideally with nicer weather next time. By 2pm, our friends at Furnistore were back to collect their tables and our experiment in disrupting the daily lives of Redhill citizens with some nice free food was complete.

Once again, we have to thank Furnistore and Chalk Hills Bakery for their wonderful contributions, and Munch in Marylebone for making such a delicious lunch spread!

And finally, the best bit of the whole day? We hadn’t even crossed Tower Bridge on our drive back when we had a new Cook signed up!

If you missed us yesterday, don’t forget that we’ll be at Redhill Library tomorrow morning for a food themed Rhyme Time, so stop on by and say hello! 

Lunch Table and Rhyme Time!

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What a week we have in store here at Casserole HQ! We hope some of you got to enjoy a Doorstep Cake on friday, and are revved up for the week to come. We are in the crux of getting everything set and ready to go for this wednesday’s Lunch Table in Redhill town centre (we’ve just gotten the menu through from Munch in Marylebone and it’s a good’un! I’m getting hungry already….). Our fingers are crossed for the weather to stay in our favour, but we will be out, rain or shine, in the centre of town with tables borrowed from the brilliant Furnistore and bread donated by the Reigate’s own Chalk Hills Bakery, offering up a free lunch from 11:30 to 1:30. So, when your stomach starts to rumble, come on out and join us for a bite and a chat about Casserole.

It'll look a bit like this, but outside...

Also in the works this week is a fun little collaboration with Redhill Library this Friday, 20 April, from 10:30-11! Casserole has infiltrated the regular friday Rhyme Time, making this week’s food themed. Expect ‘Patty Cakes’, ‘Oranges and Lemons’ and plenty more rhymes to make you hungry, while hearing a bit about Casserole and hopefully getting local Redhill families signed up and sharing meals in no time.

So stop by our Lunch Table on wednesday or come along to sing some food songs at the library on friday and don’t forget to sign up to cook and eat local, homemade food with Casserole!

Doorstep Cakes and a FREE Lunch Table

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Today was another day spent hitting the streets of Redhill, spreading the word and food-filled goodness that Casserole can bring.The reason for all this pavement hitting? Apart from spreading the message about Casserole in general, we are getting the word out about something rather exciting! This Wednesday, 18th of April from 11:30 to about 1:30, smack dab in the middle of Redhill’s town centre, we are setting up a Lunch Table feast for anyone and everyone to come along for a free meal and a chat about the project!

We’re setting up three dining room tables, generously on loan from Redhill’s very own Furnistore, set and ready for people to take a seat and dig into some delicious food prepared by Munch in Marylebone, and complimented with freshly made bread donated by Reigate’s top notch Chalk Hills Bakery - its sure to be quite the feast! We have 50 meals on offer, so if you are around in Redhill on wednesday, drop on by for a free tasty meal on us before they run out!

Right, back to today’s action filled day. After picking out the perfect tables from Furnistore, we hot-tailed it around Redhill’s office buildings, knowing they make up much of the lunchtime contingent in the town centre, chatting to receptionists and office managers, letting them know about the free lunch that’s on offer next week (on a side note, did you know that the guys who make all the crossword and sudoku books are based in Redhill??).

The wall of puzzles!

Next up was the highlight of the day, a little activity I’m going to dub Doorstep Cakes. Remember last week’s Cake to Door? Well, this week we were back in the neighbourhood, leaving little “Sorry we missed you” cake packages, letting people know about the upcoming Lunch Table and to remind them to check what we are up to on the site.

The story of cakes from drawing to doorstep!

We “caked” 70 homes today, and hope to do many more in the future – we think its a nice little surprise and brings about a bit more curiosity and interest than your typical flyer, not to mention it means people get to eat cake! As another bonus, during our neighbourhood wanderings, we met a man named George. At 88, he served in the Navy in WWII, worked as a printer, taught printing, design, and woodworking in prison and schools, travelled the world, and now spends his days building wheelbarrows from pallets, tending to his beautiful garden, and most importantly, baking and cooking like a fiend! We had a brilliant chat with him and hope he’ll soon be cooking up some of his favourite pies for his nearby neighbours.

Listening to George's amazing tales and cider fruit bread recipe

So if you live in Redhill and found a cake on your doorstep, let us know either in the comments below, or on our twitter or facebook, and don’t forget to stop by for a free meal and a chat with the Casserole crew this wednesday!

Cake to Door

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Have you ever opened your door to a pair of people asking, “Would you like some free cake?” Well if you live in certain neighbourhoods of Redhill, you may have experienced just that yesterday, as the Casserole Crew took to the streets, spreading the word and some free cake love to the people of Redhill.

Baskets of cakes (unfortunately not homemade…. THIS time…) and flyers in hand, two pairs of us wandered up and down neighbourhood lanes, knocking on doors, offering up cake and the opportunity to join a community-centred food project being born in their very own area.

While most of us might dread the knocking of a “door-to-door salesman,” we tried to approach things a bit differently, and that difference payed off. Expecting doors to be shut in our faces more often than not, our plot to lure people with free cakes turned out to be a brilliant way to break the initial barrier between strangers. Upon offering free cakes, people were so amused, bemused, and curious, that they couldn’t help but wonder “What’s the catch?” Even more brilliantly, when they discovered the catch wasn’t something we were selling, but in fact a plan to get ‘neighbours cooking for neighbours,” intrigue turned into nods of understanding and appreciation. Granted there was still a

handful of door slams and “Thanks but no thanks,” but in general, people we far more endeared rather than off put by our proposition (after all, how annoyed can you be with people offering free cake?), and because we targeted areas where there are already Casserole members present, as soon as our new recruits sign up, they’ll be able to get cooking and eating straight away!

Our Cake-to-Door experiment was a great test in just how meaningful person-to-person interaction is when you are trying to start something new. Taking that extra bit of time to talk to someone, offer them a little something nice, and show them just what the ethos of Casserole is all about. This was also the start of a whole string of community activities we’ve been plotting for the month of April, which I’ll go into more in the next post (HINT: rhymetime and free lunch are involved!), to continue to see how we can best spread to word and grow the Casserole community.

One final note, we had another top secret mission during our Cake-to-Door time. Katie Smith, quite possibly our most enthusiastic and supportive Casseroler, has been right along side us from the very beginning – spreading the word, cooking meals and referring members. As a thank you, we left her a little token of appreciation for believing in us from the very start.

Thanks for everything Katie!

Building trust in something new

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When the Casserole Crew isn’t running around Surrey – meeting with organisations, the council and people in the community – we find ourselves at Hub Westminster, a co-working space in central London filled with people doing creative, innovative and socially progressive things.

The other week, their Community Manager asked me to write a guest post for their blog, and today its gone live! It’s titled “Casserole: Building trust in something new,” and starts with a bit about Casserole as a service, before talking about the challenges and approach required when you are trying to start a new project in a community.

Feel free to have a read (and have a look at the other cool stuff on Hub Westminster’s blog as well) and share your own stories with us about inciting change in your community in the comments below!