Less Waste More Taste: Recipe Book

A person’s hands chopping a red onion with a large knife on a small chopping board. There is a blurred bowl in the background on a colourful tablecloth.

Less Waste More Taste focused on making food and the role it plays in our environment, health and wellbeing, as well as our pocket.

National Festival of Making, Cracking Good Food and The Bureau Centre for the Arts teamed up with the local community on a project aimed at developing a better understanding of healthy and economical cooking. 2000 people visited the Bureau for this mass healthy cooking session, and hundreds of those ate for free at the festival.

The project used food provided by Fareshare, a company licensed to safely distribute food discarded by supermarkets, highlighting issues around food waste and low-income families managing budgets.

The project was expanded with community cooking classes taking place ahead of the 2019 edition of the National Festival of Making, supported by Great Place Housing Group.

Some class participants went on to help deliver outdoor cookery lessons with Cracking Good Food, passing on knowledge and cooking and eating with festival visitors.

A person holds a bowl filled with fresh spinach, falafel patties, colourful cherry tomatoes, roasted butternut squash, onions, and crumbled feta cheese, with a fork resting inside.
A black frying pan on a hob contains sautéed vegetables, including sliced red onions, yellow and red peppers, with a saucepan and kitchen appliances visible in the blurred background.

An outcome of this project is a recipe book, distributed to participants and made available to the public via Blackburn Market’s produce stalls. A digital version is downloadable below.

This book provides information, advice, recipes and tips to help you prepare, cook and eat fresh, healthy and homemade food. The Blackburn community, along with Cracking Good Food, have helped to provide recipes for this book, and we encourage you to shop local and buy your food from your nearby markets, supporting the local economy.

Download recipe book

About Cracking Good Food

Cracking Good Food launched in 2010, with the aim of encouraging and supporting more people to cook affordable, seasonal and nutritious homemade food from scratch.

Driven by our belief that EVERYONE deserves good food, our mission is simple: to work collaboratively with others to alleviate food and fuel poverty and increase food sustainability across Greater Manchester.

Website

A wooden plate filled with crispy fried potato cubes topped with a spicy red sauce and chunks of red peppers, placed on a wooden table.
A woman in green and purple smiles and talks to people in front of a colourful cardboard stall labelled The Bureau. Others nearby are engaged and chatting in a cheerful setting.

About The Bureau Centre for the Arts

The Bureau Centre for the Arts is a grassroots community arts centre.

They offer a wide range of arts and creative engagement programmes, activities, events and performances for people of all ages and backgrounds from Blackburn and the surrounding areas.

Website