City Catering provides 35,000 nutritious meals to families during the summer school holidays.

As part of their continual work to support families at risk of food poverty during the school holidays, local charity, City Catering will be providing 2,000 grocery boxes to families for the summer school holidays.

The grocery boxes are recipe-led and provide families with the ingredients and instructions for cooking a range of healthy, low-cost meals and snacks to support them over the school holidays. The boxes include the ingredients for meals such as a children favourite Rainbow Veggie Flatbread Pizza, Broccoli & Cauliflower Cheese Bake, Tuna & Sweetcorn Melt and Hidden Veg and Tom Sauce Pasta.

"This project started in lockdown, and has grown thanks to recent funding - we were able to only support approximately 50 families last summer, however the programme has gone from strength to strength thanks to funding which has enabled us to provide over 35,000 meals this summer - we are simply delighted! The positive feedback from schools and families has been heart-warming, and we know how needed this support is, now more than ever" says Jessica Clasby-Monk who has coordinated the project for City Catering.

The charity has recently benefited from a boost of funding from Southampton City Council, through Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) Programme 2021. The HAF programme has provided healthy food and enriching activities to disadvantaged children since 2018 in Southampton. The funding enables City Catering to continue the project during the summer holidays.

Working with their local partners, Harvest Fine Food, families will start to receive their boxes in the last week of term. However, families not receiving boxes can still take part. City Catering has made available all the recipes on the website, together with cook-along videos and other resources to support and empower healthy, low-cost family cooking, as well as run a dedicated Facebook group to share the resources. People can just search 'Cooking at Home with City Catering' to find it and ask to join.