Busy day at the caff-ay!

We now offer a 3 course meal for £6.50 (less that $10). This consists of soup with bread and butter, a main course, such as pizza, pasta, pie or quiche, with salad, and a fruit-based pudding with custard or cream. There are normally 2 or 3 choices for each course.The food is almost always vegetarian (usually with a gluten-free option) and  cooked on the premises mostly with ingredients that are sourced free-of-charge from discarded or surplus goods.

A forthcoming TV documentary highlights some shocking statistics: one third of food produced in the UK is not eaten,  supermarkets reject en masse any vegetables which are not visually perfect and the average family throws away £700 worth of food every year, mostly due to the tyranny of Best-Before dates and  pressure to buy in excess of what is needed. Farmers are going out of business because their produce is deemed not fit for sale for cosmetic reasons.

It should be noted that our cafe can offer very low-cost meals because it's a not-for-profit enterprise that relies largely upon volunteer staff. We are just one of an increasing number of projects and organisations aiming to educate people in  new (old) ways of thinking about food, and what to do with misshapen parsnips and soggy bananas.

(Sorry to bang on about this but twice a week it's what I do with my day and when it gets dark early there's not much else to photograph.)