Connecting through a love of cooking

Food is a powerful and emotive subject for many people. It brings people together, connects friends and families, and is a fantastic way to share skills, knowledge and celebrate traditions.

For many older people, coming together to enjoy food provides a sense of community and helps to overcome social isolation and loneliness by providing opportunities to participate in community activities such as cooking, learning food crafts, nutrition education, supermarket tours and more.

[youtube title=”Keeping Connected Through Food” video=”z1rCESYU1Aw” autohide=”2″ color=”red” controls=”1″ iv_load_policy=”1″ theme=”dark” quality=”default” schemaorg_name=”Keeping Connected Through Food” schemaorg_description=”Man: To celebrate Australia Day, today we’re preparing some tasty lamingtons and later on we’ll enjoy them with our guests at an Australia Day high tea.

Rosa: We’ll use two cups of all purpose flour. You can use plain, you use baking powder as well. Beat the white eggs and sugar till it comes to very white and fluffy. So what we do is that we’ll pour this into the flour.

Lady: We used to make laminations for the special drives for the girl guides, we used to.

Rosa: Now we bake this for about 20 minutes.

Turn it over and now we hope it’s all in one piece. Yeah, very good. Yep, perfect.

Food plays a very important role in our well being. It connects us, brings joy and provides opportunities for us to socialise. Vintage bites is a fantastic creative ageing programme and through food and cooking our residents and clients can enjoy spending time with others, learning new skills and sharing stories around food. Food is often the centre of celebrations and today we’re celebrating Australia Day with a lamington cooking day and high tea.

Lady: You know they have a ferry run every year on Australia Day. That was a very interesting and hot day.

Lady 2: I have three sons and a husband and they were always very hungry. (laughs). And they loved my lamingtons.

Man 2: Going into the city with my wife every Australia Day. Watch the ferry race, planes, had a really good day. That’s our Australia Day.

Rosa: Today’s get -together for the vintage bites was a great success. The residents loved it, they all got together, made new friends and what I like about it is that they share their stories of their past. It was really really fun listening to it and our lamingtons were divine. They were soft and the chocolate and the coconut and they just loved making them.

Lady 3: Talking about the lamingtons, they’re very moorish.

Bob and Coral: It’s been a lovely day. It’s been a new experience for me never having cooked too much in the way of cakes.

Mum always made lamingtons so that’s what I did for my family and my in-laws, they’ve always been very good leamington makers, so it’s still going on in the family.

Well it’s been a very new and nice experience.

Group: Happy Australia Day!!” schemaorg_durationm=”4″ schemaorg_durations=”20″ button_layout=”default” button_theme=”default” button_subscriber_count=”default” extended_widget_opts-youtube_responsive-4=”Array”]

VintageBites is a social cooking program run by aged care provider, The Whiddon Group. The program is part of their healthy and creative ageing approach and provides a platform for enjoyment and opportunities to celebrate and socialise, all while helping older people stay connected.

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