New week, new challenge at Foodcycle. A small kitchen team and very little food surplus from the donating supermarkets, meant the challenge was on. On the menu this week was a take on French Onion 🌰 soup, with a cheesey 🧀 croutons on top, a vegetable stir fry with noodles and a side salad, and Cake with fruit salad 🍎🍏🍐🍇🥝🍌. The starter was well received and nearly everyone of the 47 guests asked for seconds. The main was equally enjoyed but there wasn't enough for any seconds. There were 3 cakes in the store cupboard that hadn't been used on previous weeks so that was divided up into portions and served with a delicious fruit salad, containing apples, pears, grapes, kiwi, plums and bananas 🍌. Shady worked really hard with the hosting team which helped the under resourced kitchen team massively. Great effort 👌

On a rainy and cold Tuesday evening, we couldn't help but have cheesy smiles for the hot cheesy garlic bread coming out of the ovens! The cooking team did an amazing job to make a delicious two course meal of pasta with salad and cheesy garlic bread (which was a hit) followed by a dessert twist - banana & croissants baked with custard. Just what you need to forget about the rain 😀 Gill had come to the task earlier in the afternoon having collected the surplus food from the supermarket and unloaded it at the church. The hosting team were joined by two new Good Gym members, Hasan and Shady who got stuck in and helped to clean up the kitchen. Also, just because I can't help it, I asked them to say CHEESE for a photo. A good team effort with the Food cycle volunteers. Thank you everyone for today ☺️

A slightly rainy evening after a weekend of torrential rain and floods meant our gardening job was postponed until things were less muddy, but continuing the watery theme our backup task was ideally suited.

Earthwatch, the people behind TinyForests, also do a big national water quality survey to assess the health of our rivers and waterways. Our task this night was to walk and run out to four different spots on the River Lea to collect water samples to test for nitrate and phosphate levels, two indicators that things are getting into the river that shouldn't be, like fertilisers from farms and sewage from towns.

We spend many of our sessions running by the river, working next to the river, and sometimes even in the river, so it's good to know what lies beneath the ripples! We collected water from the new Hat Garden section on Bute street, Wardown lake, Runfold Avenue and all the way to Leagrave Park for a photo with Bob Marley and a total run distance of 12km, our longest in quite a while. Fishing for water with a test tube on a string along the way was quite fun!

I got the water samples home and conducted the tests, and I am pleased to report that the levels detected were classed as 'moderate', so not too bad. The levels were quite consistent throughout the length we tested so its good to know that it doesn't get any worse as it passes through town.