New cookbook promotes healthy eating among ex-homeless

Scottish Churches Housing Action will launch a new cookery book to promote healthy eating on a budget, especially for those formerly homeless.

The book, Cooking For One, has been written especially for single people who have not had many opportunities to learn how to cook but would like a few tips to start.

Cooking for One will be distributed free through the many local starter pack schemes throughout Scotland. Starter packs provide basic household necessities to people who are setting themselves up in a new tenancy, often after a period of homelessness.

Scottish Churches Housing Action Chief Executive Alastair Cameron, explained: “Scottish Churches Housing Action has produced this book as a way of helping people settle in to a new home after a period of homelessness. If you’re not eating properly, it’s easy to start feeling low. If you’re living off take-away food, it’s expensive and not so healthy.

“Starter packs are a key way of distributing it because they are getting household necessities – pots and pans, cleaning materials, bedding – to those most in need as they move out of homelessness.”

Cooking for One has been supported by Community Food and Health, the Celtic Charitable Trust, Nicolson Square Methodist Church, Edinburgh, and Borderline.

Kim Newstead of Community Food and Health (Scotland) adds: “Community Food and Health were delighted to award funding to the Scottish Churches Housing Action so that they could develop Cooking for One.

"We were keen to fund resources such as Cooking for One as they can inspire organisations to see cooking and work around food as central to their work with those experiencing homelessness.”

Cooking for One is edited by Elodie Mignard of Scottish Churches Housing Action and produced by The Touch design, Edinburgh. The book will be launched at the Wayside Centre homeless facility in Glasgow next Thursday.