Alphington Community Centre is delighted to partner with Melbourne Farmers Markets to deliver ‘grow local, cook local’ a series of seasonal workshops that link the things you can easily grow in your home garden, with fun, delicious and yummy food you and your family can cook every day.

In each workshop you will get the chance to explore the key ingredient(s), chat to experts and share the joy of cooking locally grown food … and then eat it together.

Our winter series runs through the July school holidays and includes 5 workshops each with a different theme (honey, microgreens, mushrooms, winter herbs and winter greens). This series is suitable for people of all ages, and in school holidays is deliberately family friendly (for children 7+ years of age). Please note that children must be accompanied by a participating adult (who is expected to actively supervise them throughout the workshop). Also note that due to COVID restrictions total numbers are limited to 10 people per session.

Tickets cost $15. The workshops will run from the commercial kitchen onsite at Alphington Community Farmgate on the corner of Yarana Road and Wingrove Street (just down the road from us).

This grow local, cook local workshop series is kindly supported through a sustainability grant from the City of Yarra.

Honey, Honey

10am-11.30am, Monday 28 June.

This family friendly workshop will explore honey and urban beekeeping, an increasingly popular interest in our local area.

In the kitchen we’ll be making honey joys and muesli bars together and exploring other honey recipes.

We’ll pop over to The Practical Beekeeper to inspect all the equipment, have a look at hives and find out more about keeping bees in inner city areas.

Teeny Gardens for Tiny Homes

10-11.30am, Tuesday 6 July.

No home is too small for a garden! Just because you have moved into an apartment doesn’t mean you can’t grow your own food. In this workshop Farmwall will introduce you to microgreens and sprouts.

We’ll explore ways to use them in every day cooking and we’ll cook a yummy soup together, that is garnished with sprouts, breadcrumbs and a crunchy topping.

You’ll take home some seeds sown in a pot.

Marvellous Mushrooms

10-11.30am, Wednesday 7 July.

Keen to explore the world of mushrooms? This family workshop will start with a tour of The Mushroomery to see how mushrooms grow.

Whilst there we’ll pick some mushrooms and take them to the kitchen to cook delicious mushroom tacos - you can add whatever toppings they like.

You’ll have the opportunity to purchase mushrooms plus mushroom growing kits from The Mushroomery on the day.

Chive Talking

10-11.30am, Thursday 8 July.

This workshop will explore how to use simple winter herbs that are straightforward to grow in any home garden.

It will include a tour of the Alphington Community Farmgate garden to look at what is in season.

Along the way we’ll pick chives and spring onion tips and head into the kitchen to making some delicious dumplings (using wonton wrappers).

Green Snacks

4-5.30pm, Wednesday 14 July.

Have you thought about using the winter greens that you can easily grow at home in school snacks?

This after school family workshop will start with a walk around the Alphington Community Farmgate site to check out the gardens and discuss what is in season.

Along the way we’ll pick some leafy greens such as sorrel, silverbeet and kale. Then we’ll head into the kitchen to whip up some cheesy green pastry triangles … along with some kale chips. Yum.

STREAT is a food-system social enterprise that offers work readiness and employment programs for disengaged young people who want to work.

Thay are based in Cromwell Street in Collingwood. Programs coming up include:
 
Taste of STREAT - a two hour interactive workshop for young people (and accompanying workers) who are interested in STREAT’s Ready to Work program and keen to learn a little bit more to help them decide if it's right for them. 
Date: Friday 25th June 10:30am - 12:30pm
RSVP by: 18th June
 
Intro to Work - an eight week individual program for people wanting to access hospitality
or horticulture focused work experience with weekly individual support. This is a roll-in/roll-out program that runs throughout the year.
Accepting referrals now!
 
Ready to Work - a 20 week fully supported group program for young people seeking work in hospitality. It includes on-the-job training, accredited training (Cert II in Hospitality), work readiness workshops, creative and social engagement, individual case support and referral. Plus guaranteed employment opportunities for graduates through the Paid to Work program!
Commencing: Tuesday 27th July 2021
Accepting referrals now!
 
Paid to Work - a six-month program offering Ready to Work graduates an opportunity to transition into 20-25 hours a week of paid employment facilitated through one of our partner employers.

Job Club - a weekly drop-in session for young people wanting individual assistance with looking for work (eg. help with resumes, cover letters, job search sites). No booking necessary – just drop in! Every Friday 1pm - 3pm.

If you are interested in finding out more you can visit their website here.

Today some pictures of Mark from Pacific Australis placing beautiful natural stone paving in our front garden. We’re very excited that this is finally happening. Once Mark is done we’ll finish off the area next to the building with a pergola - thanks to a Federal Government Stronger Communities grant.

We’re hoping to make our front garden a more attractive and handy place for playgroup families and other users. Particularly in COVID times when being outdoors is safer than being indoors.

The pergola out the front of the shed has been fabulous, and we’re hoping our front garden will also be much more multipurpose when this work is complete. The final element we’ll be adding is a new cubby and sandpit - which has been ordered and should be arriving in a few weeks.

Our garden is coming along.

And with exciting plans and opportunities we hope more volunteers will come to enjoy time pottering in the garden here at ACC into the future.

Katrina and her special helper lent a hand when the soft mulch arrived and needed to be spread a few weeks ago.

Along with Jenny and Phil who mowed and mulched the never ending sea of leaves, Anne who planted and weeded and Demisse who also tackled the leaves - our garden is now getting wrangled into shape.

Volunteers are an invaluable resource for places like our community centre. Great things get done when they are here to help.

It really has been a fruity gardening week or two here at ACC. We’ve had lots of posts relating to gardening.

And the latest thing on our radar is medlars … have you ever heard of them?

Fairfield neighbour Bernie, who has come along to Preserves Group in the past, contacted us with a donation of some medlars - a fruit that looks a lot like a big rosehip and that tastes quite a lot like very ripe apricot (I think anyway).

Along with the fruit she gave us a recipe to make medlar jelly which, a bit like quince jelly, will have a lovely floral scent. And she also explained the process of bletting - where we have to leave the fruit out for a couple of weeks to go really soft and squishy, just like you would with a persimmon.

It is quite bizarre, because they are ready to eat when they look quite brown and rotten … but the skin peels off easily and they actually taste quite nice. Bernie says she often just eats them with cheese and biscuits at this point, and I can imagine this would be quite delicious.

If you are interested in finding out more about this unusual and ancient fruit, which has been around since Roman times, you can check them out on the bench in room 2 if you are passing by … they’re in some wooden trays under a cloth doing the bletting thing - take a peek.

Or let us know if you’d like to be involved in the day of jelly making … it will probably be on Friday morning this week or next (when the fruit is ripe enough to use).

Email us here if you are keen to join in. And thanks Bernie for the fruit donation and education!