January at Food Behind Bars
We’re excited to be kicking off 2025 with the first of our monthly blog posts. This year, we want to use this space to share what we get up to and where our work takes us. From project updates to prison visits, new recipes and inspiring people, we’re looking forward to sharing more with you.
January has been a busy month for us and our team has been travelling up and down the country delivering work with our prison partners. It might be cold and dark outside, but our kitchen garden at HMP Stoke Heath is still full of life and we have recently taken on a new area for a second kitchen garden in the grounds. Our brand new greenhouse arrived at the end of December, and our Kitchen Garden Educator has been busy assembling it with the men on the programme. Next month, we’ll begin some early seed sowing in the greenhouse as well as cultivating the wild garden area around it, which is also home to our beehives.
At the beginning of the month, the Shropshire Beekeeping Society began a series of bi-weekly workshops with our cohort of men. Each cohort will spend 2 sessions with the passionate team of beekeepers, learning about the subject and putting some of their knowledge into practice. Our two colonies of bees are thriving and we are hoping for our first batch of honey later this year…
The first week of January also marked the end of our 6 month cookery programme at HMP Downview. Led by BBC Good Food Recipe Developer and FBB Food Educator, Helena, this programme was a chance for groups of women to connect with food and each other. We introduced many of them to new ingredients, flavours, cuisines and techniques. For our final sessions, we made a homemade healthy-version of sweet and sour chicken, egg-fried rice and a beautiful fresh cream victoria sponge with in-season rhubarb. Over 53 women have taken part in the course, and we hope to be back at Downview very soon to continue our work there.
Our Chief Executive took to the road for a 2 day trip across Nottinghamshire and East Lincolnshire. First up was a visit to the incredible School of Artisan Food. This cookery school, nestled in Sherwood Forest, is one of the most highly regarded cooking schools in the country. They focus on preserving artisan techniques and immersing students in the whole food system. We watched students bake baguettes in the bakery, produce charcuterie in the butchery and make cheese and ice cream in the dairy. The school is a social enterprise, meaning they offer opportunities to marginalised communities including young people, refugees and - hopefully soon! - people in prison.
This led us to day two of the trip which took us to the eastern coast of Lincolnshire and a men’s open prison, HMP North Sea Camp. Set on a 200 acre farm, the prison is home to 60 polytunnels, greenhouses and livestock. They are growing fruit and veg for the prison estate and producing high-quality and ethical meat that’s used on the menus as well. Along with the School of Artisan Food, we are excited to hopefully help support the prison’s plans for an on-site butchery. We left feeling very inspired by the work of the team there and the delicious food produced by the hard-working catering team.
We have almost finished building our Prison Food Education Programme, a landmark ideas and inspiration programme for prison catering teams, and so this month was about starting to kick off the project pilot at HMP Bristol. The team have been busy testing and refining a set of recipes in the prison kitchen. A baked chicken and sweet potato katsu curry was almost ordered by the entire prison (!) when it landed on the dinner menu this week, and the team have been cooking up baked pesto fish, homemade soups, oven-baked sweetcorn fritters and lots more. We’re working closely with the team to diversify menu options, boost nutrition and get lots of exciting dishes on the menu. We’re looking forward to sharing more soon!
Finally, we wrapped up the month with a quick visit to HMP Send to finalise plans for a project we are running in partnership with the University of Surrey’s Doing Porridge study in February and March. We’ll be hosting a series of lunchtime dining events where the women will be able to try some new dishes on the menu, taste some exciting ingredients and hone their skills in some guest chef cookery classes.
And what better way to wrap up the gloomiest month of the year than with a freshly-baked lemon tart from HMP Brixton? The prisoners working in the kitchen were experimenting with a new recipe and we couldn’t resist the offer to try some. Food can bring so much joy, comfort and humanity to people in prison, particularly during the cold, dark months of the year, and it was great to be part of so many positive initiatives demonstrating exactly that. See you in February!
Food Behind Bars x
