Pito-one Kitchen is cookin’

Update from our Kitchen in Pito-one

We’ve been busy at work in the Kaibosh Kitchen whipping up innovative ways to make the most of our rescued kai! By developing recipes to transform food nearing the end of its life, we’re able to create healthy and delicious kai for the community, including stocks, sauces, pickles, jams, preserves, baking and more. These tasty treats are so handy to grab from the pantry and jazz up a meal with added protein or carbs, to make a full meals. We’ve received plenty of encouraging feedback from our food recipients so far.

Because we don’t purchase food for distribution to the community, we rely on steady volumes of rescued kai from our food donors. But the number of hungry people is increasing. To help our community organisations cope with growing demand for food, our Kaibosh Kitchen plays a pivotal role in making our rescued food go further to feed more people.

We’re still in the early days of our kitchen project, but we’re already seeing incredibly meaningful results. To date, 1471kg of second-sort fruit and vegetables has been diverted from compost or animal feed, to be processed in our kitchen. By showing a little extra love and care to the slightly squishy produce, we’ve created an additional 4201 servings of food to feed our community. 

What this food looks like changes with the seasons, too!

At the height of summer fruit harvest-time, we were bombarded with produce to hastily process. This means that we’re now stocking our community organisations with colourful jars of preserved peaches, apricots, and plum jam to brighten up the winter months.  

We’re equally proud to say that no tomato has gone to waste on our watch! The kitchen freezer is bursting with buckets of chopped, stewed, and sauced tomatoes. These goodies are an invaluable base ingredient for whipping up our hearty winter meals, like soups, stews, and curries constantly on the boil and now being given out regularly from our kitchen. 

Thank you supporters & sponsors

A big thank you to these businesses who are backing our kitchen mahi with extra food donations and sponsorship of equipment:

Gilmours, PAK n SAVE Lower Hutt, Miele, Thermomix, Waffle Box Upper Hutt and Wesley Rata Village in Naenae.

Kai Communities short film

Have you seen the new Kai Communities short film starring Ange, our amazing Kitchen Coordinator? Check it out here.