Cooking up skills, community support in Quebec's collective kitchens

Every December for the past 15 years, a small army of volunteers has gathered in Coaticook, Que., to prepare hundreds of Christmas meal kits for the community.

It's an annual tradition for the collective kitchen group at the Centre d'action bénévole in the Eastern Townships.

This year's kits included a tourtière, a chicken pot pie, an apple pie and a family-sized serving of soup. People in the community were welcome to buy up to five kits for $10 each on one condition: they had to come assemble the pies themselves.

"We're used to stuff that's pre-made now, so sometimes it's a big thrill for the families because they've never done it before," said Marjorie Tyroler, the director of the volunteer centre.

Tyroler speculates that the event in her community could be the largest collective kitchen activity in the province, but it is far from the only one.

According to Melanie Lamoureux from the Quebec Collective Kitchens Association (RCCQ), there are more than 1,000 different collective kitchen groups meeting regularly across the province.

These activities are run by different parent organizations, and they are much smaller than the event in Coaticook. Still, they all share the same goal of helping to fight food insecurity by sharing costs and giving people an opportunity to learn more about how to make a good meal.

"It's a wonderful activity," Lamoureux said. "There are so many benefits for the body, the mind, the soul."

LISTEN | Community kitchen groups say they serve an important social role: 

Quebec AM12:43Cooking up community in the collective kitchen

Over 1000 collective kitchen groups meet regularly to prepare food together across the province of Quebec. It is a way to share the costs of food preparation and to learn from each other, but the organizations running the groups say they also serve an important social role. Eastern Townships reporter Gordon Lambie shares perspective from different groups who run collective kitch programs about the challenges involved.

The RCCQ traces the history of collective kitchen groups in the province back to one project out of Montreal in the 1980s, but since that time, many organizations have started up kitchens of their own.

In each case, the organization offers guidance and support for cooking workshops by providing a space and the basic ingredients for a given recipe. Participants then work together to prepare a meal.

Marjolaine Delisle is a food security agent with Les Tabliers en Folie in the area around Richmond.

She says there are clear benefits to collective kitchen projects for families and for people living on their own, but that there are challenges that come with co-ordinating the workshops as well.

"It's not meant to be something that happens once and then you're done," Delisle said, explaining that a collective kitchen group works best when people have the opportunity to meet regularly and learn together.

The rising cost of food is also making things challenging.

Although some groups benefit from donations and the economy of pooling resources for ingredients, rising food prices make certain items less accessible over time.

For Delisle, part of the solution to that challenge is getting more people to understand collective kitchens

"A lot of people think that we are kind of …meals on the wheels, that we do food to deliver," the community kitchen worker said.

She said if people better understand what a collective kitchen is, they will be more equipped to support those in their community — or even take part in one themselves.