Breakfast club gets a pie maker
A donation to a New Plymouth school breakfast club will help turn leftover food into tasty snacks.
Marfell Community School’s breakfast club has won a pie maker from Love Food Hate Waste, which aims is to get New Zealand to reduce food waste and save money with hints, tips and tasty recipe ideas.
‘‘It’s a great prize for the school because the breakfast club will be able to show the students how leftover food and basic food items can become nutritious and filling meals really easily,’’ New Plymouth District Council waste and compliance lead Kimberley Hope said.
Taranaki Regional Council waste minimisation officer Nadine Ord-Walton said using bread slices to make pies was a definite winner in the waste-reduction stakes.
‘‘Bread is the food item that Kiwis throw out the most, with more than 12,800 tonnes thrown away annually. Leftovers are the second-most wasted food at nearly 9500 tonnes per year,’’ she said.
‘‘We can turn that food waste into meals, which is good for our wallets as well as the environment.’’
New Plymouth woman Tarnz Cowie nominated the breakfast club for the prize because it does so much for the school’s students.
‘‘I hoped that the pie maker would mean hot, healthy breakfasts that the kids could eat on the run, and could even possibly use at lunch if the need arose,’’ she said.
Breakfast club used the pie maker for the first time on Wednesday and coordinator Ray Tucker said the food went down a treat with the children.
‘‘It’s terrific. We’ll be using it probably every day. The children can help make the pies, it’s so simple. They can decide what goes in the pies. We just demonstrated it today and the children loved it.
‘‘We had spaghetti pies,’’ he said. Breakfast club runs from 8am to 8.45am each school morning with support from many organisations including the New Plymouth Red Cross, Fonterra and volunteers from the community.