Duchess Meghan’s foreward from Together: Our Community Cookbook: The Hubb Community Kitchen
“The Hubb Community Kitchen was opened after the Grenfell tragedy, offering women who had been displaced and the community around them a space to cook for for their families…the kitchen provided an opportunity to cook what they knew and to taste the memory of home, albeit some had recently lost…I immediately felt connected to this community kitchen; it is a place for women to laugh, grieve, cry and cook together. Melding cultural identities under a shared roof, it creates a space to feel a sense of normalcy – in its simplest form, the universal need to connect, nurture, and commune through food, through crisis or joy – something we can all relate to… Through this charitable endeavour, the proceeds will allow the kitchen to thrive and keep the global spirit of community alive.” (Together: Our Community Cookbook: The Hubb Community Kitchen, Clarkson Potter, NY., 2018)
As the ladies cooked together and shared their recipes, a community connected, healed and looked forward to the future.
The Duchess, who has long advocated for women, was inspired by how the Grenfell women cooked together and shared recipes; and as a community connected, healed and looked forward. The women told the Duchess that the kitchen only had funding to open two days per week. Duchess Meghan then suggested that they create a cookbook, which would help to fund the kitchen; and allow it to be open more days a week. The Duchess of Sussex has long empowered women at a grassroots level. She championed the cookbook project as a way of ensuring the kitchen can continue transforming lives and communities through cooking.
- Cookbook
Symbol to all communities and has encouraged cooking together for life and joy.
- More than 50 recipes in Together: Our Community Cookbook: The Hubb Community Kitchen were contributed from women, whose community was affected by the Grenfell Tower fire.
- Cookbook is a New York Times Best Seller; has sold more than 130, 000 copies.
- Contributors of Together: Our Community Cookbook: The Hubb Community Kitchen has won a André Simon Award. The book received a Special Commendation which showcases the best of contemporary food and drink writing in UK for past 40 years.
The proceeds from the sale of the cookbook has enabled the Hubb Community Kitchen to
- Renovate the kitchen
- Serves 300 meals a day, 7 days a week, 109,500 meals a year to retirement communities, homeless shelters & domestic abuse survivors.
- Hubb Community Kitchen has global influence with contributors from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean.
- Since the cookbook has been published, there have been 23 Qualifications in Food Safety & Hygiene obtained by Grenfell community volunteers.
- Through empowerment, the ladies have been inspired to lift themselves and others, as they climb and embarked on their own projects.
Projects such as:
- A project to combat domestic violence.
- A project to deliver food to women on maternity wards.
- A project to produce healthy snacks for children.
“We were instantly caught up by the extraordinary vision for this project with the women of the Hubb Community Kitchen. Every woman who has contributed a recipe to this book has also contributed a fragment of their lives and memories. Each dish tells a story of culture, family and a sense of home.” (Baroness Gail Rebuck, Chair of Penguin Random House, 2018)
