Jimmy Doherty supports church recipe book
 ON OUR PLATE is a book of home-made recipes, personal inventions and adaptations collected by members and friends of St Matthew’s church, Ipswich. It is a collection of tried and tested family favourites, each with a background story.
The project started in September 2010 when two members of the church’s Mission and Social Action Group, Pat Hall and Imogen Catchpole, had the idea of producing a recipe book to sell to raise funds for Christian Aid.
Imogen says “Each recipe has a family story or anecdote attached to it. I think my favourite is the one about the dog that ate the cake, and gave her name to it thereafter – the Cornish family involved have been making ‘Jill Cake’ since the post Second World War rationing, when the loss of a cake to the dog would no doubt have been all the more disappointing!.”
“Then there’s the recipe in threes made by blind Aunt Pootie; the Hungarian family chicken dish, and the toffee crispies that consider the fact that Mars bars seem to get smaller each year.”
The team say the exciting thing about raising money for a specific project, in this case to bring agricultural assistance to Burkina Faso, one of Africa’s poorest countries, is that it attracts matched funding from the EU. So every £1 raised becomes £4 for Christian Aid and its partner organisations.
Jimmy Doherty from Jimmy’s Farm has contributed a Foreword to the book. He compares the ease of farming in our temperate climate with the struggle faced by farmers in Burkina Faso who toil “in this most desolate of environs to cultivate the land and create a future for their communities”. We should, as Jimmy tells us, feel proud to support this amazing project.
Some recipes in the book are clearly children’s favourites, ripe for cake stalls and tea times. Others are more grown-up dishes, and some are designed to deal with vegetable garden gluts at the productive times of year.
Imogen again “With lots of colour photos to inspire you, it’s an enticing read, and soon you’ll be rolling up your sleeves and getting busy in the kitchen. You could probably cook nothing but ON OUR PLATE recipes for a full month and not tire of the variety. There’s fish, chicken, lamb, vegetarian; soups, salads, meats; creamy puddings and baked puddings; squishy brownies, tarts and tray-bakes. If you have any home-made recipes you think should be in, let us know and perhaps there’ll be a second edition!” 
500 copies of the book have been printed, all with wipe-clean laminated covers and spiral-bindings, which means they lie flat on the work surface
The book costs £7:50 and can be obtained from St Matthew’s Church Office, The Fletcher Centre, 2 Crescent Road, Ipswich, Tel: 01473 251630.
Quantities are also available on a sale-or-return basis for churches, community groups, toddler groups or neighbourhood shops.
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