MELBOURNE: Recipes from the residents of Loxton Lodge, November 2007

This cookbook was a joint project between Cultivating Community and Melbourne’s Inner South Community Health Service through its High Rise Support Program and was generously supported by Stonnington City Council.

Cultivating Community is a not-for-profit organisation initially set up to support community garden projects in inner-city public housing estates and now promotes and supports the development of projects like these in the broader community. Access to such a basic resource as soil is limited in the inner city: community gardens are extremely popular, so there are long waiting lists. The only real solution is to create more community gardens — every inner suburb should have one!

The High Rise Support Program aims to improve the health and well-being of tenants at five high-rise public housing estates in Melbourne’s inner south, which includes Loxton Lodge, by offering a rich range of activities to tenants, such as exerciser groups, social activities, community gardens, and educational programs.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Recipes

Soups

• Sandy’s Lam-shank and veggie soup
• Pumpkin soup
• Garden pea and lettuce soup
• Zucchini soup
• Creamy carrot and orange soup.

Main dishes

• Polina’s gefilte fish
• Kaytya’s vegetable pancakes
• Eggplant with capsicum and tomatoes
• Katya’s cabbage rolls
• Vincent’s chilli beef burgers
• Pasta with veggie sauce
• Lyubov c’s mushroom salad
• Dora’s tuna patties
• Klara’s potato cakes
• Vincent’s stir-fried winter vegetables
• Moussaka.

Sweet treats

• Katya’s cottage-cheese patties
• Lidia’s pancakes
• Marija’s honey cake
• Poached pears
• Marija’s white pie.

Sauces & preserves

• Roasted red capsicum sauce
• Fresh chilli jam
• Green tomato chutney
• Pickled eggplant.