FCC brings students together to learn and share accessible recipes in a hands-on cooking experience
The McMaster Students Union's Food Collective Centre hosted its January cook-along event on Jan. 29, 2025, at The Hub. This event is part of a monthly series designed to promote food literacy, build community and demonstrate how meal preparation for students can be accessible.
This month's cook-along, held in collaboration with Maccess, emphasized making cooking more accessible for people with disabilities. During the two-hour session, participants prepared a coconut chickpea curry, chapati flatbread and a cucumber yogurt salad.
Christine Lin and Harry Li, the FCC's Community Kitchen coordinators, explained to the Silhouette that the event is open to all members of the McMaster community, including undergraduates, graduate students and staff.
"We call it a workshop, but we're really just cooking together. It's a collaborative opportunity to learn from each other, whether participants are experienced or just starting out," said Lin.
We call it a workshop, but we're really just cooking together. It's a collaborative opportunity to learn from each other, whether participants are experienced or just starting out.
Christine Lin, Community Kitchen Coordinator
Food Collective Centre
The recipes chosen for the workshops aim to reflect the FCC's core goals for diversity and accessibility. Each month, the recipes are selected so as to use seasonal ingredients an array of dishes from diverse backgrounds.
Recent events featured dishes like vegetable stir fry and tacos, showcasing a medley of global cuisines. Lin and Li highlighted the effort to ensure that recipes accommodate dietary restrictions, with vegetarian modifications always available.
In addition to cooking skills, participants gained practical knowledge such as meal planning, budgeting and food safety. According to Lin, the workshops also address food literacy, teaching participants how to find ingredients and prepare nutritious meals.
The cook-along initiative aligns with broader efforts to address food insecurity on campus, including the upcoming Food Accessibility Initiative referendum. The referendum proposes increasing the MSU organizational fee by $6.50 to fund the Soup & Bread Initiative, which would provide free soup and bread to students throughout the academic year.
Lin and Li expressed their support for the referendum's proposals, noting that these measures would help relieve the hunger of many students. However, they also emphasized that addressing food insecurity requires a more comprehensive and long-term approach that goes beyond immediate relief provided by such programs.
"Food insecurity is a complex issue. It's great that people will be able to have a free lunch every day, but what about the rest of the day? Are they able to cook by themselves at home? . . . We have to think more holistically," said Lin.
Food insecurity is a complex issue. It's great that people will be able to have a free lunch everyday, but what about the rest of the day? Are they able to cook by themselves at home?
Christine Lin, Community Kitchen Coordinator
Food Collective Centre
Lin and Li noted the importance of increasing the variety and accessibility of nutritious food options on campus. They emphasized that it is not just about providing meals but also about ensuring that students have access to fresh, affordable ingredients that empower them to cook at home.
They also explained how food insecurity differs among diverse groups of students. They suggested that graduate students, for example, can struggle to afford nutritious ingredients. Meanwhile, first-year students may not face the same immediate need to cook due to living in residence but could still benefit from learning basic cooking skills to prepare for future independence.
For students unable to attend the cook-along, Lin and Li also mentioned that the FCC is developing a cookbook featuring workshop recipes. The cookbook will include a variety of cultural recipes contributed by volunteers, aligning with the FCC's focus on representing McMaster's diverse campus community.
Looking ahead, the FCC has plans for future cook-alongs, including a February session in collaboration with the McMaster Community Garden and the McMaster Nutrition Club.
The closure comes in the midst of security and funding issues
The campus community fridge, a vital resource for students, faculty and community members needing free healthy food options, officially closed its doors on Aug. 30, 2024. The decision came after mounting financial challenges, repeated security breaches and ongoing difficulties in maintaining adequate staffing.
The fridge, operated by the Student Wellness Centre, had been a food resource located behind Mills Library for over two years. It provided free, nutritious food to anyone in need, including students, staff and members of the surrounding community.
For many students, the fridge was essential to help provide food amid the rising cost of living. In an interview with The Silhouette, PhD student Val Flores, expressed how the fridge had been a great help throughout their time at McMaster. "It came at a time in my life when I didn't really have a lot of money," said Flores.
It came at a time in my life when I didn't really have a lot of money.
Val Flores, PhD student
Flores, who was diagnosed with diabetes in 2023, shared the struggles of eating healthy with expensive grocery prices and limited food options on campus. "Having the community fridge so I could make my own meals and deal with my own condition . . . It helped me a lot," said Flores.
The McMaster Community Fridge announced on Instagram that the service would be closing as of Aug. 30, 2024. The statement cited "logistical challenges" as the reason.
The community fridge was established in 2022 by a group of third-year student volunteers who wanted to address food insecurity on campus during a sustainability course project. The Student Wellness Centre undertook the project and assumed responsibility for stocking, maintaining and monitoring fridge services.
SWC Program Coordinator Jack Chen provided a detailed account of the challenges plaguing the community fridge initiative in recent years. Funding had become a persistent challenge, with the initiative relying heavily on monetary and food donations. "The years following 2022 showed a pretty exponential decrease in funding from donation . . . we were not able to secure the kind of additional funding needed to support the fridge on a sustainable basis," said Chen.
The years following 2022 showed a pretty exponential decrease in funding from donations …we were not able to secure the kind of additional funding needed to support the fridge on a sustainable basis.
Jack Chen, Program Coordinator
Student Wellness Centre
Staffing and volunteer support have posed further challenges. "We have lots of student volunteers who work on the project and love being part of it . . . But without a dedicated [paid] staff member, it's been challenging to manage everything together," said Chen.
In addition to financial difficulties, security concerns have significantly impacted the fridge's viability. According to Chen, the fridge has faced incidents of theft.
"In the past 12 months, we've experienced quite a few security breaches," said Chen.
These incidents have also highlighted the difficulty of maintaining a free-access resource in a public space while balancing the need for security and safety. Ultimately, the combination of these issues led to the difficult decision to close the community fridge.
Although the community fridge itself will no longer be in operation, the mission to address food insecurity on campus will continue through the Food Collective Centre, a service funded by the McMaster Students Union. The fridge and freezer from the closed community fridge will be repurposed to support the FCC's operations, expanding their service operations to offer both non-perishable and perishable food items.
The FCC, newly located on the 3rd floor of the HUB, has traditionally focused on non-perishable items. This expansion will help maintain the balanced and nutritious offerings previously provided by the community fridge.
"I'm super excited by the expansion of the FCC services to include perishable items. This will continue to help us serve our members and help alleviate food insecurity on campus," said MSU Vice-President (Administration) Adam El-Kadi.
The SWC will provide an initial $1,000 in financial support to the FCC and will evaluate further donations based on the success of the first year of operations.
Organizers of the community fridge have expressed their commitment to supporting those in need, albeit in a different format.
"You can still access the same number of resources, if not more, in this new space [FCC]. It's just in a different spot and a different format," said Chen.
They hope that integrating the FCC into this new model will provide a more sustainable and secure method of distributing food, addressing the challenges that led to the fridge's closure.
As the campus community adjusts to this new food distribution blueprint, the HUB will officially launch the new service space on Oct. 1. Organizers encourage students and staff to stay informed by following @msu_fcc and @mcmastercommunityfridge on Instagram.
C/O Ester Chow
The Silhouette: Please introduce yourself.
Ester Chow: My name is Ester Chow and I'm the Assistant Director of the Food Collective Center, the FCC. I go by she/her pronouns. I'm in my fourth year of [the health sciences program] in the Child Health specialization.
What is the FCC?
You can think of it as the food bank on campus. It's a major hub for anything to do with food. We have a community kitchen program where people can learn to cook food. We have food boxes where you can get a big box of fresh produce for $15. A big part of what I oversee is the Lockers of Love program where people can access food and health items confidentially. You basically just fill out a form. You don't have to put your name on anything. Then, within two to three days, we'll send you a locker code and you can go pick up your food and health items.
What inspired you to join the FCC?
In my second year, I participated in one of the community kitchen workshops. It was a five- or six-week thing where you get to go and cook with other people and learn a new skill. One thing I really appreciated about it was the community aspect. There's a lot of great initiatives and clubs off campus but it can feel a little bit like working in isolation. With this community kitchen, it wasn't about learning by myself — we were a team. In fourth year, I also realized that I was missing something that really made me feel like I was making a big difference. I joined a lot of clubs and was really interested in research, but also just doing a lot of things I was told I should be doing. In my fourth year, I wanted to do something for myself. I really liked the FCC and even though it was kind of a new experience, I just went for it.
In fourth year, I also realized that I was missing something that really made me feel like I was making a big difference. I joined a lot of clubs and was really interested in research, but also just doing a lot of things I was told I should be doing. In my fourth year, I wanted to do something for myself. I really liked the FCC and even though it was kind of a new experience, I just went for it.
Ester Chow, Assistant Director of the Food Collective Centre
Can you elaborate on the community aspect?
When Morghen, the Director and I were choosing the [executive] team and volunteers, we really wanted to give people the opportunity to join us whether or not they had experience at all. We wanted to give everyone an opportunity because food isn't really something that you necessarily have to have a lot of academic or personal background with; it's something that you have to have every day. We also really try to think about the community impact even in small things. For example, we have Trick or Eat, which is our Halloween food drive. We emphasize that it's not food that goes just towards [McMaster] students, but also to the nearby community. So we set up bins in Westdale and Emerson and all around campus. People who can access Lockers of Love, which is what most of the donations go to, are not just [McMaster] students. It can be for someone who's affiliated, it can be for a family member. So that's another part of how community plays a role. It's not just the students that are affected by food insecurity, but it's a deeper intersectionality that also affects a family, affects their ability to do well in school [and] their ability to exist as a person.
What continues to inspire you in the FCC?
I think that the opportunity to oversee Lockers of Love made all of these intangible numbers about food insecurity much more real. For example, something simple is in first year when you have a meal plan. You kind of expect everyone in residence to have the same amount when you're living together. That kind of thought can be really damaging when you go into second or third year and you're living on your own, you're working and cooking for yourself and you see other people are getting takeout all the time or you're struggling to get fresh foods. There are all these things that you compare yourself with. That was a big part of contextualizing everything through Lockers of Love when I realized how many people were using it. Another thing that Morghen and I continued from last year is the e-card version [of Lockers for Love]. Just because we're slowly transitioning to in-person [classes], it doesn't mean that those cards aren't valuable to people who might not be able to get to campus. I've just learned so much from people who are contacting me and saying that Lockers of Love has helped them and how we can make it better. That's the biggest part. For me, I'm just doing this as a job and I really enjoy it. But for some people, they really rely on this to survive. So being able to connect with those people, even though I don't know their names, makes me feel that this campus needs the food centre.
