SG Volunteer

Tastier food and a wider range of meals are on the menu at four local charity homes as part of a new community outreach project launched yesterday.

Eat Well With Us is a partnership between the Pan Pacific Hotels Group and the National Council of Social Service (NCSS).

Pan Pacific hotel chefs will share healthy recipes and culinary techniques with resident cooks at AWWA Senior Community Home in Ang Mo Kio, Bright Hill Evergreen Home in Punggol, Melrose Home Children’s Aid Society in Clementi Road, and Singapore Cheshire Home in Serangoon Way.

Recipes include steamed fish fillet with pumpkin puree and healthy garden vegetable soup. They take into account residents’ health needs and the participating homes’ costs.

Eight hotel chefs will rotate around the four homes in pairs and work with their cooking teams. At Singapore Cheshire Home, residents were treated to new recipes cooked by chefs including Mr Andy Oh of Pan Pacific Orchard.

Ms Ong Tui Fung, 58, a cook at Singapore Cheshire Home, said: “I have learnt to cook with different techniques and seasonings to make the dishes more flavourful.”

Singapore Cheshire Home resident Loke Peng Mun, 43, said: “The food was delicious. I particularly enjoyed the eight treasures rice.”

NCSS president Hsieh Fu Hua said: “We hope to make this nationwide.”

Source: The Straits Times

Online travel agent, ZUJI Singapore, is partnering with The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund (SPMF) and MasterCard to help under-privileged families and is appealing to the public to participate in their fundraising campaign.

Called ‘A lot like love’, the campaign seeks to help ensure children have enough money for their every day activities and also opportunities to travel and have fun experiences.

As part of its campaign, over 40 children were treated to free tickets to the Beauty and the Beast musical at Marina Bay Sands MasterCard Theatres. The kids were selected from SPMF’s beneficiaries.

They also enjoyed exclusive meet-and-greet passes with the actors after the show.

Ms Chua Hui Wan, CEO for ZUJI Singapore, said the force behind the collaboration was to make sure all children are able to experience special events and see unique places.

These opportunities “should not be hampered by background or financial burdens”.

ZUJI Singapore will be surprising two low-income families from SPMF, who have not had the resources to go overseas, with all-expenses paid holidays around November this year.

Ms Chua said the free trip was to give two families the gift of travel without any financial worry.

ZUJI will be donating $0.50 for every new Facebook “Like” on their ZUJI Singapore’s Facebook page until Nov 1, 2015, and $2.50 for every booking made with a MasterCard during selected periods.

Source: Asiaone

At one charity home, a set number of dishes are rotated throughout the month, with only slight variations to the menu from month to month.

At another home, the standard menu is rice, with one meat and one vegetable dish. On weekends, the rice is swapped out for porridge for a change.

A hotel group is trying to add some spice to the dull meal routines at charity homes by sending their chefs to teach the homes’ cooks a thing or two about whipping up tasty, healthy and cheap dishes for their residents.

The initiative by Pan Pacific Hotels Group, in partnership with the National Council of Social Service (NCSS), will involve chefs from the group’s five Singapore hotels and restaurant going to four charity homes to teach them eight recipes they have created.

Over two months, the eight chefs will make four visits to each charity home to teach them these new dishes, which take into account their budgets for food and dietary needs of the residents at each home.

These homes are the AWWA Senior Community Home, Bright Hill Evergreen Home, Melrose Home Children’s Aid Society and Singapore Cheshire Home. In total, they have more than 600 residents.

Some of the recipes they have come up with include garden vegetable soup, minced chicken dumplings and eight treasures rice — and each meets the S$2.50-per-resident budget.

Ms Ong Tui Fong, 58, resident chef at Cheshire Home, said: “I have worked here for 17 years, and I am so bored of the recipes. I have (even) tried to go online to find some new ones.

“This is a good opportunity to learn some new recipes from a big chef. Learning from the Internet is not as good as somebody teaching you in real life,” she added.

Mr Hsieh Fu Hua, president of NCSS, said: “Eating well is living well. We welcome businesses to come forward with skill sets that can benefit the social service sector.”

Future plans for Pan Pacific Hotels Group’s initiative include refresher sessions for the respective homes to reinforce their culinary skills, as well as a second project run with a new group of charities next year. It has not decided on the list of charities.

As part of the initiative, Pan Pacific Hotels Group has pledged to donate 0.5 per cent of total sales proceeds from five of their all-day dining restaurants for the months of June and July. The donation will also be matched dollar-for-dollar by the Government under the Care & Share Movement, led by Community Chest.

The funds raised will be used to help the charity homes purchase equipment and supplies that will enhance their kitchens and meal preparations.

Source: TODAY