TWO community groups are cooking up a storm by working together.

Our Community Kitchen and Lammermuir Larder have teamed up to provide home-cooked frozen meals for people in the community.

Volunteers at Our Community Kitchen, which was set up to tackle social isolation, have provided a selection of home-cooked meals.

Chicken curry, fish pie, lasagne, cottage pie and chicken casserole are all on the menu and will be supplied to people using Lammermuir Larder.

The Bridge Centre-based group was set up at the beginning of February with a view to supporting people who find themselves in crisis or financial difficulties.

Food packages can be sent to people who are referred to the scheme, with volunteers working hard to set up a number of partnerships with other local groups.

The latest step is to provide frozen meals for people who do not have cooking facilities.

Linda Mitchell, volunteer co-ordinator, was delighted with the success of the partnership.

She said: “When the Lammermuir Larder launched in February, we offered meat vouchers for our local butcher Kevin Watt.

“We wanted to offer people who liked to cook the option of fresh meat as well as the canned goods we deliver.

“We are in the process of producing recipes to help and encourage cooking.

“In April, we will be providing laminated recipe cards which will build into a book. They will go out weekly with deliveries.

“Very quickly it became apparent that there were people who had situations where they couldn’t cook, perhaps having become homeless, so how could they feed themselves?

“We approached Our Community Kitchen to discuss providing home-cooked frozen meals; they were delighted to support us in this initiative.

“So we took delivery of the meals at the start of March and we are now supplying them to the people we support.

“This was a great opportunity for a local charity and a community group to work together to support local people.”

Elaine Gale, founder of Our Community Kitchen, was delighted to help.

She told the Courier that 100 meals had already been prepared and were ready to be sent out.

She said: “It is a pleasure to be doing this. We are helping our local community by doing this and we do fresh food so it seemed to make a lot of sense.

“There seems to be quite a few people out there who are struggling financially.”

It is not the only partnership struck up by Lammermuir Larder.

The group is also working with Roots and Fruits to offer people fresh fruit and vegetables.

Mrs Mitchell added: “To ensure everyone we support has the chance to improve their diet, last week we began including fresh fruit in orders; as we move into warmer weather, we hope to include salad vegetables.”

For more information, email team@lammermuirlarder.co.uk or search for Our Community Kitchen on Facebook.