Cooking on a Budget

As part of 'Money Week' 2017, Ignite College in South Auckland partnered with the Commission for Financial Capability as part of a community collaboration with the hospitality students, to come up with a menu on a budget for occasions that Pacific island families often have to cater for.

Students not only learned about budgeting but were then able to incorporate the skills that they'd learned in their hospitality programme, combining the two and then the end result was putting on a meal for invited guests from the community and doing a full meal service.  The students came up with the menus, creating everything from the shopping to the budgeting to the cooking.  

Student Support Advisor Romana Fetu said that it's crucial for people to be aware of the importance of knowing about money and staying away from things like debts and loans and getting more into education to get into employment.

"Thats really what the whole focus of today was about and then we've started these conversations with our students in regards to budgeting, money and finances - where to!  where from here?"  

As a practical exercise the Level 4 Hospitality students were split into 3 groups and were given the challenge of feeding a family of ten for $100.  They all decided on the themes - 'White Sunday', Xmas or Mid Winter Xmas plus a family birthday and then all contributed to the menus.  The themes were chosen with Pacific Island families in mind.

We had the pleasure of experiencing the students pop up 'White Sunday' themed menu and this is what they came up with:  

Entree -  Roasted Taro and Raw Fish 

Main meal - Roast pork, kumara, pumpkin, beans, corn, apple sauce and gravy

Dessert - Trifle 

The students catered for 10 but there were at least 15 of us in the room and there was plenty left over for at least another sitting of 15 people.  They found that it wasn't hard to keep under the budget because once they broke everything down they used different cuts of meat and did simple things like buying veges from the markets (Sunday markets in Manurewa) instead of from the supermarket which saved money.

"We hope that it'll encourage people that you can feed many people on a small amount of money"

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As part of 'Money Week' a Pacific Womens Fono was held in Mangere with information on financial services available to Pacific Island families.  Click on the link here to read more.