Recipe Exchange

Jack’s Story

A key part of life in the Tab for me has always been around food, and eating together. Eating together has been crucial in building relationships within the church family, and also drawing others in. One of my favourite memories of this happened in ‘Recipe Exchange’. This was a gathering that developed quite organically when Dave Urwin was minister, and involved people from different nations showing each other how to make traditional food from their country of origin, and then the group eating it together.

On this particular evening we were being shown how to make bhaji’s from Pakistan. The chef, knowing my love for hot food, stuck a full chilli in the middle of one of the bhaji’s for me. However, as the food was served, one of the elderly ladies present grabbed the infected bhaji, immediately biting into it. We watched in terror, dreading the outcome. However, we had failed to appreciate our senior friend’s life spent in India, and the chilli had no affect on her at all. She smiled, licked her lips, and took another!