Catch me hosting Mental Ideas spinoff Mental Love Stories on RTHK Radio 3 with the brilliant Noreen Mir! The weekly strand celebrates unusual love stories and explores the impact of the pandemic on relationships and mental health. The guest list is now almost complete and TBA soon! Catch up on Series 1 of Mental Ideas HERE

Can’t believe Home Kong Kitchen has been baking, collecting and delivering bread and other treats to Hong Kong’s homeless, migrants in crisis and refugees for A YEAR!!!! That’s a lot of dough, amigos!

Thanks to all my homeless friends, incredible team of bighearted Homekongers, and inspirational collaborators and beneficiaries, including Breadline, ImpactHK, Bethune House, Loved Flock, Christian Action HK, Refugee Union and the Mission for Migrant Workers for being part of my first culinary miss adventure!

Here’s a few of my favorite faces and memories from the past year! Happy 1st Birthday Home Kong Kitchen!!!

https://homekongkitchen.com

https://mentalideas.org/home-kong-kitchen

Whether you’re a keen home baker or would like to donate a shop-bought loaf a week, help out as a delivery driver or as an artist on our sustainable bread boxes, Home Kong Kitchen would LOVE to have your support! Please take a mo to fill in the form below or email hello@homekongkitchen.com! Thank you for your kindness and support! 💜💜💜

Last month, I announced my pie in the sky intention of making, collecting and distributing 100 Christmas Gift Socks to the homeless! Thanks to the amazing generosity and support of bighearted Homekongers, I can only ever find one sock and that target was nearly trebled!!!

Thanks to everyone who donated their time, energy, creativity and baking to Home Kong Kitchen in 2020! It’s because of you that HKK is collecting and delivering bread, bagels, muffins and other gifts to homeless people living in unlicensed shelters and refuges most days! We are also making weekly deliveries to Impact HK every Friday!

There are many ways you can volunteer for Home Kong Kitchen: you can bake a difference as part of our community of home bakers, you can make a difference as a bread donator, or you can create a difference as an artist on our sustainable bread boxes!

Thank you for your kindness and support! 💜 💜 💜

Ho Ho Home Kong!

This summer I’ve been on a roll and making a lot of dough! Thanks to the amazing team effort of Ying, Moira, Chriz, Raquel, Mercy, Michelle, Emma and Amy, we were able to donate ALL THIS to Hong Kong charity Breadline! (And this was just Week 1…)

The food waste charity, founded by Daisy Tam Diers, does a cracking job of feeding the homeless, elderly, migrants and refugees living well below the breadline on the streets or in shelters. The charity usually relies on food waste donations from cafes and restaurants, but with most operating restricted hours at low capacity, Breadline and other food waste charities have been unable to keep up with demand at a time it has never been higher. So after reading an article in the HKFP, I rallied a few of the neighbors together to see if we could feasibly bake our own to help the charity continue its work during the pandemic.

For the past couple of months we have made this a weekly initiative and we’d love to have your support! If you’re based in Sai Kung/ Clearwater Bay/ Tseung Kwan O and would like to join our Baker’s Dirty Half Dozen, fill in the form below! We’re all novices so don’t let a trivial thing like experience put you off. My first loaf came out of the oven not just burnt, but on fire! It still tasted pretty good though, once I’d given it a good hose down with the fire extinguisher. 

giphy

We were also able to donate at least 12 shop bought loaves to Feeding Hong Kong, who had received an anonymous tip off about my baking and decided their insurance policy didn’t cover it.

We are now exploring the possibility of setting up an online bakery, Home Kong Kitchen, where you can order home made breads, pastries, muffins and other yummy treats online and we deliver it to your home. We can’t promise it’ll be the best you’ve ever tasted but we can promise every cent we make will be donated to homeless charities. We are also collaborating with local artists to create sustainable bread boxes out of recycled waste with doodled designs and messages of solidarity to our homeless friends.

Roll models

Covid-19: Hong Kong food charity struggles to assist needy as partners suspend donations

疫情已經歷了3波8個月,。如果您沒有工作,沒有薪金,減少了工作時間,缺少食物或生活必需品,請不要讓您孩子們會空著肚子睡覺。不要害怕或尷尬地向我們發送私人消息。我們將竭盡所能幫助您,這可能只是將食品包裹放在您門前然後離開的情況。您不必與我們見面,沒有人會知道。就其他人而言,這從未發生過。請與您所認識並且在精神上和財務上都在掙扎的任何人分享。謝謝!

I’m excited to be collaborating with the Hong Kong Writers Circle producing and presenting a brand new strand of podcasts exploring the timely theme of Masking The City: Hong Kong in Allegory!

Writer Unblocked showcases original short stories, poetry and humor to unlock and unblock Hong Kong’s creative art and soul. While some lucky writers and artists have been feeling creatively inspired by the protests, lockdown and surreality of social distancing, others have been left feeling disoriented, emotionally locked and creatively blocked.

Join me, familiar and debut voices from the Hong Kong Writers Circle as we attempt to ease the ‘blockdown’. The series will be recorded Sept/Oct 2020 and tie in with the publication of the HKWC’s 2020 anthology in November! The first episode will be recorded Sept 14 and feature Chief Editor Nathan Lauer and HKWC Chair Chris Maden.