When married couple Nigel and Rachel Stephens decided to change their lives, by leaving the Estate agent business behind to concentrate on what God wanted them to do, things just grew and grew beyond their expectations.
Nigel and Rachel are community workers and members of St Chads church, Romiley. When the lockdown began they wanted to find a way of keeping their youth group connected. They came up with the idea of running an online cooking session called 'Fit and Fed', where they would live-stream themselves preparing and cooking meals in their home kitchen. The first session was watched by 15 families and within weeks the number had grown to 150. The cooking sessions are coupled with fitness sessions that run in the afternoons, with the cooking session being run in the evenings.
When describing the reason behind the popularity of Fit and Fed, Stephen says "It's the cooking together, but it's the spending the time together, and the feedback we get is that when you are eating together, you are talking as a family, which is brilliant.."
Donations from individuals, businesses and the council began to flood in, and it soon became apparent that their kitchen just didn't have the space to store everything. St Chad's church in Romiley offered space in the church that could be used as a food store and distribution centre, which began to look more and more like a commercial depot day by day. Church parishioners kindly volunteered their time to deliver hundreds of food parcels to families in the area.
It all started with cooking and sharing recipes online, but with a few extra ingredients like determination, community spirit and faith, Nigel and Rachael have shown what an amazing idea you can cook up.