The Singing Chef

This is one of my all time favourite sandwiches... I remember my first time!

I was in London with my mum; she loved London! Before her MS really took hold, she would always take us to see a show and a meal in the school holidays.

She was a single mum of 3 and she’d go to the box office and haggle for seats for us. She was an absolute legend! My first club sandwich was at Planet Hollywood in Leicester Square. It was epic and I’ve tried to recreate it many many times. It had bacon and smoked turkey with coleslaw and salad arranged between 3 slices of bread. A club sandwich can be anything you want it to be, but it must have 3 slices of toasted bread and pay attention to every aspect.

Method

Season your tomatoes and dress your salad leaves. Grill bacon in the air fryer for 7 minutes. Toast the bread in a panini grill. Then butter each slice on both sides. Then added chicken, BBQ sauce and cheese between two of the slices and returned to panini grill. In the third slice of bread I made a BLT with a generous spread of mayo.

This BBQ chicken club has its own purpose, and that is to commemorate our stunning new garden at O’Connors, complete with a wonderful brick BBQ (much like the one I had at home as a kid) for Nanny Wilson’s Kitchen!

So if you can’t get outside to BBQ, do this instead:

Ingredients

2 slices of toasted bread. Sliced chicken breast. BBQ sauce.

2 rashers of bacon. Cheese.

Lettuce. Tomato.

Put your sandwich together and pop in 4 cocktail sticks in a north/ south/east/west fashion and cut your sandwich into quarters. Soooooo good!

Serve with chips or crisps or if the weather turns again - soup! Oh and if you can’t be bothered, I got you... You know where to find me: O’Connors in Hall Street.

ISarah is a singing and vocal coach based in Chelmsford and offers singing lessons to people of all ages and abilities. She has a brand new website at www.chelmsfordvocalcoach.co.uk, or you can email her at sarahmtfood@gmail.com. Sarah is also the chef at Nanny Wilson’s Kitchen in O’Connors in Hall Street.

To read this magazine and the City Times online, go to www.issuu.com/itsyourmedia www.mlct.org.uk enquiries@mlct.org.uk

The Coronation of King Charles is fast approaching, and The Community Station and the Copper Pot Café will be holding a Coronation Viewing Party with cream teas. We will have a large screen in the marquee to watch the event and enjoy this once in a lifetime spectacle. You can order a cream tea from the Copper Pot Café where there are three priced cream tea boxes: Small - £10, Medium - £12 and Premium - £14.50. Contact the Copper Pot Café for details and orders (use contact details below), details also online at www.mlct.org. uk.

Cream teas will also be available to order and take away to enjoy the coronation at home.

Another upcoming event is our Well-Being Day on 24th June. We will have a range of organisations covering all aspects of keeping our mind, body and soul fit and healthy. More details will be posted soon so watch our social media and website.

Our first meeting of Men’s Shed will be taking place in April. This will be to talk about what space we need, what sort of projects we can make on-site and how the project will be funded. To get an idea of what it’s all about and whether you might be interested, have a look at this website at www.menssheds.org.uk. We will be initially working with Chelmsford Council for Voluntary Service (Chelmsford CVS), and Chandler who are our local builders merchant. Please get in touch if this is something you might be interested in.

Also starting soon will be a seated exercise class as well as a regular well-being class called With You In Mind which we will feature next month. We hope to see you soon, if you do come along, bring a friend too and enjoy a treat at The Copper Pot Café.

07434 678 999

Chelmsford Lions Club would like to say a huge thank you to the people of Chelmsford for all their generous donations over the festive period, when Santa and his sleigh collected more than £12,000 for a range of local causes.

To celebrate the achievement with all involved, the club held a social evening on 22nd March at their new meeting place of St Augustine’s Church in Springfield, attended by Deputy Mayor Bob Massey and

Deputy Mayoress Ali Massey. Representatives of charities supported including Farleigh Hospice, Barrow Farm RDA, Helen Rollason, Families in Focus, Parkinson’s, CHESS homeless, New City Girls WI and Havens Hospice, as well as several of the drivers and volunteers who were involved with the collections.

Lions business meetings take place at 8pm on the second Wednesday of every month at St Augustine’s Church, and the club can be contacted on info@chelmsfordlionsclub.org.uk.

Chelmsford and District Diabetic Youth (CaDDY)

Chelmsford and District Diabetic Youth (CaDDY) recently held their first virtual duck race and raised £604.56! CaDDY members and supporters purchased ducks for £3 each, and gave them great names - everything from In-duck-ana Jones and Sirius Quack, to Ed the Duck and Ducky McDuckFace.

The money raised from this fundraiser is being spent to provide hospital care bags. CaDDY gives these bags to children and their families when the children are diagnosed with type-1 diabetes. The bags contain products for use in hospital and information that helps families come to terms with the diagnosis. The bags have been highly praised by families, and are just one of the incredible ways in which CaDDY supports type 1 children and their families.

Created in 2019 by two families whose children had just received their type-1 diagnosis, CaDDY has grown an incredible amount and now supports families from hospitals in Chelmsford, Colchester, Harlow, Basildon and Cambridge.

For parents and carers, it is common to experience anxiety, burnout and depression from different parenting challenges. CaDDY enables parents and carers to share information and support each other, including through their social media networks. For children, it is

Snowboarding

Recently I had the privilege of spending a week in Switzerland with some close friends snowboarding. It was an awesome time spent among the amazing mountains of the Jungfrau region.

The vast beauty of the snow-capped mountains, with glaciers wedged firmly in place, was a source of great enjoyment, exhilaration and refreshment, whilst also being a place of potential danger. The friendships I enjoyed had been formed over a number of years as we had journeyed together, not just to mountain locations, but also through a sense of shared pain and experience.

Often I find that the closest friendships I develop are those with people with whom I have journeyed either through shared experience, or because of the commonality of our experiences. The latter is true for myself and this particular group, who I first encountered as a result of a difficult period of personal loss and grief in my life. As is often the case, I found common ground with these two men - one a plasterer and the other a pastor - but in a completely unexpected way. Journeying together over the years, the two of them have influenced me as equally I have them.

They helped to enable me to convert from skiing to God’s preferred sport of snowboarding, and I helped them in enabling them to see common to experience embarrassment due to the high demands of monitoring blood glucose levels, denial and resentment coming from a ‘why me’ syndrome. CaDDY provides a safe space to meet with other type-1 children, to share experiences and to form incredible friendships.

In a typical year, CaDDY organises parkour workshops, bowling, crabbing, beach days and picnics in the park for type-1 children and their families. Last year’s summer picnic was so successful with 26 families attending! The next events planned are an early years’ group (for children 6 and younger), archery (for children 8+) and a teenage driving experience (for children 13+). All events can be found on the CaDDY Facebook page (www.facebook.com/ ChelmsfordDiabeticYouth).

If you have a child with type-1 diabetes or know a child with the condition, the CaDDY group is here for you - please get in touch via any of the following: caddydiabetesgroup@gmail.com www.facebook.com/ChelmsfordDiabeticYouth www.instagram.com/chelmsford_diabetic_youth that being someone who has faith in God doesn’t mean we have to compromise who we are.

I love that following Jesus has had such a profound effect on how I am, as I have realised who I am as a result of knowing him. This, in turn, is what I cherish most about my friendship with these two guys, both men who love Jesus and desire that others know how much Jesus loves them.

I hope that you too can experience both the joy and love that God has for you through the friendships you have and the journeys they take you on.

Blessings

Pastor James Bell

Youth & Community Pastor @ Tile Kiln Church