Arriving rather soggy (apart from someone who drove… no name shall be given), 6 Leeds Good Gymer members made it to Kirkstall Valley Development Trust’s retail unit on Wednesday evening.

Unsure what we were going to be doing, we were pleased to find there was a big task ready and waiting in the form of moving a large shelving unit from the front to back of the unit, restocking and organising it so that the food bank service could be condensed into a smaller area and the café / community space could be fully reinstated to its pre lockdown state.

With Tom’s initiative and uncanny knowledge of how to dismantle the shelving unit, it was relocated in a matter of a few minutes and so we set to stacking and organising what seemed like thousands of tins of soup and veg.

As we looked at the mountains of can, jars and bags of food, it seemed the odds may have been stacked against us and having moved the cream of tomato, vegetable soup, beans, tinned carrots and tinned potatoes, it was noted that there wasn’t mushroom for more to go on the shelves. However, as usual many hands made light work and we whizzed through the task with 20 minutes to spare at the end.

An education in types of soup, Jenny (and indeed most of us) got to learn what Mulligatawny was. A soup which originated from South Indian cuisine and has curry powder in. Sounds yummy!

Towards the end we were all left in awe of being shown a catering size tin of baked beans and Katie posed the question of how many portions of beans on toast did it equate to, which Minnie reckoned was 20.

I am very excited to announce the numbers have now been crunched and it can be confirmed that a 2.6 Kg tin is equivalent only to 6.3 ordinary tins which by all accounts each equate to 2 portions of beans on toast (unless you are very greedy).

Therefore, the massive cans would provide approximately 13 meals of beans on toast! We can all sleep soundly in the knowledge of that now.

Then back into a torrential downpour we went to finish the session with a run up Kirkstall Hill.