Expat Danny McCubbin set up The Good Kitchen in Mussomeli, Sicily | The Senior | August 2025 - video Dailymotion

The Senior

Expat Danny McCubbin set up The Good Kitchen in Mussomeli, Siciliy so he could give back to his adopted community.

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00:00I'm just getting together a little food parcel. One of our volunteers, Marco, he looks after

00:14his sister. So I collect all the produce and Marco just does a little delivery. Four times

00:23a week we get the most incredible food from the supermarket, it's surplus food, but for

00:29us it's perfect to cook with and then also for our families the food is really good so

00:34it doesn't get wasted, which is great because a third of the world's food that's produced

00:41is thrown away, which is crazy, and yet you have people that go hungry. From day one we've

00:48had wonderful people from the town who've come to volunteer. A lovely friend called Lara who's

00:57helped from day one and her mum, Calodra, who's just the heart and soul of the kitchen. So

01:03Calodra came to start running our kids cooking classes and then just started making cakes

01:09and biscuits for all our events. It was just beautiful. And so I asked if she would like

01:14to stay and so Calodra cooks for Sunday meal but then all the other events that we do and

01:20is kind of like the good kitchen chef I would say.

01:23Her skills are incredible, she probably wouldn't say that she's a chef, but she can, her cooking

01:29skills are incredible. The other day we had a surplus amount of food, the most I've ever

01:36seen because it was a public holiday for Augusto and it was really hot so we had so much food

01:42and I was really hungry sorting all the food. So Calodra asked if I wanted lunch, pranzo and

01:47I said, si, si. So she made this zucchini soup. I mean, it was just like the best soup I've

01:56ever tasted. And I'm like, Calodra, oh no, bene, molto bene, buonissimo, grazie mille. And she goes,

02:05ma, ma, super zucchini. It was like, it was nothing. It was like, yes it is. It is something.

02:15So yeah, she's amazing. And it runs the kitchen now. So it was always my dream after three

02:22years that I could hand the kitchen over a little bit and to the people of the town and

02:28create jobs. So that's what we're doing. And there's a great amount of trust. So whenever

02:33I head back to Australia and it just runs, it runs beautifully.

02:40As you'll see, the families come and collect the food and sit down and chat to each other.

02:45It's amazing.

02:47Prego, prego. Ciao, ciao, ciao.

02:54So nice. Everyone on a Sunday, people call in to say hello. Yeah, I love that. I mean, that's

03:01what the kitchen's become too, a place for socialization. Every Sunday we do a volunteers

03:07lunch, so family lunch, as they say in restaurants, family meal. And then sometimes, like today,

03:14we're going to have guests that are here, like a lot of tourists looking for houses in

03:18Musumeli. And sometimes I don't get, I like cooking for all the volunteers as a way of saying

03:23thank you at the end of the day. Ciao Enrico.

03:27How are you?

03:28How are you?

03:29How are you doing?

03:30How are you doing?

03:31How are you doing?

03:32How are you doing?

03:33How are you doing?

03:34How are you doing?

03:35How are you doing?

03:36How are you doing?

03:37Okay, Danilo, Simone, no problemo.

03:40Loredano, Danilo, Franco, Nino.

03:43We have around 15 families that we look after every week. And we give them fresh food parcels

03:50on Thursday and Sunday. And what I found was when I opened the kitchen, I always just thought

03:55that we would cook and deliver cooked meals for the families here in Sicily. But because

04:01they're Italian, they much prefer fresh produce because an Italian will have a pot, a pan, a

04:07hob, sugo, passata, pasta, and that's it. You know, the families need the food, they need

04:13the fresh food. And they're not embarrassed to come here because when we first opened they

04:18were a little bit thinking that it was a soup kitchen, thinking that people might see that

04:23they're struggling. But, you know, food is expensive even here. So for us to be able to

04:30deliver food that would have been thrown away is fantastic. We've rescued 18 tonnes of food

04:34in three years, which is incredible. And then we get a lot of families who have little

04:38companions and farms around Musomelli and they deliver acerto, vinegar, olive oil. And

04:44a lot of the kitchen, what we do is become about socialisation and connecting. Because

04:51I think that's what people want, you know, they want a space where they can come together.

04:57And the kitchen provides that. It provides an opportunity for the kids to volunteer. So

05:02we have a whole army of young people that come and work in the kitchen. You know, food is just

05:07the conduit really. But it's the families and the people that are doing the amazing things.

05:12Which is beautiful.

Expat Danny McCubbin set up The Good Kitchen in Mussomeli, Sicily | The Senior | August 2025

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