Morning all,
Bill – amazing news, so happy for your family. Have come home with 4 packs of Craster kippers which are delicious.
Ladies, have just caught up on the thread as have been away a few days. Re. cooking in schools. This is actually my job! I live and work in one of the most deprived areas in the country. My company bids for community funding from the council to go to different ‘target’ schools in the area to teach parents how to cook. We work out the costings of different foods, put the parents through their food hygiene cert, and teach them easy healthier recipes over 10 weeks. It helps that the recipes are things like chicken nuggets (chicken egg wash, breadcrumbs) and pizza. There have been a lot of Change for Life initiatives which alienate the parents, because the food is too different to what they are used to, having familiar food, but teaching them the basic cooking processes, means a lot of my parents can now make better choices for their families as they have some confidence in the kitchen.
I had a very young mum on a course last year who was determined to do the best for her child. She had been brought up in foster care, and had never been taught to cook. She watched a well known tv chef and thought that she would try to re create a *simple* chicken dinner. She and her toddler ate the meal, then she threw everything leftover away, as she did not know if it was safe to eat and was terrified of giving her child food poisoning. She spent ยฃ20 on all the ingredients, which was over half of her weekly food budget.
We are inundated with schools wanting our course, and sometimes we are oversubscribed with parents wanting to join, but as far as I am aware, we are one of only a very few companies that do this.