Love W
Let’s Get Cooking The Food of
Let’s Get Cooking is turning its attention to children in care, helping to instil a love of cooking in kids from some of the most de prived backgrounds in Britain. Jane Renton heads to Eastbourne to see the work they are doing
e’re in a village hall on the outskirts of Eastbourne for a cookery session run by Let’s Get Cooking for foster and care home parents in the area. The aim is that they hone their cookery skills and learn how to produce a variety of interesting, but economical dishes, designed to appeal to children and more diffi cult teenagers in particular.
The people here today are all women,
save for brave Richard, a foster parent with a conservatively-minded foster daughter, who is resistant, it seems, to
trying out anything new, let alone anything resembling a vegetable. The charity, an initiative delivered by the Children’s Food Trust and funded by the Health Lottery, is pushing at an open door with this audience. All are interested in cooking and all whom I talked to know fi rst-hand the healing benefi ts of getting damaged,
18 June 2013 “The impact of
this on troubled youngsters is massive. It is a
huge boost to their self-esteem”
troubled youngsters to cook. We have a small, but spotlessly clean kitchen in which to operate, as well as a spanking new Kenwood professional oven. We have two great chefs in Sophie Wogan and Mari Polonen, armed with trays of fresh ingredients, enough spices to blow up the town, a variety of fresh and dried herbs and a huge array of cooking utensils. We’re in business.
The session begins with the serious business of muffi n-making.
There’s various fruit ones and a divine raspberry and lemon one. The team I’m part of is making herb and parmesan ones – and of course they’re brilliant, even if I say so myself. This is followed by a discussion of the food diaries kept by youngsters taking part in the Let’s Get Cooking programme. There are wonderful stories, such as Toby, who is so visually-impaired he’s virtually blind, but has worked his way through the Let’s Get Cooking recipe book and is planning to carry on cooking when he goes to university the following year. One of the ladies who runs cookery club caravans as a placement support worker, giving respite to carers, talks of the
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