In May 2015 Bristol hosted the FOOD CONNECTIONS festival, a fantastic celebration of real food and the people who produce it. I was invited to come and cook as part of the EATDRINKBRISTOL section.
Working alongside Jo Ingleby (BBC Food and Farming Awards cook of the year 2015) together we were demonstrating what could be created from a simple veg box (kindly provided by The Community Farm). Jo's Malaysian style vegetable curry was incredibly fragrant, wafting over to tempt the audience whilst I created Arabic flatbreads and a zesty carrot, celeriac & poppy seed salad.
It was a great chance to try and show how exciting, tasty and simple vegetable cookery can be and it seemed to go down well with the crowd who came forward to taste our creations.  
This video gives a feel of the whole festival, and includes a section on Jo and I.

Jo and I were working with Darran Maclane as part of The Bristol Good Food tour to try and take simple, healthy food out into communities around Bristol.  Please do contact us if you would like us to come to your area or event, we are passionate about making a difference in Bristol in this Green Capital year.

Since January 2014 I have been working alongside Barny Haughton and Gretchen Doering  at Square Food Foundation in Bristol, planning the COOK-IN' -SCHOOLS programme. The programme aims to teach teachers how to teach cookery and we hope to show teachers how essential cookery and food is in schools and how easy and accessible it can be in the everyday classroom.

This month we have been out to Knowle Park Primary and Victoria Park Primary cooking meatballs with tomato sauce. The response from teachers, pupils and management has been extremely positive and we are hoping that this grant funded pilot project can be rolled out to other schools in Bristol later in the year.

Please contact Squarefood Foundation if you are interested in the project as we would love to hear from you.
Knowle Park Primary School where we have been working has made a great slide show of the cooking workshop. Follow this link.

I am a bit of a fiend for hunting through local charity shops, particularly their book shelves, and I’m always on the lookout for cook books.



On a recent visit I came across this gem.  I am aware of Mark Hix through his OYSTER BAR cookbook which includes some simple but fairly luxurious recipes, and the idea of him co-writing a kids cookbook really appealed to me.

The best thing about the book is the fairly substantial introduction where Mr Hix shares his own thoughts on feeding children and educating them about food. I share in his view that “children do prefer to eat good food but a lot of them don’t get the opportunity.”  If a child is brought up on ready meals and takeaways then most real food might taste bland because it isn’t full of salt and sugar.  If a child is only allowed manufactured food rarely and is used to freshly prepared food that is less salted, then their taste buds are allowed to enjoy the variety of sometimes subtle flavours that the world of food contains. Mr Hix has other great advice for parents trying to feed their children to the best of their ability including:

•  Giving your child a baguette to chew on as they go round the supermarket to avoid the whines for rubbish food.
  
  
• Serving your child only a tiny amount of a new food but let them ask for more.
  
  
• Eat out in ethnic restaurants where a child is expected to eat the same food as an adult, not a child’s menu made of beige, over-salted rubbish shaped into a child friendly form.
  
  

The recipes range from soups, stocks and purees through to puddings and drinks and include many family favorites such as real fish fingers, shepherd’s pie, a range of simple tasty pasta dishes and some great salads; all family friendly and aimed at helping you feed the best to your brood. One particular dish I am desperate to try is the crispy pigs tails; not minced pork shaped into a tail shape and covered in day-glow breadcrumbs but the real McCoy. I have traked down a butchers in Bristol (Ruby and White) that will source the tails for me. They only get 3 whole pigs in a week so they will freeze the tails and keep them for me till I get a dozen

I will let you all know how it goes.

My friend Dave from The Brewery Band was chatting to me last night and the subject of kids and cooking came up.

He shared how his daughter was furious after ordering these cookbooks. She has a son and a daughter and wanted to get both of them into cookery and understanding food. She had bought these books from the Usborne series  because she considered Usborne to be a trusted name in children's books.

Furious? Have a look at the ridiculous choice of contents for the girls book. Now, I haven't actually handled these books myself but have had a look at the book previews on amazon, where you can see the list of recipes and get the general feel. The boys book seems actually pretty good. There are better books out there but the recipes seem to represent a fairly balanced diet.  The girls book? I am flabbergasted. What kind of message is it trying to portray? Girls only care about sweet things, pink and baking? 

What do you think? Please leave your comments.

Today I had the real pleasure of joining Gretchen (from Canada via Italy) at Ashton Vale Primary to take  Hyo-Jeong and Bo Ram (both food students from South Korea)  on a tour around the school's gardening and food facilities.

I also had a chance to chat to our Korean visitors about food activities they had been involved with back home.



HELP NEEDED PLEASE:

If any Primary School teachers out there could spare 5 minutes, Hyo-Jeong would really appreciate it if you could fill in the questionnaire below and email it to me at kidsandfood.co.uk where I can pass it on.

O.K. , so the picture above suggests that this is the normal kind of Daily Mail story - a knee jerk reaction to possibly a very small incident in a school - but further reading of the story shows that there is a lot more going on here.  All text in red is taken straight from the Daily Mail article.


A six-year-old boy who went to school with a bag of Mini Cheddars in his packed lunch has been suspended for four days after teachers said it contravened its healthy eating policy.

Riley Pearson, from Colnbrook, near Slough, was excluded from Colnbrook C of E Primary School after teachers discovered the snack and called in his parents.

After a meeting with headmaster Jeremy Meek, they were sent a letter telling them Riley would be excluded from Wednesday until Monday because he had been 'continuously breaking school rules'.

No further information at this point on what rules he has broken. Is he being excluded for other misdemeanours?

The school, which was placed in special measures after Ofsted inspectors deemed it 'inadequate' in 2012, introduced a healthy eating policy at the start of term.

This seems to suggest that OFSTED wanted the school to set up the healthy eating policy. I wish OFSTED did judge schools in their healthy eating but they don't. At present they worry about the test results and not about the whole child. That being said I do know the new guidelines from OFSTED do include commenting on the atmosphere in the dining room (not the quality of packed lunches and school meals).

A letter was sent to parents saying that from 14 January, packed lunches should be 'healthy and balanced'.

It would be interesting to see what this letter said. Schools I have worked with in the past have found ways of explaining to parents what  is expected without being confrontational. I have noted the word "should" is from the Mail not the school.

Parents were told: 'Chocolate, sweets, crisps and fizzy drinks are not allowed. 

Well said, but then again a balance is also needed. At Ashton Vale, because chips are still served on a Friday for school meals, we allow crisps on a Friday. Everything in moderation.

'If your child's lunchbox is unhealthy and unbalanced they will be provided with a school lunch for which you will be charged.'

That is a bold step to take, but can easily backfire as you are offering confrontation. Other options include doing a snack swap (where children swap an unhealthy snack for a piece of fruit in the school) or do as I do "I know you (the child) didn't pack this lunch and I know you didn't want that packet of crisps in there, so put them away and take them home."

Today Riley's mother, airport shuttle worker Natalie Mardle, 24, said: 'We just do not see how they have the right to tell us what we can feed our son.

Not a right, but as a teacher I always put the child's health first and if I feel I can improve their life I would do my upmost to do that. Would Natalie be saying "The school does not have a right to tell us how to teach our son to read. The school does not have a right to tell us how to teach our son to play sport."?

'If anything, Riley is underweight and could do with putting on a few pounds.'

Good to see his parents are concerned about his health, but have they been advised that he is underweight by a health practitioner or is it just their own view.

Miss Mardle, who is expecting her fourth child, added: 'Having a balanced diet also includes eating some carbohydrates, sugars and fats

Absolutely, but balanced in the correct ratios, as in The eatwell plate.

'Surely the headteacher has better things to do with his time than search lunchboxes?'

"Searching lunchboxes." That is a phrase that does upset me. I have come across schools where the Head / staff have indeed searched lunchboxes secretly . This is wrong and should be stopped. My own approach, and what I have introduced into Bristol Healthy Schools is to ask the child if they would like to show their lunchbox. This could be so they could get a raffle ticket for the lunchbox promotion (if they want to be involved) or to help us complete a lunchbox survey being undertaken by fellow pupils. In both cases the child is welcome to say no and that is fine.

But, has the Head searched the lunchboxes? How did he find out that Riley's lunchbox wasn't up to scratch?

Riley's parents, who both work at nearby Heathrow Airport, will be attending a meeting with the head on Tuesday to learn whether their son can return to the 290-pupil school.
Headteacher Mr Meek said the school had one family who 'do not agree with the policy.'
He said: 'We have had a wonderful response and the parents and children are on board and pleased with the way the policy has been impacted on our pupils.
"We cannot talk about individual circumstances, but there is one family who are not prepared to support the policy.
'We are in discussions with them about how we move it forward. We have excluded [the pupil] for four days due to lack of support for the policy."

At Ashton Vale  we have never excluded a pupil due to their parent's views or disagreement with our school policies. This really doesn't sound like the school are doing their best to move it forward.

'It is to avoid putting the children in a difficult situation. If the policy is not being abided by, then that potentially harms that pupil."

So often we have had incidences where a child has not followed our healthy eating policy at Ashton Vale, and it has never harmed that pupil. They have never been given a hard time by fellow pupils. That being said, so often the reluctant healthy eaters are swayed by peer pressure when they see that their classmates are all getting praise for their eating habits and performing better in school and at sport.


As a teacher, I was all ready to support the school and think that their was more to this story than was being reported. Were they being misquoted?

 Then the letter from the school to the parents is shown.  Exhibit A:

This is where my support for the school falls away.

"Threatened to send Riley to school with just a banana and water." Now, that isn't really something to be worried about is it?

I have been threatened with "I have a large machete at home and I can bring it to school." (comment directed towards me at a parents' evening).  Mr Pearson's behaviour is not threatening.

But what concerns me most is that Riley, who seems to have been mostly actually forgotten in all this, is being punished because of the attitude of his parents. Now, whether you agree or disagree with the parents stance, what should not be overlooked is that Riley is being excluded because of his parents. Is that right?

If you are in a similar situation to this at your school PLEASE contact me, I can help, I can offer ways around this situation so that you don't end up in the same scenario.

Contact me at kidsandfood@outlook.com 07906 633 167

Also Ashton Vale Primary have all of the lunchbox resources you need to encourage a healthy packed lunch on their website.  They can all be downloaded for free.  what are you waiting for?

When I first saw this programme advertised I thought “Here we go, more faddy diets.”  but I was impressed by how this programme presented the arguments and investigated the different diets.

The conclusion from the programme was that people don’t crave fat OR sugar, but fat AND sugar combinations – the ultimate ratio being 50/50 fat and sugar as found in cheesecakes, ice-cream and other processed foods. 


An anti-faddie diet programme, and one that was needed, particularly by me. For the last few weeks I have been trying to improve my mental health by going on a very low-carb diet (following the GRAIN BRAIN idea by David Perlmutter ).  Did it make me feel any better? No.  Was I eating healthier? In some ways yes (lots of fruit and veg) but in many ways no (the lack of carbohydrate left me a bit listless and didn’t improve my Crohn’s symptoms).

I love to bake bread, and I am fascinated with the whole idea of sour dough loaves, where no yeast is used and the natural yeasts in the flour and bacteria in the kitchen affect the bread.

Over the years I have stuck to a traditional Pain Rustique  recipe from an old bread book I have had for years. It takes about a week and provides good tasty results (though sometimes a little chewy).

I have just started a new loaf, and henceforth he shall be known as BERNIE!  The recipe is from The Flour Station and is taken from the Leon, breakfast book.

I will keep updating this blog with photos of Bernie's progress.