Announcing the Big Cookathon!

Kents Hill School's Let's Get Cooking Club are excited to announce that this year we will be taking part in the Big Cookathon! On Tuesday 16th March 2010 schools across the country will be competing in the nationwide Big Cookathon. Up for grabs are £3000 of prize money, with the overall winning school receiving £1000 of this prize fund. But there is more to it than winning. This is the opportunity to launch the Let's Get Cooking club at Kents Hill School in a big way. One of the club's main aims is to encourage everyone to cook and what better way to start than by a Big Cookathon where as many people as possible will join in and cook the same recipe on the same day.

To keep it simple and to make it possible for anyone to join in we have chosen baked potatoes as our recipe. In Kents Hill School every child will cook and eat a baked potato on that day, preparing and eating a variety of delicious toppings, but we need as many people as possible to join in with this event. Last year's overall winner had 900 people cooking on the same day but we can beat this! All you have to do is cook a baked potato - either at home, at work or in one of our other locations. Red Hot World Food Buffet have already joined us and said that anyone turning up there on the day can cook a potato. If you are a member of a club, church group or organisation why don't you get everyone involved. We are also grateful to Riverford Organic Food for agreeing to donate potatoes, topping ingredients and man-power for our event. If you or anyone you know would like to sponsor our event by making donations of food or offering manpower then please get in contact with us and we will be sure to give you a mention at every possible opportunity!

Keep checking back here for the last updates and whilst you are here why not fill in our baked potato survey.

So put the date in your dairy - Tuesday 16th March 2010 - and cook a baked potato with us!

Let's Get Cooking Start Up Day

On 28th January 4 Year 2 pupils and the two club demonstrators attended a start up day at Loughton's Heron's Lodge Guide Centre, along with about 20 other schools from the region. After a brief introduction to the club and a "match the ingredients to the recipe" exercise it was time to make the first recipe. Every school was given a smoothie recipe to make and we were lucky enough to be given the task of making the mystery smoothie. This one included 3 ingredients that all the other schools would have to try to guess later at the tasting session. Because it was to be a secret we had to work in the centre's kitchen rather than in the hall with the rest of the school, which was exciting!

The 3 ingredients in our smoothie were to be 2 large tins of apricots, some orange juice and some grated root ginger. In fact, we didn't have a recipe to follow, just instructions to try to make sure that no one flavour over-powered the others. The children gathered together the equipment that we needed and all had a go at using the blender and grating some ginger. We also had to set out 90 plastic shot glasses ready to fill with our smoothie. It didn't take us long to make the smoothie and soon we were back in the hall making a poster to advertise our smoothie, which we had decided to name "The Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine Smoothie".

Then it was time to taste the smoothies that the other schools had made and to decide on our favourite. One school had been given the task of making up their own smoothie but all the others followed recipes from the Let's Get Cooking recipes. The pineapple and pear one was very nice, as was the one we had made but in the end the made up one was voted the overall winner. And did people manage to guess the 3 ingredients in our smoothie? No, a lot of people recognised the orange juice and the root ginger but no one guessed the apricots.

After this it was time to start making our own lunch. Each school was given a different recipe to make. We had the task of making a cheese and chive dip with carrot sticks and some pots of fruit with yoghurt and granola. So lots of chopping involved in this one and a good chance to practice the new knife skills we had been taught - the claw and the bridge grips.

Lunch was served at 1 o'clock by which time with all this food around us and lovely smells we were definitely ready to eat. Now we had chance to sample the recipes that the other groups had made. It was like a tasty party buffet with soup, baked potato, vegetable sticks, dips and tomato tarts to eat to name but a few. Then fruit kebabs and our granola pots for afters.

After lunch we were straight into a food tasting session. A selection of exotic dried fruit were placed in front of us and we had to think about the best words to describe how they tasted. Many of the children certainly had a surprise when they bit into stem ginger!

The final activity of the day was to make an apple crumble to take home to cook. Again we got busy collecting ingredients and equipment and we all had a small foil tray to make our individual crumble in. There was a recipe to follow but we were encouraged to experiment with other ingredients such as cinnamon, frozen soft fruit and honey. Again there was a chance to practice knife skills as the children took turns to peel and chop the apples, and they all had a go at rubbing in to make the crumble topping.

It certainly was a busy day but a very enjoyable one for everyone. We all went home with a crumble but also a lot of new skills and enthusiasm. We are all looking forward to the club starting up after the Easter holidays now.