Woodham Academy’s Let’s Get Cooking club is as popular as ever with record numbers joining this term.
The club is an ideal opportunity for pupils of all abilities and their families to have fun whilst learning valuable life skills and gaining the confidence to cook nutritious and tasty meals from scratch.
Let’s Get Cooking is a lottery funded programme aimed at establishing a national network of cooking clubs with the aim of teaching new cooking skills to more than one million children and their families.
The network of clubs complements the recent re-introduction of practical cooking onto the curriculum for secondary school pupils, as they involve the wider community and encourage children and young people to cook at home and eat a healthy balanced diet.
The club is held on Wednesday evenings after school from 3.30-5pm and runs for nine weeks each term. All family members are welcome to join.
The club has already made some impressive dishes this term including fresh egg pasta using pasta machines, short pastry sausage rolls and a variety of home-made soups.
This is a particularly exciting time of the year. Firstly, club members will be searching the school site for free food such as herbs, blackberries and rosehips so they can make some smoothies or crumbles with what they find. Secondly, they are preparing for Woodham Academy’s annual Christmas meal – on Wednesday 16th December. Friends and families will be invited to enjoy a three-course traditional meal. This festive evening gives pupils a chance to demonstrate the skills and knowledge they have gained over the term. Members will be planning, preparing, cooking and serving the dinner with the guidance of the club’s co-ordinator, Linda Vipond.
“It always amazes me how the students react when I tell them what we are making at the start of the session,” said Linda.
“For example, soups they’re not so keen on, but, by the end of the session they love the product that they have created and will go on to make it at home.”
