Warwickshire News Mine

An experiment using OpenCalais and Google Maps to tag news stories

Never too Hurley to learn to cook

Children from Hurley Primary School and their parents and grandparents have been part of a cooking class learning healthy cooking and recipes.

11 families attended the school after hours for the six week course where they were given all the ingredients to cook a healthy meal for the whole family, along with ingredients and equipment to take away to cook a further healthy meal at home.  Two teaching assistants from the school were also on hand to help.

Organised by the cluster co-ordinator for the Kingsbury and Anker Valley cluster, the lessons were a collaboration between Warwickshire County Council’s Extended Services team, North Warwickshire Borough Council, which funded the lessons, and Warwickshire NHS PCT.

Among the meals that families learnt were spaghetti Bolognese, chilli con carne, chicken fajitas, Chinese stir fry fish with vegetables, healthy lunchboxes and vegetarian options. 

Comments from the new cooks were complimentary.  Laura Temple, mother of Jamie and Liam has claimed that she has already been buying and cooking healthier foods whilst the father of Paige Gladders is now ’more confident about trying new ways of combining foods’.  One happy cook, who asked to remain anonymous, said ’food tastes nicer when you’ve cooked it yourself’.

June Evans is the cluster co-ordinator for the area.  She was delighted with the families’ commitment to attend the six sessions and is seeking to put on further sessions in all the other schools in the cluster, as well as further sessions at Hurley Primary School.  She said:  “It has been well chronicled that poor diets can lead to a range of problems for children from obesity and the health implications that has to behavioural issues.

“Helping families to get into the habit of creating healthy meals is a way to stop this from happening.  All of the families who attended the sessions have got much more idea of how to simply and cheaply make nutritious meals and with more than one member of the family attending, they are more likely to continue with the good habit.”

For further details of Extended Services activities in the area, visit http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/extendedservices