“A newfound skill and passion for cooking”

With the 2020 summer holidays approaching, we all knew that this summer would be different to previous years. But with a little extra planning, lots of social distancing and some very useful gazebos borrowed from Bradford Markets, we managed to hold our planned cooking sessions for families in the Bradford area.

Some numbers

Volunteers

We’ve had some great support from our young volunteers this summer. These are young people who have initially joined us for cooking classes and decided they wanted to help others out with subsequent sessions. Huge thanks to Ella, Sufyaan and Abigail who were a great help with setting up and clearing down sessions, assisting people on classes (at a distance of course) and helping to sweep away the constant puddles during a very rainy summer!

Feedback

We received some great feedback from parents. Some were initially concerned with how we might maintain social distancing, but with a one way system in place (only allowing one family in our indoor space at a time), face visors for staff provided by Bradford Academy, and a separate table for each family group, people said they felt comfortable – and even booked more classes.

We also ask for feedback at the end of each session to find out what people have learned and what they’ve enjoyed (or haven’t if that’s the case). So many people commented on the knife skills they’d gained – teaching safe chopping is a key part of our sessions. Trying new ingredients is important too, and we got loads of positive comments saying that people had tried a new food – and liked it!

One parent has been in touch, saying:

A newfound skill and passion for cooking has been developed in an eight year old who has never used a knife in the kitchen nor been near the cooker. He has developed excellent safe knife skills and gained an in-depth understanding of healthier eating with the aid of the healthy food plate diagram. He has learnt about the care required when working with raw meats/poultry and how to hold the pan whilst cooking.

We’ve also had great feedback from Ross and his family who has been attending sessions for a number of years now:

Ross had a great time cooking and eating as usual. He loves to come and take part. He’s been coming for a few years now. He’s made some amazing dishes once again and he started making things at home and always wants to mix and stir and of course taste when i am cooking at home. His chilli and hummus dishes went down really well here too. We look forward to many more cooking adventures with you.

We’re now looking to the future and planning our next sessions, we’ve got a lot to do, especially keeping up to date with all the changes to social distancing rules and new guidelines, but we hope we’ll be able to provide more classes very soon.

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We look forward to seeing you all soon.