More than 50 children from our Juniors age-groups have designed and cooked their very own curry, from concept to consumption, in celebration of National Curry Week!
Teaching children to cook is a fantastic opportunity for them to develop an interest in food which will lead to them learning new skills, exploring new flavours and developing healthy eating habits that will last a lifetime. It’s something we do at The Boathouse Youth routinely across all our programme areas in various different environments.
We want to ensure that our children develop the fundamental skills to cook at home, combined with an interest in eating decent and tasty food. It’s about mixing, chopping, spreading and peeling. These basics will take our youngsters a long way in the culinary world and, most importantly, provide a transferable skill that they can take home.
One young person said: “This is my first time cooking on a hob and cooking chicken. I don’t normally cook at home, but I can’t wait to ask my Mum if I can help. I love this session”.
The children cooked their meals as part of a “Masterchef” styled competition in teams, so the requirement to practice group work, communication and social skills was also of vital importance.
Deputy CEO, Pete Crossley, who was upstairs in his office at our Grange Park Youth Centre said: “Trying to work became impossible today due to the tasty smells coming from the session downstairs. Great to see and hear the pleasure the children get from learning to cook”.
Kayleigh Smith, our Universal Programme Manager, judged the creative concoctions and concluded by saying “Very interesting curries here, nothing more to be said!” – which, we assume, means they were all absolutely delicious!!
