Cracking Good Food

We have now delivered cooking sessions at our first conference, in September of this year.

LEAF approached us to deliver 4 cooking sessions on 2 themes to a range of delegates from the farming community,
who were attending their Let nature feed your senses conference in Cheshire.

These sessions formed part of a wider range of activities which the delegates took part in during the course of the day. Time keeping was essential in order for our sessions to fit neatly into the day’s schedule. Our challenge was to teach them how to deliver sessions to visitors to their farms in their own participatory sessions. We delivered 2 foraged food workshops and 2 sweet & savoury pancake workshops during the course of the day
(please see the case study below for more details).

If you are planning an event or conference where one or more cooking sessions might form part of the programme and would like to talk to us about delivering bespoke sessions to your delegates or participants, we would be delighted to hear from you.

Let Nature Feed Your Senses National Conference

Tuesday 6th September 2011 at 10am – 4pm

Let nature feed your senses is a Big Lottery funded project run in partnership between LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) and Sensory Trust.  They are engaging people with nature, food and farming on a network of farms and nature reserves across England.
The project is working with people that currently cannot or do not access the countryside because of age, ability or social situation.

On September 6th, 2011 around 70 people came together for the second annual Let nature feed your senses conference.
We gathered at Reaseheath College in Cheshire and the day buzzed with inspiration!

Speakers shared ideas for delivering powerful visits for people with disabilities, the elderly, and people from areas of high social deprivation.
A range of stimulating questions were tackled; What is distinctive about a sensory rich farm visit and what health and well being impacts have visitors reported? How can elderly people with dementia be encouraged to reminisce during farm visits? How might a host farmer partner with local care providers to utilise personalized care budgets? How can taste be brought into a visit to help connect visitors to the story of their food?

Fiona Danks and Jo Scofield authors of the ‘Going Wild’ series of outdoor play books led us into the world of imagination, clay, masks, fires, dens, puppets and firelit night adventures, all sourced from natural materials. Many of the delegates were familar with their books and this was the time to work with Fiona and Jo on taking play onto farms.

Cracking Good Food ran cookery workshops in Reaseheath’s brand new state of the art Food Technology Centre (hence the white coats and blue caps). Often taste is the most  difficult sense for a host to bring into a visit, and both workshops seeked to address this, with one session themed on foraging run by Jesper and a second on seasonal sweet and savoury pancakes with Beth! Tasty!