cooking Platt Bridge
Wigan kids cook up a healthy takeaway favourite in national Cookathon
More than 500 pupils, teachers, parents and members of the community dropped i at Wigan's Platt Bridge Community School to take part in the national Let’s Get Cooking BIG Cookathon 2014.
Each class rolled up their sleeves on Friday 4 April to cook up a delicious pizza recipe along with more than 100,000 people across the country in home kitchens, and in more than 300 schools.
Wigan School kids join a cookathonAssistant head teacher Martin Haskayne, at Platt Bridge Community School, said: “At our school we do a lot with our families to encourage participation and when this also involves fun activities that promote healthy eating it’s a bonus.
“The families really enjoyed themselves making and eating the pizzas and the event really showed how easy it can be to cook fresh, nutritious meals from scratch.
“We run a Let’s Get Men cooking club after school and we had lots of the dads from that along spending quality time with their children, which was brilliant.”
The annual Let’s Get Cooking ‘BIG Cookathon’ aims to get as many people as possible cooking a healthy dish together on the same day.
This year’s recipe was ‘cooked up’ with help from the experts in pizza-making - PizzaExpress, which has supported the charity since it launched its Getting Kids Cooking initiative in 2013 with the aim of inspiring a million kids to get cooking using fresh ingredients. Stuart Owen, a pizzaiolo from the PizzaExpress in Bolton went along to the school to give the wannabe chefs a hand.
Head of Let’s Get Cooking, Maggie Sims, said: “So far, Let’s Get Cooking has helped more than 2.4 million people improve their cooking skills and the impact it’s having at home is huge. We know that 92 per cent of members use their new cooking skills at home, and more than half tell us they now eat more healthily.
“Cooking and eating together are such powerful ways to bring communities together, and that’s what the BIG Cookathon is all about. We’re so thrilled Platt Bridge Community School took part and we want to say a big thank you to all of the staff, pupils, family and friends who made their fantastic event possible.”
Let’s Get Cooking is a national network of school-based cooking clubs run by the Children’s Food Trust charity, which has been supported by an initial £20m grant from the Big Lottery Fund’s Wellbeing programme and boosted by an additional £3.6m grant last year.
Dharmendra Kanani, Big Lottery Fund Director for England, said: “Cooking is a brilliant opportunity for families of all generations to spend quality time together, learn new skills, discover new flavours, and conjure up healthy culinary creations.”
To find out more about Let’s Get Cooking visit letsgetcookingathome.org.uk
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