Smitten Kitchen; A Thyme to Eat

Project summary

This project is about cooking, nutrition and food but it is intended to use this as a means to develop community cohesion, social inclusivity, vocational training and sharing best practice with a wide cluster of schools both at home and abroad and certainly we hope to reach out well beyond the confines of this project. The schools involved in this project all have a strong commitment to developing culinary skills. For example the Croatian partner won a nationalTourism Reward “Anton Štifanić” assigned to the School in 2004 for its exceptional contribution to tourism in the Republic of Croatia shows that the institution was ranked the leading vocational school in the field of tourism and catering. It offers its students a vocational studies cooking and confectionery. The English school has delivered courses in hospitality and catering and as part of the students’ practical assessment they completed everything from making the dishes, designing the room layout and serving the customers. We have two interwoven objectives. The first being to increase the knowledge our students have relating to food preparation and the importance food plays in our societies, we want our students to see how a healthy style will include good food. Sharing food is a time honoured method of sharing our hearts and so we will pay special attention to one another's eating habits, products and traditions. A subsidiary output of this strategy is to help our students acquire an armoury of skills which will be freely transferable to other curriculum areas as well as to the workplace The second objective is to improve social inclusivity and community cohesion from the project. We have explored strategies to involve the wider community as well as fellow professionals across Europe Central to the project is sharing recipes from our regions, making them in our schools and collaborating on a multinational cook book. To supplement the book we would like to create a calendar with traditional dishes for local festivals. We will prepare a structured and graded library of food technology, catering and hospitality teaching resources which can be used by colleagues working in schools beyond the project. During each Learning event, students will actually prepare the food in the menus for guests invited from residential care homes for the elderly or for parents and their children who attend feeder schools or special needs schools. We will also explore food organisations such as "Meals on Wheels" so that our meals can be shared with house bound memories of the community and there carers. The project will link to other curriculum areas such as physical education, in this aspect we will look at nutrition for sport, Mother tongue and Modern Foreign language teaching where our students will practice writing their recipes in a clear format which can be read by an audience. The cookbook will be illustrated with photos, proverbs, drawings, photos so this will link in with Art and media. participating students will also build a project web site available on mobile devices as well as publishing a regular e-magazine. The project is aimed at involving approximately one year group per school, the students will be aged between 9 and 16 depending upon the school and will include the full ability range. The Italian school have already established links with various organizations such as local authorities, Slow food Association Farmers association Agenform, environmental association Amici del Po, Local parents association Inalpi, Food and nutrition Secondary School of Barge, Associazione Naturalmente interconnessi, Gastronomic Sciences University of Pollenzo The project envisages involving as many stakeholders as possible to provide its sustainability in primary and secondary schools. Workshop about peasant cuisine- food as a cultural heritage Food festivals in each region (in Istria e.g. festival of dried ham (location: Tinjan), truffles (Livade), mussles (Location:Santa Marina, Vabriga), potatoes (Gramperijada-Kaštelir), watermelons (Rošini), chocolade (Buje), wine (Buje), olive oil (Buje), asparagus (Buje), apples (Kaldir), honey (Pazin)- making of a map or application about food festivals.) The traditional production and preparation of cheese, olive oil, truffles, asparagus, dried ham Revitalization of typical food products/vegetables which were present in the past in project regions but disappered as the time passed by (e.g. in artichokes in Istria) Food as a cultural heritage of our regions makes our local identity specific. Ethnographical lecture about the connection between people and food in project regions. Workshop about traditional food and preparation in the past Research about food history and connectivity between food and people Food Roads in Istria- wine roads, asparagus, truffle, etc. Participants in a workshops will be Retired people, the community of people with special needs, Open university