Happy and healthy New Year!

After the overindulgence of the festive season, diet and exercise are at the top of most people's list of New Year's Resolutions. Why not let Cracking Good Food help you kick off a happy and healthy 2011 - our latest classes start on 15 January and run on Saturday late mornings and Tuesday early evenings until 15 February.

The best guacamole you'll ever eat, from Fernanda's Mexican Tapas class.

The Cracking Cooks encourage more home cooking through hands-on classes - by cooking together and then eating together, we pass on food knowledge and share ideas for tasty, affordable meals. We’ll show you how to eat meat ethically, fish sustainably and veggie and gluten-free easily - all the ingredients we use are seasonal, organic and fairtrade where possible, and bought from Chorlton’s fantastic independent retailers. Adele Jordan, who set up Cracking Good Food a year ago, says: “The support and demand for cooking sessions has been astounding. People really enjoy getting stuck into good food when they’re shown what to do, and it’s so social too!”

Get on a bit of a roll in Breadmaking for Beginners run by Rob!

As we're subsidised by the Local Food Fund (National Lottery) and The Co-operative Membership, we can offer our three-hour classes for just £20 per person (or £15 for unemployed people, students or over 65s). The new Saturday classes run between 11am and 2pm while the Tuesday classes take place 6pm to 9pm, all at Chorlton High School on Nell Lane. Places are limited to 12 so everyone has the chance to prep, cook and eat - and ask plenty of questions!

Kate's Thai green curry will knock your socks off in our Spicy Vegetarian session.

Breadmaking for Beginners (with Cracking Cook Rob): Saturday 15 January
Breadmaking Advanced – Sourdough (with Cracking Cook Rob): Saturday 22 January
Breadmaking for Beginners (with Cracking Cook Rob): Tuesday 25 January
Spicy Vegetarian (with Jam Street Café’s Kate): Saturday 29 January
Breadmaking Advanced – Sourdough (with Cracking Cook Rob): Tuesday 1 February
Curry Up (with Kath from Unicorn Grocery): Saturday 5 February
Marvellous Meat (with Beth of Electrik’s Guestrant Wild Food fame): Tuesday 8 February
Mexican Tapas (with Unicorn’s Fernanda): Saturday 12 February
Risottos Demystified (with Kim from Islington Mill Café): Tuesday 1 March (please note new date)

Bookings can be made online at http://crackinggoodfood.org/ (our website is having a little spring clean, so bear with us!), via email (fiona@crackinggoodfood.org), by telephone on 0845 652 2572, or in person at Hickson & Black’s deli on Barlow Moor Road in Chorlton.

Vouchers are also available if you fancy treating the food-lover in your life!

GUEST BLOG: Sensible snacking

By guest blogger AVRIL POVAH

The menu on Wednesday 1 September for the Chorlton Good Neighbours group meeting at St Ninian's Church consisted of quick and easy snacks - but nutritious as well as tasty. We began the session making Mexican refried beans to use as a healthy topping on a variety of different crackers and breads (great for a quick lunch!), together with chickpea houmous. Both were excellent sources of protein and fibre, and really delicious.



Next we prepared one of Elvis Presley's favourites: peanut butter sandwiches. These were orginally cooked in butter or lard and topped with grilled bacon, but we opted for a lower fat version using sunflower oil (see photo below). They went down a storm, the piece de resistance of the day, and a true legend of all sandwiches! As we munched on them, Cracking Cook Lorenzo regaled the group with tales of some of Elvis's other famous dietary quirks, telling us how he was renowned for cravings such as Fool's Gold Loaf: a loaf of Italian bread filled with a pound of bacon, peanut butter and grape jelly. His mother, Gladys, said he had "sandwich after sandwich of this favourite".


We washed the food down with some delicious lemonade homemade using real lemons: tangy and very refreshing. Lorenzo was by now in full flow with all his stories about organic food growing and everyone went home with some great ideas and plenty of tips on how to follow a healthy diet.

GUEST BLOG: Chorlton Good Neighbours puddings cooking session, Wednesday 2 June

By guest blogger AVRIL POVAH


Adele was on her jollies en France – ooh la la - so I stepped in to coordinate a cooking demo for Chorlton Good Neighbours at St Ninian's Church on Wilbraham Road. The session was on themed puddings, which Rob, our Cooking Leader, executed wonderfully, helped along by our super cooking assistants, Kate from Jam Street Cafe and Donna from Chorlton High School.


At first, I was worried that it seemed rather an ambitious menu for a two-hour session, but despite all the chopping, fruit stewing, mixing and baking, we pulled it off! Our menu consisted of Apple and Pineapple Sponge, Rhubarb and Apricot Crumble and Semolina Pudding with Prunes, accompanied by lashings of homemade custard. Each had plenty of fruit content, but as they were also laden with fat and sugar, we explained straight away that puddings aren't nutritionally balanced and we cannot live on sweet dishes alone (I wish), but that they're to be eaten as a treat and not over portioned.


The sponge was delicately spiced up with cinnamon, while the hint of ginger in the crumble really made all the difference in tasting at the end of the session - truly delicious. Rob was a brilliant raconteur, relaying passionate stories of ingredients and origins of food, together with his vast knowledge of working in the food industry.


You can join Rob for his sessions on Cooking With Fish The Sustainable Way on Tuesday 8 June at Chorlton High (6-9pm) and Saturday 12 June at St Ninian's (11am-2pm). Meanwhile if the thought of puddings has tickled your fancy, Kim will be running a session for the general public on Tuesday 15 June at Chorlton High (6-9pm). All details on the June and July sessions, which cost just £15 for three hours (£10 concessions), are on the Cracking Good Food website here.

Avril is on Cracking Good Food's team of Cracking Cooks and will be running a public session called Tasty Salads With Pulses'n'grains on Tuesday 22 June at Chorlton High (6-9pm). She also works for Nutrimens and The Sunshine Cafe in Sale.

GUEST BLOG: Leading a session with Chorlton Good Neighbours

By guest blogger CRACKING COOK LORENZO

Had an exhausting but great two hours doing a cooking demo for some of our local seniors from the Chorlton Good Neighbours group last week. I did the spiel, jokes and anecdotes while everyone else did the cooking.


The theme was microwave miracles. We made:
a) granola with porridge oats, syrups (the date syrup went down well; the rice syrup only so-so) and lots of dried fruit. This was a success as it used ingredients the audience could relate to and only took three minutes in the microwave.
b) mini-muffin pizze. One from a 1978 cookbook. A winner - see the photo of the finished product below (and before cooking above)!
c) chickpea salad. Now I thought everyone ate chickpeas but 75% of the group had never even tasted one before. Not a winner, unfortunately - maybe a step too far.


Lorenzo is on Cracking Good Food's team of Cracking Cooks. He also writes a blog, Grocer's Kitchen, about cooking, eating and grow your own.