Celebrating good food!

On bank holiday Monday (3 May), Whalley Range played host to the Celebrate Festival at St Margaret's Primary School on Withington Road. Events kicked off at noon and ran right through the afternoon until 6pm. Cracking Good Food was there with the Cooks On The Hop gazebo and we had fantastic fun helping festival-goers make their own lunch.

It was another great chance for Rob (below, in the white pinny) and Juliet (above, also in the white apron) to show off their Szechuan sauce stir-frys. There was an abundance of fresh produce to choose from, and hungry participants eagerly selected what they fancied, duly peeled, chopped and tossed their veg'n’tofu around the woks, and threw over coconut, pineapple and sesame seeds at the end. Even Gerald Kaufman MP popped by and was obviously delighted by what was going on.


What’s more, Laura and Anghi, two wonderful Year 10 Chorlton High School students, were keen to help out, having loved their time at the wok during Cracking Good Food's launch at Chorlton's Big Green Festival in March. We’re hoping to see more of these two… they're truly inspired chefs in the making!

Cracking Coordinator Adele

Follow us on Facebook!

In case you haven't already checked it out, Cracking Good Food is now on Facebook: www.facebook.com/crackinggoodfood

You can keep up to date with events we have planned, join in or start discussions, or have a shufty at all our fab photos - feel free to tag people you spot! All you need to do to keep in the loop is click on the "like" thumbs-up button at the top of the page.

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.

GUEST BLOG: Taking part in a Cracking Good Food cooking session

By guest blogger RICHARD FROST

Cooking is universal. Everyone has to learn to cook at some point, which is why I find it baffling that basic cookery classes are so hard to come by. So when I was invited to take part in a session organised by Cracking Good Food in Chorlton, I jumped at the chance.

I was one of the first paying punters to have a go at a Cracking Good Food cookery class after stumbling across their launch day at Chorlton's Big Green Festival 2010. Well, I say "paying", but the token sum I handed over must barely have covered the cost of the ingredients. Rock bottom prices aside, I'll admit that another key motivation for signing up was the growling of my stomach as lunchtime beckoned. It was clearly time to eat.


Thankfully, the dish of the day was a vegetable stir-fry – a fabulously quick meal that takes longer to eat than it does to cook. I've made stir-fry dishes plenty of times in the past but I still found this session invaluable thanks to the friendly Cracking Cook and his constant stream of top tips and practical pointers.

For instance, I learned that cutting vegetables into thin matchsticks ("julienne") is better for stir-frying because they cook through quicker. I learned that sunflower oil is better than olive oil because it reaches much higher temperatures. And I learned that mushrooms should be tossed in towards the end because they release water that risks turning stir-fried vegetables into boiled vegetables. All simple things for an experienced cook, no doubt, but useful insights for an amateur like myself.

I was very impressed by my first Cracking Good Food cookery class and I'll definitely look out for their events again in future. It was great value, great fun and a great introduction to cooking something different. But most of all, I reflected as I wolfed down my vegetable stir-fry, it truly was cracking good food!

Richard Frost is a copywriter and press officer who lives in Chorlton. Follow him on Twitter here.

Nutrition, nutrition, nutrition

Last Friday, our Cooking Leaders were guided through the Eat Well Plate (pictured below) with Steffie, a public health nutritionist working for the NHS. Referring to food groups (rather than nutrients), we discussed the importance of balancing our menus with all types of food and talked about how to tailor the Eat Well Plate to be compatible to those on a specific diet, such as dairy-free, or with particular health issues, such as diabetes or high blood pressure. I didn’t realise that white fish wasn’t as oily as tuna, sardines and mackerel or that soya milk has natural oestrogen in it.


We also talked about portion sizes, and it was really interesting to learn that the faster you eat, the less you are aware of the fact that perhaps you’re getting rather full! Our training session also taught us about the Model Of Change, which is the process by which we can alter a habit. It's a wheel that shows the decision-making stages you go through to make a change and relates to almost everything that we do in life: thinking about a change, preparing for it, taking action, making it permanent or lapsing back into old habits. All manner of factors can cause a lapse, and it's perfectly normal; what's important is getting back on track and recognising your potential.

The Cooking Leaders also now know about all the free NHS courses, resources and services that are available to the public and we have phone numbers for health trainers and support groups should we need them. Fascinating. I’d no idea so much was available!

Adele

News flash...

In case you missed it, here's the story that ran recently (Thursday 15 April 2010) in the South Manchester Reporter newspaper, featuring Cracking Coordinator Adele and covering our six sessions with Chorlton Good Neighbours. Click on it to make it bigger!

Cracking video!

The Cracking Good Food team star in this video of the launch at Chorlton's Big Green Festival last week. As you can see, loads of people of all ages joined in with the different cooking sessions and everyone looks to be having a really great time in the Cooks On The Hop shelter!