Cooking together as a family

I am delighted to be working with the Reepham Learning Community and extended schools programme which is very active in providing a wide range of activities for their local community. My involvement is in running a series of family cookery workshops. These take place on a Saturday morning and one parent comes along with either one or two children and we cook a main course and a dessert. The idea of these lessons is that not only do both parents and children pick up valuable cooking skills and learn some new recipes, but it provides a perfect opportunity for quality family time.

I know from experience that it is very hard to find time to cook with your children and when you do, the phone will ring, someone knocks on the door or at the last minute you are roped into being a taxi service! These lessons take place away from the home so there are no distractions and I think this is a major part of their success. Also, as we have up to nine families cooking together at once, there is plenty of opportunity for exchanging ideas about cooking and all sorts of other issues either over the sink or the mid-morning cup of coffee.

Of all the different lessons I do, these are some of the most rewarding. We have Mums cooking with sons, Dads cooking with daughters and every other combination. Some of the parents are experienced cooks while some very rarely get in the kitchen. But when the children come back the following week and proudly tell me how the whole family sat down to eat their meal, I know this is definitely the way forward.

Katrina is a self-taught cook who is passionate about passing on an interest in food and basic cooking skills to families and children. She owns a small business called Kitchen Fairy Godmother in Norwich which provides cooking lessons, children’s cooking parties and a variety of cookery workshops.