Scrumptious Bakes & Menu Updates
This week, our Year 5 and 6 food education sessions started somewhere rather special — in the playground.
We headed out to explore some of Dalmain’s new growing areas, where the children were able to see first-hand what had been quietly happening in the soil over the summer. Among the harvest were several courgettes and one wonderfully oversized marrow — a brilliant reminder of just how quickly food can grow when conditions are right!
Rather than simply looking at what we had grown, we wanted to complete the journey from garden to kitchen to plate.
Back in the school hall, the courgettes and marrow were grated and worked into dough for beautiful homemade focaccias. We added red onion, fresh basil and a generous drizzle of extra virgin olive oil before sending them off to the oven.
The result was gloriously rustic: golden, slightly scruffy, wonderfully fragrant focaccia with crisp edges, soft centres and plenty of flavour.
A Plant at the End of Its Season
We also spent some time looking at the basil growing in our kitchen herb garden.
Earlier in the year, the plants had been full of soft, fragrant leaves. Now, as we move into autumn, they are flowering and beginning to produce seed — moving into the next stage of their natural life cycle.
It gave us a brilliant opportunity to revisit seasonality.
We compared our garden basil with the basil arriving in the Bloom kitchen from our supplier. The difference was striking: the supplier leaves were larger, softer and much fuller in flavour.
We don’t always know simply by looking whether produce has been grown under protection here in the UK or somewhere with a warmer climate, but that in itself gave us something interesting to discuss. Different growing conditions, temperatures, daylight and seasons can all affect how a plant grows — and food may travel much further than we realise before reaching our kitchens.
The children could see, smell and taste those differences for themselves.
Grow It. Cook It. Eat It.
This is exactly what we want Bloom food education to be about.
A courgette isn’t just something that appears on a plate. It begins as a seed, grows into a plant, produces flowers and eventually gives us food. That food can then be harvested, prepared, cooked, shared — and turned into something completely new.
When children are part of that whole journey, food becomes much more interesting.
And if that journey happens to end with a warm slice of courgette, basil and red onion focaccia, all the better!
Menu Updates
We’ve also been super-busy tweaking and refining some of our dishes in response to feedback, allergy updates and produce availability. Please check the app to see the latest. All dishes will be equally delicious and nutritious, a few will be presented slightly differently just to speed things up in the kitchen. Please do keep the feedback coming, we love hearing from you all! We’re also starting to gather ideas for our Winter menu, please hit us up with any suggestions that you may have.
Fresh food. Curious minds. Growing together. 🌱