As part of the Wye Food Festival, Wye School put on an Intergenerational Ready-Steady-Cook event. This involved teams of two students and two ‘Wye villagers’ working together to come up with an original dish using outdoor camp-cooking equipment. Beverley Jarvis (Piper) author of ‘Credit Crunch Entertaining’ gave the group of 12 students and 12 villagers a demonstration of cooking a stir fry. The teams were then given 1 hour to come up with ideas for a product, using the table of ingredients provided.
Even though in true British summer style, the heavens decided to open upon us, the students and the adults had a great time in each other’s company, and came up with some amazing dishes. Tables were swiftly relocated inside and cooking resumed! The judging was conducted by Beverley Jarvis, Amanda Amor (HR Southern at United Learning) and Nathan Foyle (a member of Wye School Student Voice). The winning team was Eden Mendham, Mikey Gent, Melissa Pugh and Barbara Wilson based on their dishes originality, taste, presentation and teamwork.
Eden Mendham (winner) ‘ I was crossing my fingers hoping we would win and when they said our name I was jumping up and down with happiness. It was the best day ever J ‘
Beverley Jarvis (Demonstrator and Judge) ‘Thank you for allowing me to be part of such a lovely afternoon. My friends also have been enthusing about it. I loved the fact that despite the heavens opening everyone carried on in true British fashion!’
Geoff and Shelia Chapman (Wye Villagers) ‘What a marvellous time it proved to be! The children were incredibly polite, interested and impressively well-informed about food. The rain was a blessing in disguise it…added a swathe of considerable humour and further underlined the team spirit between Oldies like us and children a fraction of our age.’
Dave Martin (co-organiser) ‘Everybody commented upon what a delight the students were to be with, enthusiastic, confident and curious, a real tribute to the safe, supportive environment that you have created. It epitomised intergenerational activity at its best – we all felt and enjoyed being part of a team’.
Amanda Amor (HR at United Learning Central Office) ‘The food challenge in the afternoon was the highlight for me! Using an event like this to engage the community as well as it being innovative and making the learning so much fun was great to see… the food tasted good too!!’
The event was a thorough success and we look forward to doing it again next year! Our special thanks goes to the Beerling Foundation who gave us the funds to buy the outdoor cooking equipment, Ripple Farm Organics for the donations of vegetables and Lucinda Pethick for donating the Wye tea towels which were given to all participants and CPFC/ Wye PC for funding the consumables.