Let’s get cooking

Daniel Lynch, James Gardiner and Connor Cotton, all from Rochdale

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Hopwood Hall College has been getting local youngsters involved in healthy cooking by taking part in a national initiative called Let’s Get Cooking.

The Children’s Food Trust was awarded Big Lottery funding in 2007 to set up and support the first 5,000 Let’s Get Cooking school-based cooking clubs for children and their families. Let's Get Cooking is now the largest national network of healthy cooking clubs in the country.

The College, which has a large and successful catering department, runs one of these clubs. The aim is to promote healthy eating and the students come into the College from various schools in the borough.

Recently, the College was descended on by over 100 local youngsters and their parents when they held a special Blueberry Muffin community event at its campuses in Rochdale and Middleton.

The event was a Healthy Blueberry Muffin Sale with all proceeds donated to Springhill Hospice in Rochdale.

In preparation for the event, the Let’s Get Cooking Club students baked, decorated and packaged blueberry muffins. Then, they set up tables in the College’s receptions to sell the muffins for 50p each. The children were extremely proud of themselves, as they raised a very respectable £66.55 for the local hospice.

Customers were also given the opportunity to decorate the muffins, given information regarding healthy eating and recipes for the muffins were handed out.

Tutor Paul Fino commented: “Hundreds of visitors came to the stands; over 120 people bought muffins and some of those took up the opportunity to decorate them with the help of college tutors and catering students.”