Virtual Cooking Experiences at the Orchard

We have recently launched a new virtual cooking experience at one of our homes, The Orchard, to teach children how to cook healthy family meals. The cooking experience was launched after Professional chef, Ollie, hosted a Christmas Cook tutorial in December, teaching the children how to make Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. The cooking classes to help teach our children how to cook some basic meals, but also to get them thinking about meal planning, shopping, and food preparation.

Ollie focused this series of cooking on making healthy versions of the children’s best-loved comfort foods so that in the future they have the knowledge to be able to cook for themselves. Cooking is an important life skill and crucial to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, it is also an important feature of family life and can be a great bonding experience. Following the initial tutorials, children have taken more of a keen interest when staff are meal planning and cooking at the home.

Due to the current restrictions, the live cook-offs have mostly taken place virtually. This immersive experience is just one example of how we are working hard to ensure the children in our care have a wealth of different experiences to boost their confidence and skills. In the future, we hope to be able to roll out cook-offs to all our homes, whether that be virtually or in person.