OS Cooking Club

smitty2702

Hi everyone, I am hoping you lovely OS'ers can help. I work as a HLTA in a primary school and have offered to run an after school cooking club with a colleague for years 5/6 (age 10 & 11) on a voluntary basis.

We have a budget of £2.50 per child which needs to make enough food to feed a family of 4. We have already done this in the past with various baked goods however the children now want to make meals!

Can you help with some suggestions for us, We really want to give this a go to encourage the children to budget and learn to cook.

We should have 8 - 10 children per session and can buy the ingredients for all of them. (Tesco / Farmfoods / Asda / Aldi) but dont want to go to more than 1 place per week. We aim to do 4 sessions to start and see how it goes from there. Could be a main or a filling dessert suggestion. We plan to do 3 mains 1 Dessert. MUST be easily transportable.

thanks in advance for your help.

MandM90

I remember learning to make bolognese in year 5 and pasta sauce in year 7; I think a pasta bake/sauce is pretty hard to mess up, cheap and something that is very useful to learn how to do from scratch!

What about a vegetable soup...instead of blending it, which would probably be a nightmare with 10 year olds, they could just mash the potato a bit at the end. I don't know how long you have but some homemade cheesy rolls and a soup shouldn't be too expensive.

Some sort of pie or pasties, like chicken and sweetcorn, cheese and onion or lentils and veg? The pastry bit would be fun and it should be quite cheap.

Good luck!

blackandwhitebunny

I'm not sure if they're still accepting new clubs but you could get more funding through the 'letsgetcooking clubs'scheme. Google them and you should find a phone number.
Some ones that we have found popular are pasta and meatballs, which we make from sausage meat (cheaper, already flavoured and it stays together) fatijas with mainly veg and a little chicken, macarini in cheese sauce, cottage pie (the kids all seem to love this) chciken and veg pie - made like cottage pie with a mashed potato topping and pizza.
HTH

msb5262

Hi OP,

I'd second the suggestions above - maybe even go with a starting point of minced beef for all your main courses and choose 3 from a bolognese sauce, a cottage pie, a chilli con carne, a tomato sauce with meatballs, a minced beef pie etc etc?
For the pudding you might consider doing a bread pudding (great basic recipe in the last chapter - Leftovers - of Delia Smith's Cookery Course, to be served hot or cold, or maybe a bread and butter pudding. Both dead easy, filling and simple to transport. Alternatively you could do a fruit crumble or fruit cobbler, an Eve's pudding or something like spiced apple cake to serve hot with custard, then eat the leftovers cold.

Good luck, hope the children have a fab time!

HTH

MsB

Smokemeakipper_3

How about scones you can make plain, fruit or cheese. The bonus is they're fairly easy and cheap to make. Otherwise what about a cottage pie? I also second soup, healthy and goes a long way!

babyshoes

A potato bake is easy, cheap and filling - layers of potato, veg, and optionally any chopped up cooked meat you fancy - for example, half a large chicken breast or a couple of sausages or a handful of leftover roast pork is enough for a family size bake! Sprinkle each layer with powdered soup (any flavour you fancy, but avoid the ones with croutons etc), finish with a layer of potato, and pour milk over the top - needs to come about 3/4 of the way up the side. Put cheese on the top if you fancy. Cook in the oven on medium for around an hour to an hour and a half until the sauce has thickened (probably need less time if you are doing it in those disposable foil containers).

I have one cooking for supper tonight with leftover roast chicken and bendy veg. Yum!

smitty2702

Some great ideas, I knew you wouldn't let me down.

Thanks

Butterfly_Brain

Macaroni Cheese
pizza
calzoni
stromboli
bolognaise
mushroom/pea and ham/chicken/sundried tomato etc risottos
sausage plait
Self saucing puddings
Cheats brulee... tin basic peaches, custard poured on top a good sprinkle of demerara sugar and pop under a grill until bubbling.
Crumbles both sweet and savoury
Savoury pancakes
sweet pancakes