National School Meals Week gets off to a flying start!

National School Meals Week certainly got off to a fantastic start at S. Anselm’s Prep School.

Monday

On Monday, the theme being “get tasting”, the children were treated to a selection of pizza toppings at break time and a smoothie to taste. T he pizza topping selections were pizza 1 - Spinach and Ricotta, pizza 2 - Spicy Salami and pizza 3 - Tuna and Sweetcorn. The children also accompanied the pizzas with a peach and passionfruit smoothie. The pupils all took part in filling out the all important questionnaires to enable further developments to happen on the school menus for the future. It was great to see pupils trying spinach and ricotta for the first time and actually finding out that they really did enjoy it!

For lunch, children were treated to chicken Fajitas, It was certainly entertaining to watch the pre-prep pupils in particular putting their wraps together! However, the children enjoyed the wraps filled with a range of ingredients such as chicken, sliced tomato, crème fraiche, lettuce, guacamole, tomato salsa sauce, cheese, sliced carrots and cucumber. For dessert, the children had plain yoghurt accompanied with a fruit compote. Again, this year the children are given tokens during each meal and they have to vote yes or no whether they like the food and would they like to see it on future menus. The results will be compiled next week.

For afternoon tea, the children tasted a selection of brown breads, bread 1 – seed, bread 2 – granary, bread 3 – a soft brown. There were also two muffins to try for afternoon tea, muffin 1 – blueberry and muffin 2 –tropical. Once again the pupils used the questionnaires for important feedback for future breads used within the school and also for packed lunches. Overall, a great start to the week and it was fantastic to hear the children talking about their day full of new tastes and fun activities.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, the theme was “Get Active”. At break time the pupils in the pre-prep and prep school all took part in exercise to music, run by Born 2 Move. It was important to highlight to our children that, along with a healthy diet, it is important to exercise and keep fit. It was fantastic to see Born 2 Move supporting the National School Meals week for 2010 and they certainly put lots of energy and expertise into the 2 sessions of aerobics for the whole S. Anselm’s community. The pupils certainly threw themselves into the exercise and were excited to see all the staff at S. Anselm’s involved too. Richard Newton (facilities manager) and his team, the administration team, the catering department, parents and teaching staff were all ready for action in the sports hall. A huge thank you for your support!

After the active programme in the sports hall the pupils tasted flavoured water and tried a homemade cereal bar, the information to be used for mid morning/ afternoon break times and packed lunches.

Lunch certainly got a lot of smiles and thumbs up. The children enjoyed Thai chicken curry with rice, beansprouts, carrots and mangetout. For dessert, they had steamed jam roly poly and custard. Again, all we could hear was the chitter chatter about the food and the tokens being dropped in the tin for voting. Well done to Tom B for receiving the first badge of the week saying “I am a star during National School Meals Week”. It has been a super atmosphere which the children and staff are clearly enjoying.

Afternoon tea for the children was pitta pockets with Pitta 1 - houmous and Pitta 2 - coronation chicken as well as chocolate chilli cake. A huge thank you to Kerry Speed, Nicola Vaughan and Heather Thomson (Matron) for all your help and to Born 2 Move for making today rather special!

The National School Meals week will be on all week, so please do keep checking the website for more fun and activities happening in and around S. Anselm’s.

Many thanks, Michelle Northcott.

Wednesday:

With Mrs Northcott out taking the girls to a regional hockey tournament (at which they came second) it was up to Mr Northcott to put his apron on and help the ladies with National Schools Food Week.

At break time we had sausage tasting with three mysterious and delicious types of sausages. This was washed down with pomegranate juice, which was universally liked by all. The identity of the sausages will be revealed later on but scoring was high across the board.

At lunch it was the turn of mince beef and onion pie and cabbage, carrots and roast potatoes, followed down by a citrous version of Eton Mess. Again this went down well with all the pupils.

Finally around school there have been a number of displays educating pupils about food and drink. There are some pretty hard hitting messages that are clearly getting through to many pupils.

Many thanks to the army of mothers who have helped today -especially Mrs Stubley and her information stands.

Simon