Watching the Wind-swift
  • Home
    • Who?
    • Links
    • Get in touch
  • Making
    • Stories
    • More stories
    • King of the Bookshop
    • Light (and dark)
    • Food
    • Places
    • Sticks
  • Outdoors Education
    • Whole school ideas >
      • Numeracy
      • Literacy
      • Science
      • PSHE
      • Design and Technology
    • Creating a school garden
    • Forest Schools >
      • Forest Schools at school

Food

and what it means to share a meal

Food and cooking are things that I love, and I love to share them too.  I try to incorporate them into my work with other people, and especially in schools with children.  Growing food, foraging for ingredients and cooking on an open fire are very exciting and satisfying, but any food shared with others is good.

Bread

I love making bread.  There's likely to be some more pictures of bread sometime...
But this is bread in a fire, right in the fire, with crunchy bits of ash and wood getting in to the dough.
Tastes brilliant.

Pudding

Picture
I'm not sure how many food rituals we have left, that are regularly practiced anyway.  At Christmas, we still flame the pudding (or two, in this case!).  This year, middle boy took over the ladle and brandy, and did a fine job.  It's a bit like birthday candles, but shared by us all not just one person.  Everyone shouts advice about how often to ladle the burning brandy and whether it's really gone out or not.

Mackerel

Two hours out of the sea, filleted in the middle of a field, just outside the caravan.  The boys had wanted to go fishing, so they took a trip to just of the Farne Islands.
We met a wonderful couple, she was Japanese and happened to be a chef with incredible knife skills.  She made sushi of some of the fillets - it tasted beautiful.
We talked and ate until past dark, the children running about with torches having a great time.
Picture

Jelly

Picture
When I was about five, we moved house and I made friends with a girl nearby.  The shortcut to her house was through two neigbours' gardens, then through her garden fence.  Her mum used to make proper high tea, with pink meringues and white bread sandwiches, and jelly.
My partner made this jelly a few months ago, and it's perfect - the rabbit jelly was exactly how I remember.

Sausages

Cooking by the river on a small fire, sausages from a local butcher.
Picture

More outside cooking...

I cook outside with groups of children, at schools or in the woods. We love it, and everything tastes so good when you've worked hard to get the fire going, even if there are crunchy bits of ash in your drop scones.
Powered by
✕