ABOUT THE MEALS

On this web site it is possible to access this weeks and next week’s menu. We run a six week winter and summer cycle menu with seasonal variations. I believe that the menus are impressive however they do not speak for themselves.

The fact that we provide food for the under fives means that when you see something on the menu such as curry it is a variation on a theme. It is not vindaloo! It is in fact a savoury dish. When you see something like humours on the menu it is not the standard recipe. We use natural yoghurt rather than sesame oil when we make it, making it delicious and appropriate for the age range. When you see something like meat paste on the tea item, it is not something that comes out of a jar with e’s and additives’ galore it is in fact whole diced meats cooked with vegetables and pureed into a paste by ourselves. We don’t use any grade of meat lower than top quality mince meat.

There may be things on our menu like ‘Lamb, red lentil and spinach curry’ that may make you think the children wouldn’t really eat that but I can assure you we have received feedback on all of our food and we have refined it until the children do eat it or we have dropped it altogether. For example with that particular dish the spinach is frozen then grated so it looks like an herb and there are no long and stringy bits to cause the children not to eat it. Little details like that apply across our whole menu. It is this attention to detail that makes a real difference to children eating or not eating a meal.

BALANCE

When you look at our menus please try to leave behind what your idea of a healthy meal for yourself is. Children do require foods that yes are healthy but they also need some foods rich in energy. They have a lot of growing upwards to do unlike us adults that only grow outwards! One of the top child nutritionalists in the country was doing a talk at a nursery for the parents. She saw our menus and commented that this is how food for children should be and that she wished she could see more of this at nurseries. We know that nutritionally for the age range we provide for we have it right and we know that the children we serve enjoy our food.

SPECIALIST DIETS

We do cater for special diets and it is an increasing part of modern society. We like our nurseries to be able to say ‘yes, that’s no problem’ to all their potential clients with confidence that Care Catering will be able to produce the food the specialist diets require. Care Catering is a nut and kiwi free environment. All other allergy foods though can be found on site so it is important that the parents of, for example, dairy allergy sufferers know that dairy is found on site but that we do have written HACCP for allergy sufferers and that only people trained in these procedures are allowed to perform them.

HEALTHY AND ENJOYABLE MEALS

Fourteen years ago I was presented with the problem of getting children to eat food that was good for them. Long before Jamie Oliver was blowing his trumpet I had already cracked the problem. I have been more fortunate than poor Jamie though as the children I serve are younger than the children he serves and so bad eating patterns have not been established yet. It is still not straight forward though as the nature of catering in the modern age lends itself towards convenience to the cook which is a path that is too tempting for most.

Healthy and enjoyable meals for children require lots of fresh ingredients, being visually appealing and each month full should be so delicious that the child wants to eat more.

One of the first things I realized was that in order to control exactly what goes in the food I had to make it from scratch using real ingredients. So packet mixes like smash potato were a definite no and cheats like bisto or stock cubes were out. No sausages or neither reprocessed nor mechanically recovered meats. No angel delight or cake mixes.

Secondly all those years ago I decided to educate myself in what children actually need for the specific age ranges that the nursery sector provides for. As parents or nursery providers you will realize this age is a period of enormous growth for children and providing the nutrition they need in a format they will enjoy is not even an option here, it is a must.