School Meals By Chefs In Schools

Grasmere have a dedicated kitchen team, Margaret, Breda, Carmen and Maria, all of whom work hard to ensure children have a healthy breakfast, if they come to Breakfast Club, and an equally healthy and adventurous lunch.

We have partnered with Chefs in Schools, a charity that strives to:

‘inspire change in school food by freely sharing our knowledge of what works well, both in kitchens and classrooms, to schools across the country… led by some of the UK’s foremost experts in food policy and education, and chefs who support our efforts.’

The current menus are here:

The catering team is led by our brand new Chef Educator Clara Grace Paul who leads on menu design, training and teaching children through small projects and workshops across the school about growing and cooking food.

 

Here is a message from Clara:

I would like to my introduce myself to the Grasmere community. My name is Clara and I’m the new head chef at the school. I’m very excited about joining the school and
I’m very much looking forward to working with the kitchen team to bring seasonal, vibrant and fun menus to the dining hall. We want to encourage tasting new flavours, whilst providing lunches that reflect the diversity of the school and its community.
As the year goes on we hope to open up the kitchen to you all, work on the growing garden and generally make food fun and engaging at Grasmere!
I look forward to getting to know the children, staff, parents and carers.

Clara

Here a just a few examples of the standard of food that is coming out of the kitchen each day:

 

 

General Information:

We positively encourage all children to eat a school meal. Meals are all made from scratch in school with meat, fruit, vegetables, milk and eggs coming from a local organic farming collective, with food being produced within a 40 mile radius of school. A minimum of 30% of all food is organic. Two hot meal choices are provided daily (one always vegetarian) and accompanied by two vegetable choices, a wide range of salads, freshly baked bread, cut fruit and organic yogurts. Freshly cooked puddings are made on alternate days. For more information about school food standards and portion sizes, please click on the following links:  School-Food-Standards-Guidance, Portion-Sizes-and Food-Tables

Children are provided with healthy food that is nutritionally balanced, ensuring your child has the energy needed to fulfil the demands of a school day. In the same way, we expect packed lunches to be healthy without hidden sugar or salt.

Water

We understand the importance of being properly hydrated. Children are expected to bring in water bottles every day.

 

 

Allergies

We are a nut free school. Please inform the office if your child has an allergy and we will work with you to cater for them effectively.

Additional note: Grasmere is a nut and sesame seed free school. Recently we have noticed a number of sesame/ nut-containing items bring brought into school by parents and children. Items such as cereal bars, chewy bars (such as Naked bars), breads or pastries containing sesame seeds/nuts, nut butters, humous and nut milks (including almond milk) should not be brought into school as many of the children here have serious allergies to nuts and sesame seeds. Therefore we would like to remind all parents/carers not to give children nut or sesame seed products to consume on school premises including at before and after school clubs and as snacks before or after school. This also applies to packed lunches on school trips. If you send in treats for your child’s birthday please make sure they are nut free too. Speak to your child’s teacher about any other allergies that may be present in the class.

Please see the Grasmere food policy (in the policy section of the website) if you need more information.