Here’s a test picture from Flickr loaded into our blog. This means that we can post pictures, our own or our customers & friends, to Flickr then create a blog entry from there.
We’d like to invite all our visitors to suggest cooking related pictures that we can share.
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this is a test post to see if I can post images in the blog from our in-house gallery. The image itself is the one I use as a desktop background on my laptop (ah, sweet..). It seems to work! Next stage is to post some of the video clips of children preparing food..
For the curious, I use a plugin to iPhoto on my Mac from zzamboni.org which allows me to export photos directly from iPhoto to a coppermine gallery hosted on some free space from our isp. I then installed a Wordpress plugin from stilglog which allows an author to choose any image from the gallery to add to a post.
I’ve also sucessfully tested an integration with Flickr so that we can post images direct from our splatcooking album as well.
So, we are now totally picture-tastic (to abuse Smashy & Nicey).
Written by Peter Glock - Visit WebsiteThursday 23 August – I felt a very proud Mum today at the supermarket with my three little’uns so I’m going to boast about it. We nipped into the supermarket this morning to get something for lunch and I made the very brave statement that the small people could choose what they wanted for tea (I did have my fingers crossed behind my back). This is dangerous territory I know, just in case you get the cry of ‘chicken nuggets’ or something equally scary, but this time they came up trumps.
Big daughter (aged 10) asked in disgust why they didn’t have any live lobsters like in the supermarket in France (just come back from holiday) and where were the langoustines – spotty youth behind the fish counter had gone into gibberish mode by now and really couldn’t cope. She settled for third best – fresh Tuna. Little man (aged 4) demanded ‘pink fish’ aka salmon and littlest daughter (aged 6) declared that she would like the fish that she liked when she put lots of lemon juice on it at the weekend – Tuna. As the alternative was Spag Bol in the freezer I left the supermarket feeling really smug and considerably poorer.
Of course I blagged about this in the office when I got back, feeling really self righteous about all the things we teach children about fresh food, tasting different ingredients, cooking and look what my children chose for dinner – problem is, that the team know full well that if I’d suggested going to the chip shop there would have been a stampede. I don’t care, Little man has just finished off most of his salmon and his little big sister’s tuna. Wow.
Written by Beverley Glock - Visit WebsiteHere’s an article recently published by raisingkids.co.uk:
Beverley Glock, founder of the Splat!Cooking website and cookery school suggests getting your children’s hands dirty this weekend by picking your own produce at a Pick Your Own farm
Summer holidays, the children home from school for up to eight weeks – by rights it should be a fantastic time of year when you can all spend time together enjoying each other’s company, playing outside, building sandcastles at the seaside or cooling off in the paddling pool, colouring, painting and playing games without the TV being turned.
Then there is the real world when most of us are trying to juggle work, childcare, food shopping, housework, cooking and trying to stop the children from murdering their siblings and filling their faces on junk.
With every good intention in the world, sometimes the easy option to get a little peace and quiet is to plonk them down in front of the TV. We all do it at some time, after all, you’ve got to clear up the paint/glue/leftovers that are all over the kitchen floor, ceiling and walls at some time.
So, how about spending a day getting the children to try new foods, get lots of fresh air and exercise and then have them make you tea for a change? How? Go out to your nearest Pick Your Own [PYO] farm. The children will love it, they’ll get lots of fresh air, running around until they are exhausted (they will sleep soundly afterwards) and you’ll come home with the most wonderfully tasting fruit and veg.
Taste Sensation
One thing which drives me nuts is that the fruit and veg you buy in the supermarket looks beautiful and perfectly shaped, but tastes so bland. Personally I would much prefer strawberries which tasted of strawberries and burst with flavour when you bit into one and didn’t need to be swamped in sugar because they are sweet enough on their own, than the tasteless but perfect-looking Elsanta variety which supermarkets think we want. Stringless beans which ‘squeak’ when you bite into them and taste of beans, carrots which are sweet and taste so good they get eaten raw – that’s what I’m looking for.
Last year I took my three children, then aged 9, 5 and 3 to our local PYO farm in September and my 3 year old who, I am ashamed to say, refuses to eat fruit except bananas (he prefers veg) picked an apple off the tree, smelt it and declared ‘Mummy this smells lovely, can I eat it?’ and proceeded to eat it all, only problem is that he now won’t eat apples unless he picks them himself. My two eldest were so surprised about how wonderful the strawberries tasted that my 5-year-old asked why can’t the ones from the shops taste like these?
The most amazing fruit we tasted were damsons, the trees were dripping with them and we all popped the little black/purple fruit into our mouths to be greeted with an explosion of flavour, like plums but much more intense. All right, I admit the stones are a pain but the flavour is worth it.
Growing Concerns
Treat the whole thing as a learning experience; many children do not know where fruit and veg come from – it’s quite scary how many children are surprised when they see carrots with the leaves attached and mud on them. Ask children how they grow and a lot will say on bushes or trees and not realise they grow in the ground – all because supermarkets present fruit and veg to us washed and wrapped in plastic. Sometimes it’s as simple as children seeing strawberries being grown on straw and you can can ask ‘How do you think the fruit got its name?’
So put your wellies on, or your sunhats. It doesn’t matter what the weather’s like. Grab some tupperware and go fruit and veg picking. Get the children to say which are fruit and which are vegetables as you go round (fruit contains the seeds so Aubergines, Peppers, Bean and Peas are technically fruit not veg and strawberries are the only fruit with seeds on the outside.)
When you get back home the children can be in charge of topping, tailing, popping the beans and peas out of the pod and washing the goodies and then make up some of the following recipes together. If you don’t have time to make up the recipes, try everything raw. Fruits in season for August are strawberries, raspberries, stringless beans, carrots, broad beans, gooseberries, red and blackcurrants. Coming up in September are apples, pears, plums, damsons, raspberries, tayberries, loganberries, rhubarb and parsnips.
Child-friendly recipes
Get the kids involved! Click on the links below to see our recipes for kids to try.
Splat Cooking will be holding a Fruit Pick and Cooking workshop in Buckinghamshire on 1 September 2006. Click here for more information.
Written by Beverley Glock - Visit WebsiteHere at Splat we’re mostly mac users. There’s a widget available that let’s you post straight from Dashboard. Take a look at www.panris.com
Oh, and another one I’m trying is rapidmetablog.
Written by Peter Glock - Visit Website
