When the wheat, oats and barley were ready for harvesting in Northamptonshire fields, I’d pick some for my classes to taste as part of their food lessons.
Read about these stories in my latest book Cream Horns…
‘Before I return to London, I drive into the countryside and climb over gates into the fields ready for harvesting, carrying a pair of scissors.
Large bundles of wheat, barley and oats make excellent visual aids for my lessons, displayed on a nature table in my classroom.
London children often have no idea how some of our food is grown, and may never have tasted the seeds from the ears of wheat.’
In the 1950s, Britain produced 1 million chickens a year – today it is over a billion. Intensive farming in the late 1960s reduced the price of chicken.
In 1972, chicken was too expensive for me to cook at school and there was nothing in the textbooks or exams.
Curriculum and Assessment Review says that students should have a grounding in practical cooking skills. They should also understand food hygiene and sustainability.
The focus should be on cooking healthy, nutritious meals.
Cream horns and Vol au Vents is the follow-up from my I Taught Them to Cook book. It’s about teaching cookery in an east London comprehensive school in the 1970s. I’m twenty-four, in charge of a department, single and live in a grim bedsit.
Readers asked
‘What happens in Jenny’s love life?’ There are three men in the mix.
‘What happens to the students? Did they pass their exams?’ Some did some didn’t.
We hurtle into the second year. -I arrive at school to find my cookers stolen. -More boys register for my classes. -The head wants exam improvements from last year. -There are new, surprising initiatives to teach – Anti-Smoking and Sex Education – challenging for a young, single teacher with Benson and Hedges cigarettes hidden in my handbag.
London in the 70s bursts with new foods, unusual restaurants, ever-changing fashions, and energetic music. I need to shed my pink nylon overall, get out and find a partner. But 1974 is the year of the Three-Day Week, electricity blackouts, and soaring inflation. Does that matter? Not really to me – young and on a mission.
Reviewers said of I Taught Them to Cook –
‘I read this book all in one greedy gulp’
‘This wonderful memoir transports you back to London in the seventies’
‘I loved it. Can’t wait for the next instalment.’
‘The descriptions of the food are tremendously evocative.’
