We’ve just had a lovely visit to the 14th century St Cyriac’s church in Lacock, Wiltshire, with some of the children from Snapdragons Corsham. The children were bringing the food they had collected for the harvest festival; food that was destined for a food bank.
The food the children brought was mostly in tins, sometimes in packets, and bore no resemblance to the harvest produce which previous generations would have brought – although the local bakery had provided a beautiful loaf in the shape of a wheat sheaf – but they were carrying on a tradition that has been in place for hundreds of years. Celebrating a bountiful harvest and sharing the produce with others less fortunate is a long-held tradition in Britain, and also exists in some form in almost every other culture of the world.
With a diverse population such as ours in Britain, we are used to marking special days from all the world’s religions, helping children to understand the shared human values represented in each other’s cultures and faiths. Festivals are a wonderful way to celebrate diversity because they illustrate so well that within that diversity there are so many common themes: rituals of giving gifts, sharing wealth, eating together and being with our loved ones.
The preparation of food also features in the rituals of many festivals. Whether it is sharing lamb at Eid-ul-Adha, making sweets together for Diwali, frying doughnuts and latkes for Hanukkah, or stirring the pudding in the lead up to Christmas, preparing traditional foods together is a happy shared experience for many of us.
And it isn’t a surprise that we all love the food associated with our own traditional festivals, because how we experience food makes a huge difference to how it tastes.
Throughout the autumn the children at Snapdragons have been celebrating a succession of special days with some traditional food. At Diwali they have helped to make halva with grated carrots, coconut, evaporated milk and syrup, and have baked bread for the harvest festival. Although these are definitely not religious festivals, we nevertheless mark Halloween and Bonfire Night with some food favourites such as pumpkin soup and s’mores, which the children love to toast around the fire pit.
Now we are turning our attention to Christmas and all the nurseries will be having parties with a traditional roast dinner of turkey, roast potatoes, sausages, orange glazed carrots and Brussels sprouts. We will also be treating the parents to some nibbles after they watch our Christmas shows, and the children will be helping to make the food, sharing in the excitement of the preparations and enjoying the experience of offering something to their friends and families.
This year we are planning some delicious savoury snacks at some of our nurseries. The spiced lamb mince pies featured in my recipe this month (see panel, left) are little mouthfuls of luxury: lamb, aubergine, spinach and tomato, flavoured with Christmassy cinnamon, cloves and caraway. There will be blinis too, with a range of colourful, seasonal toppings such as cooked beetroot blitzed with cream cheese and sprinkled with thyme leaves; cubes of roasted, caramelised squash on goat’s cheese and topped with shredded sage; avocado, lime and coriander; and pureed butter beans with rosemary, garlic and lemon zest.
It all sounds exotic, but the ingredients are not – and imagine the bright pink, orange and green colours making an inviting and vibrant plateful. For a quick and simple blini batter we will use Jamie Oliver’s non-yeast version: a cup of self-raising flour, a cup of semi-skimmed milk, one large egg, olive oil and a knob of butter for frying. The children can help to mix the egg and milk into the flour and combine to make a smooth batter, then adults will fry the blinis before handing them back over to the children for the toppings.
As the frenzy of December draws to a close and the new year comes into sight, we will be looking to Chinese New Year for another excuse to celebrate, making fortune cookies filled with loving messages for our families and sharing a feast of crispy duck pancakes. The children love this meal because they can build the pancake parcels themselves, a sure-fire way of getting them to try new flavours. A delicate pancake, a pinch of shredded meat, strips of cucumber, a sprinkle of spring onions and a slathering of plum sauce. Absolutely delicious.
Celebrations, whatever their origins, are a great way to encourage children to develop empathy, to become interested in worlds beyond their own and to enjoy being generous and kind to others. With food, family and sharing at its core, it is really not the differences between our religions and cultures that is striking, but the similarities.
Mary Llewellin is operations manager at Snapdragons. Snapdragons Keynsham has the Food For Life Partnership Gold Catering Mark and was winner of the Nursery WorldNursery Food Award in 2012 and 2014.
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