Across the borough school kitchens have been serving up a treat.Top of the menu at this time of the year has been the traditional Christmas dinner – turkey, roast potatoes, stuffing, carrots and brussel sprouts, the works.

The Mayor of Havering, Councillor Trevor McKeever, was guest of honour at Drapers’ Maylands Primary School in Harold Hill where he dined with children as they enjoyed the festive fare.

The school is one of 62 across Havering serving up more than 12,000 school meals per day and a whopping two million meals each year.

Drapers’ Maylands is also in the unique position of having a zero packed-lunch policy, which ensures that all children dine together and have the opportunity for a hot, healthy meal each day.

The Mayor said:

“I was very impressed with both the school and the children, and it was a real pleasure to share Christmas dinner with them.

“School meals have changed over the years and one of the key things is the variety. HES Catering have worked with schools to ensure that the meals are both nutritional and affordable, which is so important when people are concerned about the cost of living.”

The menus are created by Havering Education Services catering team, which is run by the Council, and provides menus on a three-weekly cycle to ensure children have a nutritious meal each day and don’t get bored with repeatedly eating the same food.

For the past four years, the food has been audited by once a year the Soil Association and meets the Food for Life Silver Standard – with 75% of the food home cooked and a minimum 5% of our ingredient spend is on organic produce,

The service hopes that more schools will opt for school dinners.

Principal Trudy Spillane, said:

“By eating together the children are benefitting in lots of different ways. They are not only strengthening their social skills and their relationships with each other, but they are also having a nutritional two-course meal that a packed lunch would prove difficult to beat not just on cost but also in convenience and variety.”

School meal take-up has increased in Havering including the number of children taking advantage of free school meals.

The Mayor added:

“There used to be a bit of stigma around free school meals but schools now operate in a way that makes it easier for children to apply and no one would know who is on free meals and who isn’t.”

Parents can find out if they are eligible for free meals here:

https://www.havering.gov.uk/info/20006/schools_and_education/431/school_support

This month , HES Catering in partnership with suppliers McCain’s and Heinz have offered Havering primary schools the opportunity to take part in a produce growing project called ‘Farm to Fork’.

The aim of the project is to help enrich school curriculums. The project helps to improve food knowledge, gives students a better understanding of where food comes from and how it’s utilised, all whilst enjoying the great outdoors.

Schools are supplied with resources and tools in order to grow their own produce. Once the schools harvest their produce, our Nutritionist & Development Chef can work with the students to create healthy & delicious recipes to cook and enjoy.

This is the first year the project has been launched and 19 schools across the borough are currently participating. All 19 schools were automatically entered into a prize draw to win the ‘Innocent Smoothies – Big Grow’ vegetable seed packs. These packs include the following:

• 5 Large backs of seeds (varieties can vary)
• Compost discs and cups for growing
• Teachers resources packs
• Star grower badge.

The ‘Innocent-Big Grow’ project aims to help students learn something about food empathy. This allows the students to have a deeper understanding of where their food comes from as well as promoting local and seasonal produce.

Watch this space for more updates on their progress and the delicious recipes created…

Whilst developing our new upcoming menus, as a service we have been working with ProVeg UK over the last year intending to increase the amount of plant-based and vegetarian dishes on the menu, as well as trying to make them more attractive to our young customer to overcoming the reducing of meat-based dishes.

“It has been a fantastic experience working with Charlotte and the dedicated team at HES Catering Services. From the onset, their progressive stance on building more sustainable menus, both for health and environmental reasons, has allowed us to work together on small changes and tweaks to their school menus to help increase the uptake of veggie and plant-based dishes, and work to reduce the reliance on meat across the menus – without impacting on choice or taste!

Initial results have been positive, and together we’re looking forward to building on our existing work as part of the Public Sector Catering 20% Less Meat pledge!”

Phil Mansbridge- Executive Director ProVeg UK

With the help of ProVeg UK, some of the changes we have made to our primary menu include:

• Adding an extra meat-free day a week on the menu.
• Adjusting the wording on our menu to ensure we do not suggest meat-free meals are inferior to other options.
• Include a Vegan option on the menu daily.

Our reasoning for these changes further to those we have already adopted such as supporting local suppliers to help our community as well as reduce our carbon footprint are:

• Help our customers establish healthy eating behaviours- help to increase the amount of fruit and vegetable in their diets.
• Ensure that our menu is even more sustainable.
• Helping the environment.
• To provide meals that are equally as delicious.

#20percentlessmeat @HCS_LBH @ProVeg_UK

Congratulations to Dahlia and Amelia from St Edwards C.E Primary school for being our latest winners to the Bike voucher from Halfords, all for just having a school meal.

Veggie Run, Havering Council’s award-winning healthy living campaign, is offering even more rewards to pupils who eat a healthy catered lunch in school thanks to two leading food suppliers. 

The Council is partnering with butchers William White Meats and vegetable suppliers Prescott Thomas to create, ‘Veggie Run Family Roast Dinner Boxes.’

From Monday, 23 September any primary, junior or infant pupil who eats a healthy catered school lunch from award-winning Havering Education Service’s (HES) Catering Services will be in with a chance of winning  one of these ‘Veggie Run Family Roast Dinner Boxes’ worth £25, to cook at home.

Every Thursday throughout the academic year until July 2020, a Havering primary school pupil will be selected at random to take home a Veggie Run roast dinner box if they have eaten a school-catered lunch that week.

These amazing prizes are aimed at developing children’s healthy cooking skills with their family.

Every roast dinner box will feed four to six people, and will include either 2kg topside beef, a whole chicken, pork loin or turkey from Butchers William White Meats Ltd and vegetables from supplier Prescott Thomas Ltd. Pupils and their family can then follow the Veggie Run roast dinner recipe cards to create a wholesome healthy meal.

Cllr Robert Benham, Cabinet Member for Education, Children and Families, said:

“I am delighted that through the Council’s healthy living Veggie Run campaign we are encouraging more pupils to cook from scratch with their families.

“HES Catering Services is passionate about organic food ingredients and home cooking, and they want to inspire and support Havering’s primary schoolchildren to become more confident and independent in the kitchen.”

HES Catering Services are keen to see pupils roast dinner cooking achievements and ask parents to share photos on social media using #VeggieRun