By Charlotte Harding, Houseparent (Steephurst)

Stories of family meals, cooking from scratch, the challenge to use up the dry goods lurking in our cupboards and shared time spent cooking and chatting seem to be a recurring theme of many of our catch-ups with students. The same is going on in our own households within the staff community at Bedales; from inventive games of cooking different world cuisines each week, to embracing the idea of batch cooking to make the best use of giant tins of tomatoes from Matt Pott’s community shop. The desire to stay connected and acknowledge some of the shifts in our daily experiences feels important at this time and we hope that some of the mealtimes in your households might form part of a Bedales Lockdown Cookbook to raise money for charity.

Within the day and boarding communities, we have already been busy starting to post recipes and filming some ‘Ready Steady Cook’ style challenges. As momentum builds on this, we wanted to open up the project to you all and invite submissions from your households through recipes shared by students within our house Teams, or to hear from you directly if you email any of the Houseparents a recipe for inclusion. Be as inventive as you like: illustrate your family lockdown favourites, or communicate in diagram form or with photos… anything that can be printed in a book. There is a precedent for this – Ian Douglas just dropped off a copy of the Bedales Cookbook published in 1995 (pictured above), which was in aid of the Bedales Theatre Appeal for my perusal. I include a recipe below for Spicy Chick Peas with Cornbread and Spinach with Sesame Dressing we will be trying next week!

Find some recipes below to inspire you:

• Spicy Chick Peas with Cornbread and Spinach with Sesame Dressing
• Chloe Hamill’s Lemon and Rosemary Turkey
• Peter Thackrey’s Lockdown Pasta
• Jane Shannon’s Sandwich Cake
• Gill Harris’ Aduki Bean Pie

Zarah Cazac’s Gluten Free & Vegan Banana Chocolate Chip Pancakes: