Taste Tideswell

Has anyone seen Carol?

We all react to fame in different ways and Carol from Tindalls, which featured in the BBC1 programme, decided to disguise herself.  Visitors to the shop yesterday were greeted with a long, blonde-haired Carol.  On her lapel was  badge exclaiming “I’m not Carol!”  That didn’t fool the hundreds of visitors to the shop though and the shop, along with the others in the village did a roaring trade.

Online bookings, phone calls and personal visits a-plenty today at the Tideswell School of Food.  There are over 500 visits per hour to the school’s website, and the phones have been red hot all day.

Apologies to those who tried to log on last night, despite doing our level best, with the help of Vince and colleagues at Twentyhost, the sheer volume of hits were too much at times.  (For the technical amongst you, a normal server load is around one or two.  At six, the server is beginning to sweat, we had times last night when the server load hit 250!)

We’re open for tours (and sales of course) tomorrow and over the weekend, so do drop in and say hello.

Excitement is mounting in the village ahead of Wednesday’s broadcast on BBC1 of the Taste Tideswell edition in the Village SOS series.  The clips looked great at the end of the Newstead programme so can’t wait to see the full programme.

Don’t forget 8pm this Wednesday evening on BBC1 or catch up again on iPlayer of course!

From the BBC Village sos website

Tim Anderson

Tim Anderson, this year’s winner of BBC TV’s MasterChef programme, will conduct two Masterclasses at the new Tideswell School of Food on Saturday August 20^th.

Tim wowed the judges of MasterChef with his weird and wonderful culinary creations to deservedly become the youngest ever winner of the hit BBCOne series. Tim is taking time out of his busy schedule to offer two unique “hands on” cookery sessions for a strictly limited number of guests in Tideswell School of Food’s new teaching kitchen in the Peak District.

During the sessions he will demonstrate and teach a two course meal using his experimental approach to cookery creating unique dishes that guests will be able to take home. At the end of each session Tim will leave time for 30 minutes of questions and answers.

Kim Wathall, Tideswell School of Food’s Marketing Executive, said “It’s a great coup for us to get Tim to visit us and an honour to host him here. We’ve only been open for 6 months as a Cookery School and it’s important to grow our reputation and develop our business so that we can support the local food economy. Together with the forthcoming TV coverage of the whole Taste Tideswell project in BBC One’s “Village SOS” series, we will certainly be putting Tideswell on the culinary map.”

Places on the Masterclasses (and many other courses) are available via Tideswell School of Food’s website:

Taste Tideswell is a local food project with an Educational purpose. Tideswell School of Food caters for all levels and ages, and as a “not for profit” social enterprise, the leisure courses and corporate days it runs support the work of an Education Officer, local teacher Michelle Lindley.

Michelle said; “The educational aspect of Taste Tideswell is multi- faceted. The main aims are to encourage children to grow more of the food they eat (which also involves them being aware of issues such as deforestation, food miles and climate,) and to become able and enthusiastic cooks (learning life skills and sustainability as they will hopefully use the produce they grow!)”

The work of the school’s Education activities are focussed on Key Stage 2&3, and can take place in Tideswell School of Food’s own kitchen or nearby Nursery garden, or Michelle regularly travels to teach in local schools.

She continues; “Many schools already have a vegetable garden but many also admit that this resource is under used as staff aren’t sure what to grow , when to grow it or indeed what to do with the end product. Here at Taste Tideswell we provide expertise to help people maximise their food production as well as getting the children involved using curriculum based activities from learning about such things as soil type and capillary action to making bio-degradable plant pots from newspaper.”

“Most schools also have a cookery club which runs at least some of the school year but this is invariably after school which makes both staffing and funding a problem. We can provide a trained teacher who can come into school to run cookery activities making it inclusive to all. As all our schools have different needs these activities can be tailored to suit whatever is being studied, for example African cookery- and as all the planning, ingredients and equipment are provided this can be an invaluable resource.”

A new video from BIG with highs, lows and learning points from the Village SOS project.