Sustainability
Sustainability is at the heart of our ethos. Find out the latest sustainability news, developments and information on our blog. We cover concepts like food waste, plastic-free, seasonality and much more.
Supplier Spotlight: Breakfast with Original Beans
Last week we enjoyed a fantastic breakfast tasting with purveyors of beautiful, ethical chocolate, Original Beans.
The tasting was part of our supplier breakfast series, where the Cookery School team gets to meet and hear from one of our brilliant suppliers. We do this over a delicious breakfast before the kitchens get busy and students come in. Last week the team got to find out about the Original Beans ethos and ethical and regenerative approach to chocolate,
Zero Waste Week: Tips to take forward
With Zero Waste Week coming to a close, we’re looking beyond this week to see how we can continue to reduce our waste in our everyday lives. While at Cookery School, our kitchens are plastic-free and our food waste is already limited, we’ve taken the time to look into our personal lives, looking for opportunities where we could cut down even further. We know from experience in our kitchens that it’s nigh-impossible to be zero-waste overnight,
Category
Sustainability
Why eat organic ingredients?
Cookery School’s founder, Rosalind, started buying organic ingredients more than thirty years ago because they were free of chemicals like steroids and antibiotics. They clearly were better for everyone, but were harder to find and had to be sought out. Now we take it for granted that we can buy most items in organic form.
Category
Ingredients Sustainability
Was King Charles ahead of the curve when it came to sustainability and the natural world?
Charles at a Farm in Derbyshire – Image by smileykt
With the advent of his kingship we decided to have a look at what Charles has done and the sustainable food legacy that he leaves for the future.
King of the soil
As a teenager King Charles had strong views on the environment, from society’s increasing disconnect from the land to the overuse of chemicals and destruction of the small farm [to make way for big industrial farming] and he began to promote and campaign for better systems and practices for food and farming,
Category
Newsletters Sustainability
RECIPE: Easter Egg & Hot Cross Bun & Butter Pudding
This is a great way to use up leftover hot cross buns and any remaining Easter eggs you may have. It’s a mouthful to say but it tastes absolutely delicious!
Chocolate & Hot Cross Bun and Butter Pudding
INGREDIENTS
- 3 hot cross buns, sliced into 6 vertical slices
- 600ml whole milk
- 75g softened butter
- 6 eggs
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- leftover Easter Eggs,
Category
Recipes Sustainability
Save our Daily Bread
In the UK alone 20 million whole slices of bread are thrown away every day*. Many people worry about their carbon footprint without realising how much impact throwing old food away has.
Sustainability has been at the heart of all that we have done since our inception over 20 years ago, so we consider ourselves to be sustainability veterans. We have run sustainability courses for a number of years and in a recent client food waste training session we came up with an easy and obvious solution to help cut down on food waste.
Category
Sustainability
The Glasgow Climate Change Conference – COP26 – has us thinking
We have been watching world leaders meeting in Glasgow at COP26 in the hope that the decisions they make, on our behalf, on the environment would be good ones.
The most valuable contribution was Greta Thunburg’s “blah, blah, blah“.
We were so hopeful to start with. Half of us are still hoping that those who govern us will make the right decisions for us and our children’s future.
Category
Sustainability
World Environment Day at Cookery School
This year`s World Environment Day theme is all about Ecosystem restoration, which focuses on improving the capacity and productivity of ecosystems to meet the needs of today’s society. How we source food and what we eat plays a major role in improving the world`s ecosystem.
We are proud to be London’s most sustainable cookery school. Sustainability sits at the very heart of the Cookery School ethos. We strongly believe in reducing our carbon footprint through practices in our kitchens and aim to do whatever we can to reduce our impact as far as possible.
Category
Ingredients Sustainability
Why is chicken so popular and is it actually healthy and better for the environment?
At Cookery School we only source organic meat in our effort to support, cook with and teach people about ingredients that are healthy for us and for the planet, but are consumers thinking along the same lines?
‘A third of Britons have stopped or reduced eating meat’, ‘One in four Britons want to cut back on red meat this year’, ‘White meat overtakes red meat in popularity for the first time in Britain‘
Category
Supplier Spotlight Sustainability
RECIPE: Tomato Sauce (really a stew)
At Cookery School we teach to empower so that everyone has the confidence to replicate recipes again and again at home. We also teach by principle – if you can understand how to make one soup, you can make a whole range of different soups using the same principle.
During our time at home, in isolation, these principles have never been more pertinent, when we all need to cook a lot more.
Category
How To Recipes Sustainability
Turn Back The Clock – How lessons from the past can help our future
It’s time to turn back the clock! We have been wondering about the past at Cookery School, as many of you who follow us on social media, loved this photo from the 1960’s of our founder Rosalind Rathouse, outside of Sainsbury’s with her husband proudly carrying sturdy paper bags. Those were the days when plastic bags and plastic packaging were not an issue.
Kitchen Storage
If we turn back the clock fifty years people managed in kitchens without products like cling film.
Category
Sustainability We Love
Cooking with kids is the best recipe – build confidence, skills and have fun!
Our top reasons why kids should be cooking from an early age
Plus, a family friendly recipe with lots of tasks for the little ones to do!
Build Skills
Reading, counting, measuring, shaping, timing, to name a few – there are so many skills that can be developed in cookery, from simple recipes to more complex dishes for the ambitious mini Mary Berry at home! It may start off a little messy but kids will learn lifelong skills,
Category
Recipes Sustainability We Love
Healthy Eco-Friendly Eating – Our Top Titbits!
To kick start 2020 we’re sharing some top tips for a healthy eco-friendly approach to eating delicious food all year round!
Batch cooking, or meal prep, is a great way to ensure you’re eating well, saving money and most importantly, improving your cooking skills! And it doesn’t mean you have to eat the same food five days straight. You can enjoy a wide variety of dishes without too much effort.
Category
How To Sustainability
Choose ethical chocolate this Christmas!
At Christmas time, when we’re all thinking about chocolate, we wanted to mention that we’re full of beans about ethical chocolate!
Chocolate, which most of us take for granted, often has a slightly bitter aftertaste, not because it’s 85% cocoa but because the industry is a complex global supply chain which often results in cocoa farmers, particularly children, losing out. Chocolate is a luxury and we should be able to pay fairly for such a delicious treat.
Humans of Hospitality meets Cookery School
Humans of Hospitality is a podcast by people for people. It was founded by Mark Cribb, a wonderful hotelier and restaurateur who believes passionately in the true meaning of hospitality, defined as the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers. Not, as Mark says, ‘a balance sheet and a board of directors in a venture capitalist firm in the city.’
With common ground in our approach to people and local communities –
Category
Sustainability We Love
Celebrating our suppliers: Hasbean
We choose all our suppliers very carefully, opting to work with companies that share the same ethos that we do. When it comes to coffee, we work with Hasbean, a sustainable coffee roaster and supplier based in Stafford, in England’s north.
Stephen Leighton established Hasbean in 1999 and chooses to work directly with over 30 coffee producers around the world, in places such as Costa Rica, Ethiopia,
Category
Supplier Spotlight Sustainability
Our rooftop allotment
As a central London-based cooking school, we don’t have access to wide open spaces where we can grow our own produce. However, thanks to local community bodies and businesses, there has been a drive to introduce green spaces in the heart of urban London – and we’ve been lucky enough to secure ourselves a rooftop allotment!
Our rooftop allotment is based on the roof of Heddon House,
Category
Sustainability
Introducing our sustainable team building package!
As London’s most sustainable cooking school, it goes without saying that all our private and team-building events are run with sustainable practices in mind. However, we’re now taking this one step further, with our sustainable event packages!
These new packages will see visitors create delicious dishes that minimise waste and use less meat, all while learning about sustainability concepts such as carbon footprints, sourcing ingredients and seasonality.
Category
Corporate Sustainability
Plastic-Free July: Easy swaps in your kitchen
Plastic Free July is a fantastic initiative that aims to reduce plastic pollution, but can seem overwhelming on first glance! After all, plastic hides in many products, making swapping them out harder than first thought.
Luckily, there are many easy swaps to make in the kitchen. We have been running a single-use-plastic-free kitchen for over 12 years, so have found many solutions along our journey.
Lose the packaging
The UK suffers from excessive plastic packaging so reducing your consumption is an important first step.
Category
How To Sustainability
Ros Rants: The ethics of chocolate
I am an utter chocoholic and love the stuff but I always have one huge proviso – it has to be 100% slave free. The chocolate that I devour and that we use at Cookery School is always ethical.
In our chocolate making class, taught by the wonderful Jon Hogan from Rococo, we start the day with a tasting of a range of different ethical chocolates. Our students are always shocked to learn that the chocolates that they eat all the time aren’t free of controversy and ought to be given an enormously wide berth.
Category
Ingredients Ros Rants Sustainability
The importance of sourcing sustainable fish
Why is it important to source sustainable fish? Fishing continues to be one of the biggest issues facing the food industry. With over-fishing and dredging jeopardising fish stocks and sea bed ecology, it is more important than ever that we investigate where our fish is coming from and ensure the methods used are as sustainable as possible.
What does sustainable fish mean?
Sustainable fish is caught in ways that allow the long-term future and viability of species,
Category
Ingredients Sustainability
The top three benefits of growing your own fruit and vegetables
Nicky Roeber is the Online Horticultural Expert at Wyevale Garden Centres. Here, he shares the top three benefits of growing your own fruit and vegetables at home.
As we become more conscious of how our everyday choices and actions can affect the environment, many people are making the switch to growing their own fruit and vegetables. However, the benefits extend beyond just helping the planet: it can save you money and improve your health too.
Category
Ingredients Sustainability
World Meat-Free Week: Helping the planet through your plate
17th-23rd June is World Meat-Free Week, a movement that aims to promote eating more plant-based foods. With experts saying that by 2050, the developed world will need to reduce their meat consumption by 50%, it’s becoming more important than ever for individuals and families to celebrate the humble vegetable. Here at Cookery School, we’re leading from the front, with plenty of vegetarian and vegan classes,
Category
Ingredients Sustainability
World Environment Day: four ways to help reduce air pollution
June 5 marks World Environment Day and this year, the theme is air pollution. London is one of the world’s most affected cities, making it even more of a challenge for businesses and individuals to be sustainable. However, we’re not deterred – in fact, knowing that there’s plenty to do only encourages our efforts. Over the last 16 years, we’ve had success with a number of initiatives. Here are just a few of our favourites:
Recycle everything
Reducing the amount of general waste that is incinerated can go a long way in improving our air quality.
Category
Sustainability
Avoiding food waste in the home
Did you know 7.3 million tonnes of food is wasted in the UK annually? Methane, the gas given off from rotting food, is 23 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, making it a huge contributor to climate change. In fact, if food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest contributor to climate change, after USA and China.
Many people worry about their carbon footprint without realising how much impact throwing old food away has.
Category
Sustainability
Rosalind’s sustainability journey
Rosalind Rathouse founded Cookery School in 2003. Here, she shares her journey to sustainability, a key part of the Cookery School ethos.
The Cookery School sustainability journey really started before the school began. My daughter, Kathryn, had encouraged me from early days to buy as much organic food as I was able to afford as organic produce was considered an expensive luxury. She maintained that if everyone bought only a small amount,
Category
Ros Rants Sustainability
Welcome to the Wild West End
Wild West End’s vision is to enhance biodiversity in the West End of London. Despite there being a considerable amount of green space in the city, there aren’t enough connections between them to protect the birds, bees and bats, among other wildlife. One of Wild West End’s main initiatives is to attract the Black Redstart and the House Sparrow, both species once common in London.
Category
Sustainability
Sustainable Tips for Sustainable Living
“Sustainability is highly embedded in Cookery School’s business strategy and its initiatives are among the best in the hospitality industry.”
– Sustainable Restaurant Association
Sustainable living runs through our veins, offsetting the higher cost of such things as renewable energy and eco-friendly detergents against their fundamental morals. Over 75% of ingredients are sourced locally and of organic status.
Category
Sustainability
The Pity with Plastics
2018: People have woken up to the problem with plastics. With jaw-dropping facts emerging almost daily, we now know that huge quantities of plastic (larger than a big rubbish truck) are being dumped into our oceans every minute and that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish, by weight. The irony is that the cost to clean up the sea is greater than the profits made by the plastic industry as a whole – what a dystopian economic landscape we’ve created.
Category
Sustainability
BRAND NEW CLASS: We’re tackling food waste!
Waste Not Want Not
We’re proud to announce the launch of our ‘Waste Matters’ class which teaches people how to reduce waste in the kitchen, in light of the 7.3 million tonnes of food wasted in the UK annually. *
The class launches in September and covers how to use food which may be deemed waste but is perfectly edible. You will learn how to repurpose leftovers and be more sustainable in the kitchen.
Category
Sustainability
