Chef, restaurateur and TV presenter Prue Leith was the guest of honour for a special opening ceremony for Headington’s new Food and Nutrition Centre.
Prue visited the School on Friday 23rd September to cut the ribbon, meet some of the girls cooking in the state-of-the-art new facilities and enjoy afternoon tea with a selection of sixth formers and staff in Headington’s Creativity & Innovation Centre: the Hive.
She spent time with each group of girls who were cooking before touring the centre and meeting representatives from Kitchen Architecture, who designed and fitted out the kitchens. Wafting through the kitchens were the smells of a range of different delicious meals cooking – salmon with soy, ginger and noodles, chicken, chorizo and chickpeas with rice, and sweet potato, spinach and chickpea curry with garlic flatbreads.
Prue said: “It’s just so lovely to see the girls really enjoying cooking proper, healthy food. They obviously love it, which is the trick – if you can get people to love cooking good food, they will end up eating healthy food and it’s lovely to have such nice facilities too.”
Prue has a long-standing connection with the School as a Headington parent. Her adoptive daughter Li-Da Kruger attended the School and is the newest member of the Governing Body. Li-Da was also in attendance on Friday.
She said: “Learning how to cook is so important. The biggest thing my mother taught me about food, which will stay with me forever, is how important it is to sit down and eat together and all the many additional skills you learn when cooking – Maths, Science, timing and so on.
“You walk around this school today and you feel you can do anything, be anything, and I almost wish I could be 12 again and be able to come here now.”