Healthy Eating at Willow Cottage

At Willow cottage we have always striven to deliver the best nutrition and early food education for young children.

As you know our dedicated children’s cooks prepare with great care our nutritious home-made food which is freshly prepared in our own nursery kitchens. We hope that your child enjoys our meals.

Please take a look at some of the meals your child enjoys

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Update on our revised Four Week Rolling Menu

We are delighted to report that after several revisions and subsequent trials we have now adopted our new Four Week Rolling Menu. The full menu can be found in your reception areas with allergens in bold. There are some tasty new meals and snacks added and enjoyed by the children such ‘Gobble Gobble’ and ‘Cluck Cluck’ pies, Macaroni cheese, Carrot cakes together with time honoured old favourites that the children love. We also have a number of vegetarian options and a passion to widen the vegetarian options with more environmentally helpful protein options other than meat. We continue to design our meals to be nutritionally balanced and also to include the essential nutrients and micronutrients that young children need for optimum growth and development.

Nursery Food Matters

At Willow Cottage and as part of our early years provision for your child we prioritise the delivery of high quality healthy food and the encouragement of low sugar eating habits. We understand from research* that nutritious food ‘right from the start’ not only influences a child’s educational attainment, but their future eating habits, life style and even their and longevity.

Through June, July and August the children from all departments enjoy our Summer Menu. This has been very successful with its lighter menu replacing the heart-warming soups, pasta bakes, and hot fruity (though still low sugar!) puddings with more salad and lower sugar options. Within this menu they have also been gaining some new food handling skills such as preparing and filling their own home-made bread rolls for tea, popping fresh garden peas, and enjoying the new flavour of the home-grown gooseberries and fresh Edamame beans (immature soya beans) as part of their side salads. They have also enjoyed the trialling of some new recipes such as tuna fish cakes, salmon and broccoli pasta and chicken pie.

Thank you to those parents and staff who have also sent in their recipe suggestions for our new menu prepared and designed in conjunction with the Government’s new guidance for menu and dietary advice (published Nov. 2017). These recipes, menus and guidelines were jointly developed by the Department for Education, Department of Health and Public Health England, drawing on advice from a panel of early years and nutrition experts. Some of these will now appear in our Four Week Rolling Menu commencing at the beginning of October.

Why not have fun with your child at home with Mr. Willow’s latest Fun Food eNewsletter? Please sign up on our website.

* The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), also known as Children of the 90s, is a world-leading birth cohort study.