The Leeds Rhinos Foundation’s education project TryZone kicked off a number of summer activities this week with ‘Rhinos Ready Steady Cook’ with team captains from the Rhinos squad including Ryan Hall, Stevie Ward and Carl Ablett at Headingley Carnegie Stadium.
TryZone currently funded by the Big Lottery, has been offering young people that have been on projects over the term the chance to participate in a variety of summer activities.
This summer the children have an exciting programme of activities ahead of them which includes a visit to the Jorvik centre and DIG, an animation film making day, a Battlefield (laser tag) activity day along with a family trip to Scarborough.
Wednesday's Rhinos Ready Steady Cook Day started with the young people preparing for their day of cooking by dressing the part in their branded uniforms before filling up with toast at the Pavillion cafe.
The group were then split into teams named after the Leeds Rhinos players, Team Stevie Ward, Team Ryan Hall and Team Carl Ablett, before enjoying a talk an presentation from Steve at Leeds Beckett University on ‘Beat the Bugs', giving the young people a rundown of health and safety in a kitchen.
To get started the groups then began to prepare and cook their own lunch. In true Ready Steady Cook style Steve passed each group a tray with a collection of ingredients that came a recipe for the children to work through for their first challenge.
After reading through their menus of chicken and chorizo jambalaya, beef and vegetable stir fry and spicy vegetable pasta, the young chefs put their cooking skills to the test with some slicing and dicing to prepare all of their ingredients, following the rules they had learnt earlier in the day about food health and safety.
After a lunch of three different main dishes, a side salad and a mixed fruit salad – made of around 10 fruits, the group were straight back to action to prepare and cook pizzas.
ach individual had the chance to prepare their sauce, toppings and dough before putting them in the oven and boxing them up to take home for the family.
Rhinos Ready Steady Cook was a pilot with the hope to incorporate further life skills in the kitchen into other projects in the future. The one day activity took advantage of Leeds Becketts University kitchens and staff at the Pavillion part of Headingley Carnegie Stadium.
Thanks have to be extended to Leeds Beckett University and Steve and Allison for the joint organising and running of the day with staff from the Leeds Rhinos Foundation.
A further thanks to Russums, based in Rotherham, who supplied the young people with some great branded uniforms. A final thank you to the Stevie Ward, Ryan Hall and Carl Ablett who took time out to join their teams to chat and take photos.
For more information on TryZone visit http://www.leedsrhinosfoundation.org/education/index.php