Whether it’s a particular meal that reminds you of your favourite holiday, a home comfort dish lovingly cooked by your mum or simply sustenance to get you through the day, food is never meaningless.
In fact, food is one of the most powerful connective tools we have.
Food stimulates all the senses, evoking memories and associations. The smell of hot, fresh gravy takes you back to your family kitchen, where you’d huddle together with your siblings eagerly awaiting the Sunday roast.
Small plates of delicious tapas remind you of that summer you spent backpacking in Europe, where you made friends with the locals and connected over your shared love of zingy gazpacho and traditional Spanish tortilla.
Fish and chips conjure up fond memories of childhood trips to the seaside, where you’d try in vain to fend off hungry seagulls as you shared a portion of salty chips wrapped in vinegar-soaked paper.
But sharing food is about more than just sharing your chips — although that’s always nice, too!
Humans have always bonded over food.
Eating and cooking together is a long-standing, primal comfort that glues and holds us all together, especially through challenging times. Coming together and sharing a meal is the most communal and binding thing in almost every country in the world. It’s universal.
Everyone likes a good meal. And everybody knows that eating together feels good. Even two people who have a passion for food, but agree on little else, can have a good time over a shared meal and a couple of beers.
For family and friends, it can be a great time to relax, catch up and reconnect. For colleagues, cooking and eating together offers a great opportunity to bond away from the pressures of the work environment and professional constraints — meaning you can get to know each other properly on a more personal level.
Ultimately, food makes people happy. Many studies have even shown that those who eat with others (be it their family, friends or colleagues) are happier and healthier. Just think about your most memorable meals — we bet they involve as much laughter and conversation as they do good food.
Food doesn’t just bring back memories — it creates them.
We build our bonds with family over dinner and prepare food to share at special occasions and celebrations. We go to restaurants on dates and spend our time searching TripAdvisor for the best places to eat on holiday. We catch up with colleagues around the microwave on our lunch breaks and offer to do the tea round just to have an excuse to tuck into the sweet treats in the office.
We check-in at new restaurants and take pictures of the delectable dishes they serve us — sharing our discoveries with our social network and hoping to receive recommendations back. We snap our own creations and send them to our friends, beaming with pride and the delicious meal we’ve produced.
Or at least we used to before lockdown.
Things are a little different at the moment, but soon we’ll all be able to catch up with friends, family and colleagues and start making memories again. And what better way to do that than with one of our cookery courses?
We’ve introduced a few new measures to ensure your safety on all our courses and are looking forward to welcoming you to the school.
And there’s no need to worry if you’re not the most confident cook. Even if it all goes wrong (which it won’t under the guidance of our expert chefs), you’ve got someone to share the blame with…
We can’t wait to get cooking together again! Browse our selection of cookery courses today and see what takes your fancy. From children’s cookery courses and evening courses for adults to group bookings and corporate days out, we’ve got something to suit all ages and taste buds.
