What’s most important to you when it comes to enjoying your food? Most people would no doubt immediately answer ‘taste’ but what about smell or appearance, the way it feels or the noise it makes when you munch it? These are senses we all take for granted but if we want to enjoy our food to the full, perhaps we need to learn how to appreciate them more. This year’s Aylsham Food Festival is offering youngsters an interactive way of encouraging them to use all their five senses when eating and enjoying food.
The Taste Adventure is an initiative created by the Slow Food organisation, an international movement that seeks to provide an antidote to today’s fast food culture. There are a number of branches of Slow Food across the UK and ‘foodie town’ Aylsham is proud to be one of these. Each year, Slow Food Aylsham organises a 3-day Food Festival which for 2010 will include The Taste Adventure.
On the morning of Saturday 2nd October, Aylsham Town Hall will be welcoming children, up to 12 years old and accompanied by an adult, to take part in The Taste Adventure where they will be invited to visit the five Sense Zones: Seeing, Touchy, Noisy, Smelly and Tasty. For each zone there is a tabletop activity which will bring the sense to life and enable the children to explore the use of that sense in relation to food. In the Touchy zone, for example, the children will be asked to reach inside a series of boxes and feel the contents. Through touch, they will be asked to identify foods that have different textures.
There will be a Taste Adventure Passport for each child to mark down their answers for each of the five zones, with prizes for the most accurate.
Entry for The Taste Adventure is completely free – just turn up any time between 10am and 2pm – but only children with an accompanying adult will be able to take part.
The 2010 Aylsham Food Festival starts on Friday 1st October with an evening buffet dinner at Aylsham High School, prepared and served by Hospitality and Catering students. Tickets for this sumptuous meal, costing just £18.50 per person will be available throughout September at Salad Days fruit & veg stall in Aylsham Market Place. In addition to The Taste Adventure, Saturday 2nd will also see an extended farmers market in the Market Place and Kids Cooking Workshops at the High School, run in association with the lottery-funded ‘Let’s Get Cooking’ campaign. Invitations to participate in the workshops will be circulated via the Town’s primary schools.
Rounding off the Festival will be Sunday’s Big Slow Breakfast in the Town Hall. This ever popular event is bound to sell out quickly so don’t delay in getting your tickets – again available from Salad Days throughout September and costing just 5 for adults and £3 for children under 12.
Now in its fifth year, Aylsham Food Festival sets out to promote local food and its associated businesses. Coinciding with British Food Fortnight and the Norfolk Food Festival, it has gone from strength to strength and is an important event on Aylsham’s foodie calendar. There are more details at www.slowfoodaylsham.org.uk
