By Romilla Arber
Romilla Arber is the author of What’s for Dinner?
What’s for Dinner? Second Helpings, as the title suggests is her second book. She describes it is a food journal of what she has cooked throughout the year stressing that it is a book for the home cook not for chefs.
It has to be said that this home cook has so far read almost every one of its 767 pages and wants to try just about every single one of the recipe! One of the first we intend trying is the delicious sounding Braised loin of pork and fennel with mustard sauce, and we can’t see anybody complaining about having a slice of White chocolate and rhubarb Swiss roll.
It is a delightfully unpretentious book – and you instinctively know that each recipe will work and the result on the fork or spoon will be at least tasty, if not delicious. Monthly, weekly menus have been created for balanced diets using a combination of fish, meat and veggie meals, plus various treats for folk with a sweet tooth.
Romilla stresses that she is neither chef, nor nutritionist. She is a mum of four, who grew up in a household where home cooked meals were an every-day part of life. She believes that by equipping children and adults with basic cookery skills, they can prepare home cooked meals each evening and rely less on processed and convenience foods. Children, as well as adults, should know how to cook and create balanced, healthy meals.
In 2008 she established the Food Education Trust to do just that, and also to help counteract the rising obesity levels in the UK. It was funded by her first book What’s for Dinner? and she hopes that this funding will be continued through sales of What’s for Dinner? Second Helpings. The aim of the Trust is to show how easy it is to make change in diets through education, sowing the seeds of knowledge in children’s minds so that home cooking becomes the norm to them. And, with adults, showing them that with a little knowledge and some confidence it is possible to produce home cooked food regularly without the need to resort to ready meals and processed food.
It is the only cookery manual in the UK where 100% of the sale proceeds go to charity (The Food Education Trust; both books wholly fund The Food Education Trust.
We cannot recommend this book strongly enough. Worth every penny of its £25 cover price – this could well become the family bible of recipes. Park Family Publishing. ISBN 978-0-95709-350-8. Also visit www.foodeducationtrust.com