Read the latest school food blogs, including Irene Carroll, Former Chair of LACA as she talks about healthy school lunches and the build up to the week.

The NSMW Girls have loved working on National School Meals Week and we're already wondering what we will do with our lives once this year's is over...no doubt the planning will soon begin for next year!

One of the highlights for us has been working with Colin Jackson. We first met him at the filming for the Get Active Day where he showed us what a true professional he really is. The day was so much fun and we are sure you will agree the exercise videos are just brilliant! Karen also met Colin when he was speaking at the School Food Trust Marketing Conference in September, where she was also speaking.

Colin arrived at the hotel we were all staying at late on Sunday evening. He had been busy filming in Kenya with Usain Bolt so he was extremely tired and we arranged to meet up at the school at 8.30am. Both Karen and Nicola had a late night as we had to stay up to put the result of Britain's favourite school meal live at 12.01am and our alarm was set for 5.30am so we could get ready for the big day. As we were having breakfast so early we didn't think we'd bump into anyone so Karen went to breakfast with the biggest, frizziest hair you could imagine and we both looked very tired. Colin was sat bright eyed and full of beans with our get active expert, Chris Lee and he looked a lot more ready for the day than we did at that time. However his energy must have rubbed off on us as 20 minutes later we were ready to go to the school (with straight hair).

Colin arrived at 8.30am and met many of the NSMW team including Beverley Baker, Chair of LACA. What was great about him was whether he was speaking to a team of young people, the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, representatives from LACA or us he was constantly upbeat and positive. Whatever was asked of him he did with a great smile and nothing was too much trouble. Even when the curtains didn't open for the launch it was Colin who took charge and between Nicola, Chris and Colin they pulled the curtains back.

You could really tell that National School Meals Week was a cause that Colin truly believed in as he talked about his experience of school meals at his Secondary School. Obviously to a sports person of his level eating a balanced diet was vital for him to have been at his peak for training. He explained how his catering staff went out of their way to make sure he got a hot meal at lunchtime. And then he announced the result of Britain's favourite school meal - Roast dinner with sponge pudding and custard!

Later in the morning Colin spoke to a group of pupils who are all keen and excel at sport. They all listened with fascination as Colin talked about how he believed his over-confidence had cost him a gold medal at the Olympic Games. He then went on to talk about how he had to overcome this disappointment that then led to him breaking the World Record and becoming World Champion. The one message that really struck a chord with both of us was when he told the young people to day dream...as he was proof that sometimes day dreams really do come true. This actually brought a tear to our eyes as we watched the video back later in the week! If his words of wisdom had this effect on us imagine what an inspiration he was to young people who are potentially just at the start of their sporting careers!

Next it was over to the school dining hall where Colin put on his hat and white jacket and joined the ladies in the kitchen to serve Britain's favourite school meal. Lots of laughter could be seen and heard as he put the Yorkshire puddings, vegetables and gravy on the children's plates. He then joined a group of pupils to taste the delicious meal.

After lunch it was time for the Get Active session which was run by Chris Lee from Trojan Training. The school teachers commented they had never seen the pupils work so hard as Colin and Chris motivated them to put everything into the circuit. Chris asked the students to give them the scientific name of different muscles in the body and said if they got it right he and Colin would do ten press up's each. This backfired when one student answered correctly and without a second thought they both did ten each. You have to watch the video blog below to see which completed ten first!

A group of Primary School pupils joined us for the next session and Colin was as great with the younger children as he was with the old. They were learning how to make coleslaw and he encouraged them all to get involved. He then helped them make thank you cards for their school cooks ready for the ‘get thanking' day and even coloured his own card in. However he was slightly concerned his colouring wouldn't be up to standard as art wasn't one of his strong points.

Despite a long and tiring day Colin still remained upbeat when everyone else had left and he encouraged Karen as she did a piece to camera for the ‘get filming' day. This is not something that Karen enjoys doing and his support meant a lot. The day ended with all three of us talking to the camera about how much we had enjoyed the week and working together. It was a great way to finish what had been a very successful and enjoyable launch for us, Colin, the school and all the guests who attended.

Our thanks go to Michael Hales and his team in Tower Hamlets for organising such a brilliant day. The team was on hand throughout the day to make sure everything ran smoothly.....and it did!

We want to take this opportunity to thank Colin Jackson on behalf of LACA and AVF Marketing Ltd for everything he did! He really is a great ambassador for school meals and believes that what we are all doing can help many young people learn to lead a healthy and active lifestyle!

Personally we don't think we could have found anyone better to be the face of this year's National School Meals Week.

The NSMW Girls

As we approach the end of the week it has been great to receive some stories of what has been happening in schools.  When we receive emails like this with such postive stories we know all the hard work has really paid off. Take a look below at some of the great activity that has been going on.  Please send your success stories in so we can share them with others.

From Jo at Grange Farm Primary School in Leeds

"Our week has been great!  Our Year 6 children have prepared all of the cold elements of the school dinners for the last two days (such as fruit, tarts, pasta and couscous salads) and have served lunches to the rest of the school. They are now working to create their own fantasy healthy school meal which will be on the menu in the future. It has been fantastic working with the staff in our school kitchen. This morning we invited our school cooks into our assembly to give them a very special thank you"

From Anna at Solutions SK in Stockport

"Leading up to the week we ran a competition via the My School Lunch and the Yougo4it sites on healthy eating and exercise. The prize was to welcome Stockport County into their school to ‘get active.' The winners were Jade Molloy from Fairway Primary School, Offerton, Stockport and Connor Jackson from Werneth High School, Romiley, Stockport. The team presented each winner with a signed shirt and tickets to a match of their choice.

In the primary school all of Jade's classmates took part in games organised by the Football in Community Coach Mike Smith and the County Players - Carl Baker, Adam Griffin and Paul Turnball. At Werneth, County players, Matty Mainwaring, David Poole and Gianluca Havern organised a 5 a-side match between 10 selected children, which included warming up and down exercises and a question and answer session.

The event was a great success and demonstrated the benefits of a balanced diet in conjunction with regular exercise."

From Sarah at S Anselm's Prep School in Bakewell, Derbyshire

The Nursery, Pre- Prep and Prep school will be involved in taster sessions with a different theme running each day. A selection of smoothies, fresh fruit drinks and milkshakes will be tasted at each morning break along with a variety of other healthy snacks such as interesting breads (sundried tomato, cheesy and olive); yoghurt coated fruit (bananas, raisins, apricots and ginger) and a variety of seeds and dried fruits (including pumpkin seeds, pine nuts and even goji berries!) One day we will be celebrating British cheeses; on another pupils will be tasting a variety of sausages including beef and horseradish and lamb with rosemary and garlic.

The school has suspended their rolling school lunch menu and introduced new main courses and desserts for the week. Each day pupils will be voting on each dish, choosing whether they want to see it included within future menus. The week started off with pork goulash and rice pudding with strawberry puree. Other dishes include chicken korma with naan bread and various Indian relishes and chutneys and baked stuffed apples and custard.

Throughout the week, the children at S. Anselm's will be also be trying out new healthier tea-time snacks such as teacakes and scones, homemade biscuits and muffins (with poppy seeds and honey lemon and lime), homemade yogurts full of live probiotic cultures and also a variety of new and different sandwich fillings for future afternoon teas.

To top this enormous amount of activity the children will be participating in food and healthy lifestyle quizzes; a ‘What's in the box?' competition (where pupils must try and guess what food component is in the box!); poster competitions and PSHE lessons focusing on Healthy Body, Healthy Mind."

This is all fantastic to hear, please send your stories and photos to nicola@avfmarketing.co.uk so we can share your NSMW succes with others.

We have just received some fantastic photos from Solutions SK in Stockport.  They were the 100th organisation to sign up for National School Meals Week and have planned lots of activity for the week - especially in Secondary Schools. 

On Monday they launched National School Meals Week with a local band - The Harks.  The Harks went to Marple Hall High School in Stockport and played a live gig over lunchtime while the children bought and ate their meals.  Today the team are supporting the Get Active day by going to a Primary and a Secondary school with members of the Stockport County football team.

We have been capturing the week so far in video. Check out these videos and see what has been happening in schools this week.

• Monday - Get Eating - Do you day dream?
• Tuesday - Get Cooking - Where did the red cabbage come from?
• Wednesday - Get Active - who did more press-ups?

More videos will be added as the week goes on

We're already hearing of some fantastic local activity happening this week. Please email us the details and your pictures so we can share your great work with others.

The organised by Cambridgeshire Catering and Cleaning Services as part of the National School Meals Week got off to a great start yesterday. All classes took part including the nursery.

Executive Chef, David Haw, visited Uppingham C of E Primary School and Brooke Hill Primary School in Rutland. The children had a great time helping David make bread and learnt lots about cooking. During National School Meals Week he is also visiting Hemingford Grey Primary School, Great Wilbraham C of E Primary School, Priory Park Infant School and Fordham C of E Primary School.

Radio star Aled Haydn Jones gets involved in National School Meals Week. 

He tucked into a healthy plate of pasta at lunchtime after confessing he'd munched a chocolate biscuit for breakfast during the show today! Aled, who presents the Sunday Surgery and produces the Chris Moyles Show on Radio One, joined pupils from St Margaret Ward Catholic High School in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent as they tried out new, healthy additions to the school menu.

He said: "I was known for eating quite bland food but recently I have learned the importance of eating a healthy balanced diet and so I was interested to try out the new healthier school menu. I opted for Pasta with Vegetable Bolognese and it was delicious." 

Aled spent more than two hours in the packed school dining room signing autographs and talking to pupils and staff.

He added "I was really pleased that the pupils took such an interest in what they were eating. Of course, we all like to have treats from time to time - like a choccie biscuit - but there's no doubting the fact that these young people are aware they should eat properly."

He also commented “I've recently come to realise how important good wholesome food is to a healthy body and mind. I would really urge young people to try the healthy options on the school menu. Even if, like me, it doesn't come easily to you, remember a good nutritious diet is really important to being fit and healthy.

The event was sponsored by The School Food Trust and marks the introduction of new healthier school meals in Stoke-on-Trent schools.

What a fun day I have had. I taught the children how to film and they taught me how to cook! I have just got back from Gilbert Scott Primary School in Croydon where I was taught to cook by Debbie Mumford, School Chef of the Year and her very able assistants.

Whilst Debbie and the rest of the cooking team were preparing the food and getting all the equipment ready Leon Taylor and I talked to the children about TV and video filming. One by one each child mimed a cooking technique. The rest of us watched them through the camera TV monitor and guessed what they were doing.

Leon Taylor has lots of BBC TV experience so he was able to give expert advice on making TV programmes to the children. He ensured everyone was always smiling and explained what would happen if a child removed their jumper so far though filming i.e. we would have continuity problems with our edited videos!

Thank you so much to everyone involved in the Get Cooking Day filming. I am really looking forward to seeing the final videos.

We have produced two graphics for you to display on your website. They are different sizes so you can decide which is the most appropriate for your site. The banners have been produced to standard display advertising sizes so they should be suitable for most websites. You can download the banners in My NSMW in the ‘Schools' and ‘Authorities' section.

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And don’t forget to link the banner to www.iloveschoolmeals.co.uk

As you were all preparing for the pupils going back to school the NSMW girls were busy filming the Get Active day video with Colin Jackson. Getting ready in the morning we talked about how nervous we were. It is such a big part of the week we wanted to be sure it would all run smoothly. But there was no need to be nervous. Colin was a true professional! He was great fun, really kind (he even got his driver to take Nicola to the station) and made the whole event run smoothly. We think he will be a real inspiration to young people. He certainly inspired us!

We were lucky to have the help and support of Chris Lee from Trojan Training. Chris is a very experienced personal trainer and he put together all the exercises for the Get Active Day. Karen and Chris also went through all the coaching points beforehand so we could make sure that young people knew how to do the exercises correctly. Some of the exercises Colin hadn't done before so a lot of time was spent on Chris showing him the exercise first and then talking through the points that had to be put across. When we were filming Karen watched it on a screen, Chris checked the exercises were being done properly and Nicola checked all the points were being made whilst Nigel from Lancashire One TV filmed. It was a real team effort!

During the day we realised how much benefit there was to selecting an athlete who was used to being on camera. Colin came across brilliantly and his experience meant we got through it without there being too many takes. Of course, there were some outtakes and very amusing moments, some of which I am sure will stick with us for a long time. This included Colin getting his glutes and quads muddled up several times which caused much laughter.
We had a fantastic buffet lunch, which we made sure was very healthy seeing as we had a former World Champion to cater for. This gave us opportunity to get to know Colin better. He's speaking at the School Food Trust Conference at the end of the month and Karen is running a workshop there. We will also meet with him again at the launch of NSMW on 9th November.

In the afternoon it was straight back to filming as we were under a great time pressure as we only had this one day to get it all right. We all worked hard to have all the filming finished by 4.30pm and then we had to do photographs of all the exercises and stretches.

We learnt a lot about Colin during the afternoon. He can juggle grapes, is an expert with a skipping rope and struggled with the dance steps in the early days of Strictly Come Dancing (obviously he improved as he was 2nd in his series and won the Christmas Day special). We also learnt that Karen likes to pose in front of the camera and would make an excellent ring girl. Oh and that Nicola can't control her giggles at really inappropriate moments i.e. mid filming. Joking aside, it is thanks to Colin, Chris and Nigel we now have a fantastic resource that you can all use to promote your school meals during NSMW. We just can't wait to see the final version!

Those of you that have met us will know we don't let a good opportunity go to waste!! We didn't let Colin leave until he had posed for photographs with the NSMW Girls and signed some autographs for us. We also asked him to sign the exercise mat that was used for the filming which will be awarded as a prize during the week. Come back soon to find out more!

I received an email this morning saying thank you for the webinar I ran on Friday about digital marketing. This was one of two webinars that I ran with Arnold Fewell.

I enjoy speaking about digital marketing as I know everyone is very keen to learn the best ways to use the modern tools of marketing. I show some great case studies in my presentation and people soon realise how easy it is to get fantastic results or a complete failure.

We are running webinars right up until National School Meals Week. The best thing for you is that they are free. You can dial in from a conference phone so all your team can get free training. Just login to ‘My NSMW' and register for your chosen dates.

I look forward to talking to you soon

Karen Fewell, the older NSMW girl

Check out the National School Meals Week Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/nsmw

It has also been integrated on the left hand side of every page. So as you move around the site you can see the most up to date news, as it happens.

If you are wondering ‘what is Twitter, tweeting and micro blogging?' then sign-up to one of the free webinars on digital marketing. All you have to do now is register for the session you want to join. Nearer the time, you will receive an email with a link to the interactive session and a telephone number to call. It really is easy!

We have some authorities leading the way with their own Twitter pages, take a look at Tower Hamlets who are tweeting away: http://twitter.com/LBTHCatering

If you tweet then drop us a line @nsmw or twitter.com/nsmw, we would love to follow your tweets.

See you all soon
NSMW Girls

Well were are back from the LACA conference and so pleased with the interest in National School Meals Week.

We wondered what Arnold was doing when he ordered us sashes to wear, but I have to admit he was right - they did grab everyone's attention. Whether we were wandering around the exhibition, ordering refreshments from the bar or stood on our NSMW stand we were being asked about National School Meals Week.

The designers did a great job and the stand looked great! I think they thought we were going overboard when we went clothes shopping to ensure we were dressed in the NSMW brand colours - but everything on our stand represented the new National School Meals Week brand and added to the impact.

The feedback we had at the conference, and are still receiving now is brilliant. So many people are excited about taking part in a digital marketing campaign. We have had some fantastic comments as authorities and schools register on the website and we will share these with you in another blog.

The guides to organising National School Meals Week were sought after, people were always coming to us asking for their own copy of the booklet. If you did not manage to collect your own, register for the week and download it from the website.

Thanks for making us both feel so welcome at the conference. We are glad you like the new look NSMW and are really excited about getting ready for the actual week. We have all sorts planned, including:

• spending time with teenagers to plan the NSMW social networking activity
• working with our fitness specialist to get ready for filming Colin Jackson
• researching what children want to learn about cooking, in preparation for the Get Cooking day

Come back soon and read our updates on how preparations for the big week are going.

Karen and Nicola, known as the NSMW girls at the LACA conference