The kitchen, the four-week menu and the allergy folder

Every meal is cooked in the kitchen at the back of the building by Ros, who has been here nine years. Nothing arrives frozen in a van.

The rotation

Four weeks of menus, repeated, rewritten twice a year with whatever the raised beds are producing. It is on the board by the front door and on the portal. Breakfast until half past eight, lunch at half eleven in Acorns and midday elsewhere, tea at four.

Children serve themselves

Small jugs, small bowls, real crockery. They spill, and they clear it up, and by the time they leave Oaks they can pour a glass of water without flooding the table. It makes lunch take twenty minutes longer than it needs to, which is fine.

Allergies and diets

Eleven children currently have something they cannot eat. Each one has a plan the room knows by heart, their own coloured crockery, and a separately printed menu. Nothing is left to a note in the office. If your child's plan changes, tell the room and the kitchen on the same morning and we will confirm it back to you in writing.

Fussy eating

We put it on the plate, we do not comment when it comes back untouched, and we tell you honestly at pick-up. Children eat things here they refuse at home, largely because someone else at the table is eating them.