Kiss The Cook! European Open Table For Happy M-EAT-INGS Erasmus Project

Project Title

Kiss The Cook! European Open Table For Happy M-EAT-INGS

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Social dialogue; Health and wellbeing; Social entrepreneurship / social innovation

Project Summary

Our title „Kiss The Cook! European Open Table For Happy M-EAT-ings“ expressed our intention for the motivation to receive the feeling of togetherness for young open minded people in a European Union. By the first part of our title „Kiss The Cook“ we followed the idea to reflect the students‘ daily eating habits in order to appreciate nature as ressource for good food in the sense of conscious well being happy lifestyle. „Kiss“ meant appreciation for the cooking team.
Away from „ Fast food to go“ to „Happy M-EAT-ings to enjoy“! Enjoying meant to invite and spend time together with friends and to get to know new friends in our European open table atmosphere. Our table was (and still is) open for new cultures, different cultural food, new experiences of tastes and ideas: Open for social projects by inviting the neighbourhood, disadvantaged people, different generations and refugees leading to happenings and events. We encouraged the students for entrepreneurship by planning happy meetings including table decoration, invitation cards, menu, budget calculation, music, service, creating a well -feeling and we-feeling atmosphere.
At international meetings, our students acted as chefs in an international team in each country. They presented their own cultural dishes and created new European menus as an international fusion inspired by their synergy skills from all participating countries, which ended in a taste explosion.We also invited VIP chefs from our region and they aroused the interest of our students in the professional field, as they enjoyed cooking, because they received tips and skills from “professionals” in cooking and used regional products in their dishes you can continue to use them for a healthy lifestyle in the future. For reasons of sustainability and dissemination, we motivated the students to create a recipe book as one of our results. In addition, our Irish partner school created a website on which the recipe book and the process of the project are published.

Our project was extended from two to three years due to Corona. Unfortunately, the planned exchange with Portugal could only take place digitally. In these three project years we focused on different aspects:

1) Food as a part(y) of culture (Multi Culti food) – „Open for new tastes – feel the explosion“.

2) Healthy Lifestyle (Fit Food) „You are what you eat.“

3) Food as a way of communication (Soul Food) „Good food – good mood.“

4) Eating, moving, googleing – “Find your balance”

5) Food as a way of celebration – “Happy M-EAT-INGS to enjoy”

Good food evoked happy moments in a good atmosphere because people got in contact and exchange their ideas and opened their hearts. Inviting people living in the region for happy M-eat-ings with European students opens the horizon for all participants.

Our partners were (and still are) from Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Poland.
They contributed with different competences:
Our Irish and Portuguese partnerschools had experts for IT competences. The Italian partnerschool focused on education and E-twinning, the partner from Ireland was also our expert for language competences, our Polish partner was our expert partner with experiences in several former Erasmus and Comenius projects- thanks to their excellent cooperation and confident communication a trustful friendship could be established – and our German school contributed with NLP practice, methodic ideas, biology, art, cook experts and experience in many former Comenius and Erasmus projects as European coordinator.

All partners regarded the subject of cooking and healthy lifestyle as an important factor for the European youth confronted with moveless sitting students in front of their computer and smartphone plunging in their virtual world eating crisps and fast food forgetting their real world around them. We motivated them for real happy m-eat-ings and good food enjoying real friends in a motivating happy atmosphere to enrich their horizon.
So they discovered their balance between – sending messages and rechearching information using the internet as a tool and not as the centre of their life – and joyful real life experiences.

Using social networks for exchanging ideas, contacts and photos was also an important positive aspect for reasonable using modern media with the advantage of quickly echanged information. The aim was to reach a balance and a sort of saving ‘out-time’ as ‘free-time from media’ windows for caring REAL HAPPY M-EAT-ings.

So we showed a way of conscious consumption of media and awareness for a respectful communication and interaction face to face without using media during a conversation to take a chance to enter in a deep international dialogue with heart and soul at our European Open Table. Kiss the Cook!

Project Website

https://www.kissthecook.online/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 116687,96 Eur

Project Coordinator

Oberzent Schule Beerfelden & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Agrupamento de Escolas de Alter do Chão
• Newpark Comprehensive School
• istituto magistrale sofonisba anguissola
• II Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace z Oddzialami Dwujezycznymi im. Kazimierza Jagiellonczyka