Cultural Awareness Day was a huge success this year and gave all the students the opportunity to join in celebrating each other’s cultures and learning about what each other’s cultures mean to us as a school and community.

The celebration included education, music, food, and personal identity through the clothes associated with the different cultures. Many students chose to wear their traditional clothing and many others represented through the identity of their countries football kit, an ideal opportunity to represent the country of their choice.

Passmores had its very own street food market which allowed students to sample food from other cultures as well as our very own UK food which offered toad in the hole and apple pie.

Dishes like toad in the hole appeared in print as early as 1762, when it was described as a "vulgar" name for a "small piece of beef baked in a large pudding”. Toad in the hole was originally created to stretch out meat in poor households.

The Caribbean and Africa offered jerk chicken and Jollof rice which was the busiest of the stalls with students enjoying the spicey dishes. While the history of Jollof rice is deeply rooted in West Africa, specifically in the ancient Senegambian region, which is now part of modern-day Senegal and The Gambia. This area was home to the powerful Jolof Empire during the 14th and 15th centuries, a time when trade, culture, and agriculture flourished. The dish we now call Jollof rice is believed to have originated here, making it a centuries-old culinary treasure.

Asia offered a vegetable hoisin noodle dish which when the Jollof rice was sold out was offered as an accompaniment to the jerk chicken, creating its own fusion and inclusivity of two different countries.

One of the most popular pasta origin stories is of Marco Polo travelling to ancient China. After slurping lots of yummy wheat noodles, he brought the recipe and sample back to Europe. Thus inspired the creation of pasta and spaghetti. While the validity of this tale is debatable, archaeological findings do suggest that noodles were eaten in China nearly 4,000 years ago. Which pre-dates even the earliest record of noodle enjoyment, written during the East Han Dynasty between 25 and 220AD.

Samosas (a popular snack) was enjoyed by many, and the students chose from chicken, meat, and vegetable. To understand the origins of samosas, we must travel back in time to the ancient civilizations of the Middle East and South Asia. The first recorded mention of a food remarkably like the modern-day samosa dates to the 10th century in the Arabic culinary writings. Here, we find references to a dish called “sambusak,” which consisted of stuffed pastries that had captured the imaginations of many through their different fillings and flavours.

Romanian food was an opportunity to try a typical Romanian skinless sausage called Mici which is made from pork, lamb or beef and seasoned with herbs and spices. The origin of mici is believed to date back to the 19th century. It is said that they were created by a Romanian cook named Iordache Ionescu, who was working in Bucharest. The story goes that Iordache Ionescu was attempting to make traditional sausages, but he ran out of casing, so he decided to form the sausages without it, resulting in the skinless, elongated shape that we now associate with “mititei.”No Romanian gathering is complete without this little sausage that is usually barbequed and served with a traditional potato salad, mustard and bread.

It was a wonderful day and the atmosphere was charged with the positive celebration of the cultural diversity of students and staff at Passmores, and Ms Christie did a fabulous job of serving on the noodle stand.

Huge thank you to all involved.

Ms Jameson