Kathryn Rolph

The beginning of September brings the start of a new school year and Sunderland's School Food Team has been busy developing new dishes and putting together a new menu with which to titillate the taste buds of our schoolchildren. My role, as the politician with responsibility for school meals, is to promote them by taking part in launch events.

So, Tuesday, 26th August, saw me in the dining hall at Farringdon School being photographed, poised with knife and fork hovering over a tempting plate of chicken curry, whilst, appearing over my right shoulder, in the hands of the school's cook who just produced it, is an aromatic meal of fish goujons and vegetables. You can see me for yourself in my photoblog, surrounded (and completely upstaged) by food.

That was followed up on 1st September with an interview on Sun FM where I got to talk about the new dishes and the return of some old ones, particularly my own personal favourite, (sticky chicken pitta pockets,) as well as describing how we consult widely with parents and children and then design dishes that they want to see but that also meet the new, tougher nutritional guidelines and can demonstrate good value for money. I think my enthusiasm for the product got the better of me, (and possibly the interviewer too) as the studio door suddenly flew open and a breathless engineer appeared crying, "The news! the news! You should be reading the news now! I've put the weather forecast on first because you weren't there - you've got 30 seconds to get to the mike before it ends!"

It just goes to show that school food can not only be tasty but dramatic too.

The national trend in school meal uptake is still downwards, but Sunderland is doing better than most, maintaining a modest increase in the numbers of children taking school meals. And I'm quietly confident that our new menus, backed up by the continuing innovative work of our award-winning and nationally-acclaimed, Food in Schools Team, will satisfy our choosy consumers and maintain the rising trend throughout this new school year.

A year ago I came to the end of 52 continuous weeks of strenuous blogging and vowed never to go near a personal blogsite again. It was not unlike Sir Steve Redgrave after his 4th Olympic gold medal-winning performance when he said, "If you see me go near a boat again, shoot me." (topical Olympic reference, essential at this time.)

But, like Sir Steve, who was back at his oars within a year, I've now been persuaded to brave the blogosphere once again.

This time, I won't be striving for literary merit (no verse, I promise) or 500 words a session and it may not even be every week, but I'll try to pen a few words regularly about my activities, views and the issues I'm dealing with that aren't covered by the newsletters.