The CoolTan Arts Food For Mood cookbook will shortly be going into production.  We still have space for a few more recipes and short articles, and the deadline for submissions is Fri 3 June.

We’d like to get a recipe that really means something to you, so please include a couple of sentences about why you like it, or what memories are attached to it, or what it does for your mood – and confirm that you’re happy for your name to be printed with it. It doesn’t have to be fancy: we’ve got everything from goulash to cheese on toast!

On Tuesday afternoons, 3pm-5pm, CoolTan Arts is running exciting workshops around the production of the Food For Mood cookbook.   Everyone is welcome, and there will be a variety of artistic and practical activities relating to books and food:

- contributing recipes and discussing food
- creative writing, local research, interviews
- writing, editing, design and layout
- learning about the world of book publishing
- food heritage of Southwark

For anyone who’s interested, this is a chance to be on the steering committee for creating the cookbook. If you’d rather just attend for enjoyment, that’s fine too – you can do as much or as little as you like!

Because CoolTan Arts is putting together a cookbook, this Tuesday, 1^st March, the Food For Mood workshop will be dedicated especially to publishing: taking a look at the different ways to get a book made and out there.

We’ve got two guests coming: a literary agent called Diane Banks who will be able to answer all your questions about the commercial book industry (what agents are looking for; which kind of books are right for the big publishing houses) and one poet and artist (CoolTan’s own Emile Sercombe) whose work has appeared in books from independent publishers, and who has made his own books, experimenting with all kinds of methods.

It should be a big, lively, round-table discussion, so bring your thoughts and queries and come along.  Starts 3pm, at CoolTan Arts, 237 Walworth Road (we’re behind the red door at the end of the alleyway next to the Carphone Warehouse).  See you then!

The first of the two Food For Mood arts and crafts workshops at the Waterloo Community Counselling centre was a great success. The women attending all contributed creative work, conversation, laughter and stories, and everyone tried new skills.

The ladies made drawings in oil pastel and soft pastel on fabric napkins, embroidered napkins, crocheted decorations, invitation cards and still-life drawing, and there was a lovely large free-hand drawing of a woman spinning in a Turkish village amongst the chickens and cows in her yard.

Food is strongly bound up with household activities, table decor and traditional female decorative arts, and talking about these things calls up stories and images from childhood.

Next week (on Friday again, at 3pm) will be the second of these workshops, and women are welcome to attend even if they did not come to the first one.  Please bring an object, a story, a recipe… The workshop takes place at the Barley Mow Welfare Centre in Greet House, Frazier Street, SE1.

We had a wonderful start to the FOOD FOR MOOD 2011 workshop series.  Having put some energy into imagining (and drawing and writing about) cookbooks from different periods of history, we decided that the Celts might well have loved a hotpot, and the Tudors would have welcomed a quick, cheap recipe for swan on toast.

We then collected inspiration for the CoolTan Arts cookbook by asking what qualities an ideal cookbook would have.  Some of the ideas included: giving serving suggestions or taste combinations; including fun healthy facts; recipes for every day as well as special occasions; quick foods and children’s recipes; the connection of food with nature; and suggestions for how to treat yourself occasionally by making even the humblest meal special with flowers, nice tableware or just a sense of occasion.  One of us also mentioned the nicknames given to various mixes of anti-psychotic drugs: now that would be a set of recipes for the creative psychiatrist!