Winter Menu Links Portmarnock, Kinsealy, Malahide, Citywest, Blackrock, Foxrock and Leopardstown
Winter Menu Links Drumcondra, Balbriggan, Clonee and Clontarf
Links Childcare is dedicated to providing the healthiest food possible for our children. Our professional chef’s provide delicious, fresh and healthy food daily. We understand the importance of developing a healthy eating practice at a young age and we encourage our children to develop a broad range of tastes to stimulate their taste buds.
Meal times are a fun social experience at Links Childcare. Most of our centres have an ‘Activity Street’ located next to the kitchen, where the children visit daily to eat and enjoy their meals. Our friendly chefs spend time with the children during mealtimes, getting to know their likes and dislikes so that the meals can be tailored to suit each child’s unique needs.
Meals are tailor made to suit each child’s dietary requirements. Our chefs work closely alongside our parents in our baby room to provide our young babies with puréed foods and to support them throughout the weening stage. When your child is ready to move onto the next stage of chopped form meals, our chefs will be delighted to provide this for your child.
Links Childcare provides a three-week menu which includes an accurate balance of nutrients for each child, we work closely with professional nutritionists to ensure nutritious foods are provided for your child. Our menu is updated 2-3 times per year to provide a variety for the children and to ensure ingredients used are in season.
All the food is prepared by hand every day. Fresh meat and vegetables are delivered twice weekly to ensure only the freshest ingredients are used in our meals. All our meats are provided by a local Irish supplier and are fully traceable. All meals prepared contain a minimum of 3 vegetables per dish. Fresh herbs, pulses and vegetables such as broccoli and potatoes are used. There are no added flavorings apart from a small amount of chicken, beef or vegetable stock base. We do not add salt, and the sauces consist of the juices from the meat and vegetables, tomatoes (for some dinners) and cornflour to thicken the sauce. We also use spices and fresh herbs to flavour the dishes.
Fridays at Links Childcare are the best days of the week for many reasons, if you visit our centre between 3-4pm on a Friday afternoon you will be greeted by a lot of ‘happy faces’ as they indulge on deliciously healthy pizza!! (cooked from scratch by our chefs using nutritious ingredients and tasty vegetables).
Parents are welcome to meet with our on-site chefs to discuss our menu and their child’s food preferences or special dietary requirements. Our chefs will also provide you with recipes at your request, especially if your child/ren has a favourite dish at crèche!
Launch of our ‘new look’ Summer Autumn menus
13 June 2022
We are delighted to launch our ‘new look’ Summer-Autumn menus.
Way back in January we began to discuss and evaluate our philosophy of food at Links Childcare. On regular Zoom meetings with our team of eleven chefs, we looked at what lies behind our thinking on food – what motivates us as a Company, what we do well and what areas of the food experience for children can be enriched. The response from the chefs was fantastic and a ‘buzz’ developed around fresh ideas and approaches.
In February we began an experiment … one of the Tea options each week was replaced in each crèche by a “Chef’s Special”. Each chef was asked to order ingredients for a new recipe and to try it out with the children and then to report back to the group. As we expected the best judges of success were the children! On the new menus, you will see some of their favourites – others have been held back for the Winter/Spring Menu next year and those that were a firm ‘no’ have been put aside! To give you an example……. Natural yoghurt (flavoured with vanilla), fruit and raisin flapjack was a huge success, while steamed buns with stuffed black eye beans, hummus, toasted sesame seeds and cheese ….. well …. not so much!!
Many of our chefs have worked for long periods of time with the children and know exactly who likes what. They also know how to coax the reluctant eater with all the tricks of the trade. Our Educarers make every meal a social occasion by sitting down with the children. It is essential that all children see dinner and tea as a happy time, a time to chat with friends and not just go through the mechanics of eating.
Our chef team, throughout our work on the menu, emphasised the need for food to look and taste good of course, but also to ‘feel’ good. Considerable work has gone into the provision of a variety of textures to excite and challenge the young palates. We want our children to experience the five main textures: watery, firm, crunchy, creamy and chewy as part of their daily food journey.
Our belief that diet in these early years is profoundly influential for life, is reflected in our new motto “Fostering a Healthy and Happy Relationship with Food” and this is what we strive to do every day.
As parents/guardian you already are award of the menus for each day at Links Childcare. You know that everything is home-cooked from scratch. This means that food allergies, cultural preferences or parental requests can be accommodated at any stage in the recipe. When you hear that today’s dinner was Chicken Casserole and that your child ate all of it, did you know that he/she enjoyed peppers, courgettes, fennel, carrots and flat leaf parsley in a tomato broth?! We think you should, and so we have included all the ingredients on the new menus, in addition to the allergens.
We have added a new feature in each crèche and that is the provision of a warm homecooked meal each day for our staff. The response has been excellent and it is gratifying to see so many availing of this gesture, which hopefully makes their daily routine somewhat easier.
At our crèches there is a place at the table for everyone – big eaters, small eaters, fussy eaters, I am too busy to ‘eaters’, non-eaters! We hope your child continues to thrive on our freshly sourced fruit, vegetable, dairy products and meat.
We are very appreciative of the contribution made by all of our chefs to the new style menu, with particular mention to our lead chef on the southside, Aaron and to Head Chef, Charlie for his time and expertise throughout the process.
We will continue to listen to and work with our keen food critics …. your children!
Tríona Barrett
Director of Support Services
