JamieOliver.com

Hi everyone,

The marathon runners fly out a week today (30th October) and this week we have all been working hard with last minute training preparations and raising as much money as we can for Fifteen Foundation. Yesterday Louisa and I made Gennaro’s pumpkin risotto and Fifteen’s panzanella for over 50 of Jamie’s staff. We also had a cake sale and raised £450 which is outstanding! Thank you to all of our colleagues who turned up for the lunch to support us. I have never cooked risotto for this many people before and this lesson for me from this is that the addition of the pumpkin made the risotto a little bit more stodgy then I would have liked. We roasted the squash before with rosemary, garlic and oil and it was very well cooked when we added it to the risotto. Everyone said that it tasted good which is the main thing.

This morning the marathon runners were treated to a special breakfast at Fifteen with James Cracknell. James gave us some great tips on running the race and how to get through the pain barrier. As well as this he also gave us a great tip which is to ensure that we all take a stroll to the finishing line for the race in Central Park on the day before the race. This way we can then visualise getting to the end of the race. We also had some of the new apprentices and graduates at the breakfast and it was great to meet  some of the new intake. James also commented to me that he enjoyed meeting the apprentices as well.

As always the apprentices were the stars of the show and Mark who has just joined us gave us some great advice. He said that in his life with some of the challenges that he has faced he has set his mind to achieve short term goals and this has helped him to cope. His advice to all of us was to focus on something in the not too distant landscape to focus on and that this will get us to the finishing line. Wise words from a young person and ones that I will remember as I am running in New York especially given the fact that Mark is the very reason why we are running in the first place.

Thanks and regards

Danny

p.s thank you to those of you on Jamie’s site who have donated so far

How to donate
http://www.justgiving.com/fifteennymarathon/

The graduates from Fifteen who we are running for
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMomE03B … re=channel

A fun video of the runners!
http://www.youtube.com/fifteentv#p/u