Thousands of children across Liverpool are celebrating Global Scouse Day today.
Pupils at around 30 primary schools enjoyed the famous Scouse stew dish at lunchtime as part of the annual event.
The day dedicated to Liverpudlians across the globe started nine years ago, growing year on year to promote the reputation of the city’s gift to the culinary world.
Assistant Mayor and Cabinet member for education, Councillor Nick Small, went to Holy Cross Primary School to try some of the food, telling JMU Journalism: “We’ve got lots of schools across the city that will be serving Scouse today, which they do regularly as part of the Global Scouse Day.
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“I think it’s all about the heritage of Liverpool and it’s something that we should be celebrating – it’s a nice thing to do. The dish is in a really healthy place at the moment, it is going from strength to strength. You’ve got lots of restaurants and cafés selling it too.
“It’s something that is really associated with Liverpool. Anything that promotes Liverpool in a positive light is good, and this does – I think we should all get behind it.”
Kitchen chef at St Nicholas Catholic Primary School, Seth Sergent, spoke to JMU Journalism about their participation with Global Scouse Day, saying: “Even though it’s a Roman Catholic school we’re multi-faith, so we had to do a halal version of everything. We had the beef Scouse with roast potatoes and mixed vegetables and then for the halal and vegetarians, we did a Quorn version.
“Scouse is a meal to clear out your cupboards… basically it’s a ‘skint’ meal whenever anybody had no money, that’s what you had. Anything in the cupboard you just throw it into the pot and boil it up.”
This year Global Scouse Day also falls on Shrove ‘Pancake’ Tuesday, so Seth came up with an incentive scheme. He said: “The children ate it all and had clean plates. I told them if you’re not eating the Scouse you’re not getting a pancake – so they ate everything.”
However, it’s not just schools that are serving the traditional dish, this year over 100 restaurants and café’s across the city will be adding the meat and veg recipe to their menus for the day.