Ryan Riley

Where:

When: 14th September 2019 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm

+ My Itinerary

We are joined at Ludlow Food Festival by Ryan Riley, the inspirational leader of The Life Kitchen, who will talk about the ideas behind the cookery school and his journey so far.

The Life Kitchen is a cookery school initiative set up to help people living with cancer and those caring for them. It offers relaxed, friendly cookery classes tailored particularly to the needs of people who have received chemotherapy.

When 25-year-old Ryan’s mum Krista passed away from cancer five years ago, he couldn’t have imagined that the most depressing time in his life would lead to helping and changing lives of others. As a food writer and stylist, food formed a big part of his life, however, throughout his mum’s two-year battle with cancer, Ryan experienced first-hand how chemotherapy was affecting her taste and ability to enjoy food. This was an unexpected consequence of the chemotherapy but one that Ryan found affected his mother greatly. It too, affected him, and after her passing he struggled with the notion that she found it diffictul to find anything she wanted to east in the months before she died.  Krista was a keen home cook, and often made the “perfect versions” of four or five staple north-east dishes, including the Mackem hot pot and panaclty. Towards the end of her treatment, however, the only thing she wanted to taste were synthetic ice pops, mainly for their numbing cold. Having experienced the devastating effect of this first hand, and wanting to honour his mother’s memory in some way, Ryan wondered if there might be a way of using his cooking skills to help cancer patients find flavour and enjoyment in food again. 

You can find out more about Life Kitchen, here: https://lifekitchen.co.uk