DE VERE Carden Park has chosen Nightingale House Hospice as its charity of the year and to celebrate its head chef cooked up a feast for them at the Wrexham Food Festival.

Employees at the four-star hotel, golf resort and spa, near Chester, recently nominated Nightingale House as their chosen charity for the next 12 months. It means the hotel and its employees will undertake a number of fundraising activities throughout the year to aid the Wrexham hospice.

To get things started, Carden Park’s executive head chef Graham Tinsley hosted a cookery demonstration at The Wrexham Food Festival, which was organised by Nightingale House in conjunction with Wrexham County Borough Council and Northern Marches Cymru.

Using fresh, locally-sourced produce, Graham treated the large crowd to two hour-long demonstrations of his culinary skills, which included cooking Chirk Farm trout with risotto and free-range chicken with polenta. He also conducted a master class for visitors on how to create the perfect Tilston beef steak for any taste and how to cook fresh asparagus.

Graham said: “Nightingale House is a wonderful charity and it was an honour to be invited to take part in the Wrexham Food Festival and kick start our year of supporting them. We had fantastic weather and a great crowd. Hopefully they took away some new cooking tips and ideas.”

Hamish Ferguson, general manager at Carden Park, said: “We’ve had a close relationship with Nightingale House for a number of years and our staff have just voted for them to become our annual charity. Many of our employees live in the Wrexham area and have family and friends who have benefited from the services of Nightingale House, so it’s a place that’s very close to their hearts. We look forward to working with them over the coming 12 months to raise funds to help them continue to provide their vital service.”

In 2012 it will cost £2.54 million to run Nightingale House Hospice. This equates to nearly £7000 per day. Only 19% of this comes from the Local Health Board, which is enough funding to support the Hospice for 69 days; they therefore greatly rely on the generosity of local communities to raise the additional funding for the remaining 296 days of the year.

Margaret Hollings, fundraising and events manager at Nightingale House, said: “We are thrilled to have been chosen by Carden Park as their charity of the year, we have worked with Hamish and his staff on projects before and are delighted to be working with them for the next year.  Their support will make a significant contribution towards our fundraising targets and I would like to thank all the staff for their support.”