Mumsnet Talk

Perhaps you should teach your daughter some self control if she a) is likely to embark on a life of overeating purely because one teacher at her school is overweight and b) she eats a whole cake to herself once a week.

My food tech teacher was skinny as a rake and we had a whole term of making different kinds of cakes. And if one of us forgot an ingredient she would give us it but then take HALF of our cake. I still seethe at the memory. No Mrs Bell, giving me some powdered egg does NOT entitle you to half of my fucking sponge cake!

How on earth would you transport a tablespoon of treacle? The mind boggles .

I suppose parents object to a charge, so each child has to bring individual ingredients. We are charged by the term for that type of thing, and it isn't much.

For recipes that require one tsp of something, we usually buy a jar and each pupil takes a tsp each. To avoid ^this exact situation^

I hate bloody school cooking lessons..nothing to do with an overweight teacher BTW..I hate the fact that I have to fork out a blooming fortune on ingredients that we will never use again.
I've got a big pot of black treacle in my cupboard that I had to buy so my DS coud take 1 TABLESPOON of the stuff to school!
It really really gets me ranting!

YABU to have been so rude & crass about the teacher's weight. I lost interest in any potentially valid point you may have had when you decided to be so nasty.

Now I am going to HAVE TO bake a swiss roll!!

Don't plenty of doctors smoke & also tell their patients not to?

Isn't lots of life "Do as I say & not as I do"?

In our household we would be delighted to have cakes brought home each week <<bun fight over who'd eat 'em>>. There were no cooking classes & only the most simplistic nutrition lessons when & where I went to school. YABU.

Agree cooking the same every week is pointless and is important to do a mix or healthy recipes and 'treats'
Op - you won't have a leg to stand on arguing about the size of the teacher, the school wouldn't want to touch the issue with a barge pole. I do however see where your ideas around hypocracy come from.
What would everyones views be if we were looking at a smoking teacher teaching pupils about the dangers of smoking?

Oh go and get a cake and a grip OP!

I think there's two issues being raised in this thread:

Is there any harm in the cookery teacher ignoring the text book every now and again to make something fun and sweet tasting (no, in my opinion)

Should an extremely overweight person be teaching young children about healthy eating and nutrition (seems a bit contradictory and ironic in my view but what can you do? Its not really something you can make a formal complaint about).

As long as, at the end of the day, your dd can also make a few basics like soup, a stir fry, an omelette etc. and has a fundamental grasp of nutrition, that's what really matters.

Im a food teacher <runs and hides>. I am also a size 16....not sure if that is too fat for the op or if i can continue teaching.

We teach swiss roll once in year 8 and probably once in year 10 as part of an investigation into properties of ingredients. I charge £7:50 per year which covers all ingredients unless the pupils decide to bring in extras ( chicken for the veg curry, chocolate <gasp> for decorating cakes etc) we teach a variety of healthy meals and basc skills which then allow pupils put skills together to make their own meals

Swiss roll shows a different way of making a cake rise (chemical vs mechanical), plus the usual,weighing, measuring, ratios, timing, using an electric whisk safely ( unless im feeling mean then it will be using a baloon whisk takes ages!) team work, evaluation and planning skills. The fact it has no fat init allows for discussion on complex and simple carbohydrates and fat and the impact in the diet ( i am allowed to know this, university didnt have a weight limit on nutrition lectures )

Swiss roll is also a government recommended recipe from when license to cook was in operation - as was fruit salad - teaches valuable knife control skills especially for year 7 and you would be amazed at how many 11 year olds have never tasted a pear.

Op feel free to complain if your dd is making swiss roll every week but dont blame it onthe fact the teacher is overweight as you will just sound pathetic.

For what its worth I'm a massive fatty. I know loads about nutrition and eat a balanced diet just fucking loads of it

I don't see how this woman's size has anything to do with her abilities as a teacher. If this was a slim teacher baking cakes then would you be as bothered? Also baking cakes requires loads more cooking skills than chopping a salad...

Yabu

OP you are a twat and your attitude is vile!

At least she gets to cook something. Home economics in my school 18 years ago was a farce. Every week it was 'flapjacks' except for one week where we made melon soup. I think that involved mixing the melon with honey and whizzing it in a food processor.

Oh god, 18 years ago... I feel so, so old.

All my swiss rolls have turned into chocolate logs at the last minute

The icing covers up and holds together the broken mess that lies inside

The skills involved in making a swiss roll are so advanced that I can't do it.

Anyone can throw a spag bol together but doing cakes requires proper skills that are transferable to other recipes.

You have every right to question it, but not so much to insult the woman and her entire family....but then I think you know that.

lol @ Joan - not a bad idea! I will keep you posted!
Justspidero - do you mean that if my daughter is enrolled in a school I have no right to question anything? Weird.....

Perhaps you should move your daughter to another school as you clearly have such a low opinion of the staff in general, I'm sure they'd be delighted to see the back of you and celebrate with lots of cake!

Perhaps you can start a 'diary of a fat cookery teacher'.

Come back each week and post what they have cooked, and we can judge if it is acceptable for fat people to eat these items, or if they should just sub it for Ryvita and boiled lettuce.

duh

Now if you had talked about cake every week that would have been an interesting discussion about school cookery.

yes but it was not A swiss roll, eg singular......it is cakes every week as I said.
and the teachers are quick enough to judge on appearance and make assumptions (another story perhaps) -

Nelly Job You keep saying that her teacher is teaching her about nutrition. So what's the problem exactly? She's learning about nutrition in a Food lesson and you're unhappy because she has made a swiss roll which contains a trace of fat and 70 calories per slice (as mentioned).

Along the way she might also have learned something about accurate weighing and its importance in a recipe like this (Food Science) unless you weighed it for her, in which case - tut tut. She has most likely learned to use an oven safely, handle an electric whisk, organise herself in a very limited time frame,take responsibility for clearing up (which also involves teamwork), work independently and in a group and listen appropriately. She has also learned a reasonably difficult skill in the whisking method and rolling up the sponge correctly.

But instead of reflecting on this you choose to have a go at her teacher's appearance.

ds cooked a stirfry last week, and soup the week before.

It is possible to cook proper food in an hour(ish).

He has also cooked cakes, scones, pancakes and lots of sweet things.

Cooking anything is really good for children, and unfortunately there are many parents whose cooking skills include shoving chicken nuggets in the oven or calling the local takeaway. So cooking (anything) in school is great. As is teaching any nutrition.

But if parents continue to get so hysterical about the whole thing I suspect the day is coming when cooking in schools will no longer be allowed. One friend of ds's cut his hand when chopping onions, and his mum went in and complained that the knife was too sharp. I mean ffs, he was 14, he should be able to use a knife.