I'm a bit miffed about this Food Tech ingredients list

[IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads]

Not feeling brave enough for AIBU, and I'm sure the teacher has her reasons, but this is what DS needs to take to school next week. He's 14/Y9, do not into GCSE course yet, and food tech isn't one on his options. Also, he has food tech after lunch, and has to carry his cooking around for the rest of the day, as the fridges are full of heat the morning lessons have made. OK for scones, but for chicken?

Here is the offending ingredients list:

Thai Green Curry - 1 onion, 1 clove of garlic, 80g sugar snap peas, 2 small chicken breasts, 30ml Thai green curry paste. 200ml coconut milk, ½ lime, small bunch coriander.

My concerns - there's about £8 worth of stuff there, many of which (curry paste, coconut milk, coriander) come in bigger packs than required. That doesn't seem to be considerate of the CoL crisis - it's a big standard academy comp in a not-particularly affluent area.

Also - no veggie alternative ingredients offered - so half our household wouldn't eat the results anyway.

DS is not matey enough with anyone in his FFT class to suggest sharing ingredients. Expensive ingredients!

I'm delighted that the school is teaching the kids to make something other than scones and pizza, but there are so many cheaper curries to mark in an hour! They could start by making the curry paste! Or school providing (and charging for) the ingredients the kids won't need need "all" of.

(DS's previous school/DD's school charge for all FFT and RMT ingredients and materials at the start of the year, abs supply everything. I appreciate limited kitchen space doesn't always make this possible).

My DD's in her late 20s now but I still remember being so fucking pissed off with this food tech malarkey when she was at school. Her father, my ExH, had stopped paying child maintenance and seeing the DC; and I had roof leaks to fix and uniform to buy. Life was tough for a while.

We weren't eating king prawns, fancy risotto rice and fresh parmesan at home, so why the hell would I want to be buying it for a school lesson, as per the presented list? I did buy it for her, but felt pressured. Yeah, it still makes me hacked off.

This was a state school in an area with some very deprived neighbourhoods.

You definitely need to ask what they suggest as a vegetarian alternative.
There must be several children who turn up without the ingredients - either parents couldn't afford it, couldn't find it in the supermarket, couldn't get to a supermarket or they simply forget (parent and/or child) so schools must have a Plan B for lessons (ie children team up and cook together).
I think parents should be honest and send a note in if they can't provide the ingredients for whatever reason. A physical note to hand to the teacher and an email too incase they decide to 'punish' the child for not bringing the stuff in. That way you can prove that you clearly informed the school you could not provide X for whatever reason and it's beyond your child's power.
If 25 parents don't provide ingredients and 5 do hopefully the school will think "hmmm.... perhaps we need to change this".

My daughter made the same and didn't even like it. I've got a jar of the curry paste in the fridge that's probably off by now. I wish we'd just been able to pay and they have it centrally. I hate waste

The amount of food waste produced by these lessons is awful. I’m not sure what the answer is as clearly cooking is a useful skill but I remember mine always getting binned as it had been carted about all day. Same for my friends! Agree with you on this particular list too.

This drives me mad too, we haven't had anything this complicated yet though. I moan that they aren't expected to take in their own 2x4 for woodwork etc so why is food tech different? I would much rather pay say £20 for the year, this could be set at £10 for pupil premium as is standard with trips etc. Anyone who can't pay would still get their ingredients and there wouldn't be so much waste.

They need fridges to store anything that might go off until the end of the day. Also, a vegetarian/vegan alternative and I would say, ideally, cooking that focuses on basic skills and ingredients likely to be of use to everyone, instead of more niche meals.

Carrying around raw chicken until after lunch is asking for trouble! I would definitely send in a non-refrigerated vegetarian alternative.

I breathed a sigh of relief when my year9 dt both said they weren't doing ft for gcse next year. Mine have done lots of expensive meals. Lots of things that need eating and can't be frozen. We had 2 yule logs in November, 8 Fajitas wraps last month (already assembled with an expensive list of ingredients). We also spent two months eating chilli with a combined total of 1000g mince. I'm on benefits but it's an affluent school on the whole so no support.
I'm assuming part of the issue is curriculum but why can't the teacher show dc how to adapt a recipe to reduce costs? A tub of curry powder could do a whole class instead of 30 kids bringing one in and is much cheaper than the ingredients op was asked to buy.

I know this doesn't solve the real issue but I would buy those ingredients from Aldi/Lidl. Frozen chicken breast from Tesco are super cheap

I feel your pain OP
its long gone now but we too suffered with food tech
One DC did it for GCSE and I specifically queried how they would accommodate a vegetarian 'oh that's no problem we LOVE thinking of meat subsitutes' Week 1 (or possibly 2 or 30- TASK- make a chicken curry- ingredients- chicken and a jar of curry paste. vegetarian option- quorn chunks and a tin of curry paste. Method- mix the two.
That is not cooking in my book.
Then another DC, Task- make an apple crumble. Ingredients- flour, sugar, butter (of course) and a jar of bloody apple pie filling !!! Just NO. So we stewed the apple the night before and took it in a jar.

NRTHR so apologies if repeating
do you have any independent Asian food stores locally most of those items can be bought singular and as well as coconut milk far cheaper than supermarkets. Get chicken from butchers
Can definitely get for less than £8

DD is in year 8 and so far none of the ingredients she has been asked to bring in have been too expensive. But what always annoys me is 1 tbs of cooking oil!

How to transport just one tbs, without wastage? 🤔

Why can't they just provide this for everyone?

That would really annoy me too. I balked at £6 for something Y8 DS made last term, and he had no intention of eating it, so it's just cooking for the bin/compost.

So much seems pointless in the way Food Tech is done at our school. It's single period, so it has to be something that cooks in 20 mins (when I was at school it was a double lesson) or they bring home uncooked things - like apple crumble - with an instruction on how to bake it at home. Also, the carrying around food all day. I know I can be quite strict about food safety, but making 'savoury rice' in 1st period, blast chilling, and then carrying it around for the next five hours is not good. DS says they haven't been taught anything about basic food hygiene and safety.

The drama!
You don’t need to go to the governors that’s just a ridiculous suggestion. Email the teacher and let them know if you are struggling. Swap the chicken to quorn if you eat it or tofu if you don’t. They are going to work and doing their job which is to teach your child how to cook a repertoire of predominantly savoury dishes so that they are able to feed themselves and others a healthy and varied diet.

The teacher is just another person that is more than likely as skint as the rest of us, not everything has to be a battle.

when i was a teenager, taking public transport to school, all ingredients measured out by my dm, in a big cake tin

nightmare
i remember having to drive to shops in the evening because dc just remembered they were making spaghetti bolognaise the next day.

but no requests for flour or anything too difficult after that - just cash donation for a term

quorn and tofu? also expensive
mushrooms perhaps?
or a tin of chickpeas

We always just sent in a veggie alternative and it was never questioned. I'm pretty sure we had this same recipe and I just sent in a pack of Quorn fillets. It is a lot though.

Buy a small bottle and they can take it with the each week and bring it back home?

Are you sure school aren’t providing it? I once had a parent complain about similar and I explained that they students get a full ingredients list so they can replicate the recipe at home if they wish, but I highlight the ingredients I provide. The student wasn’t telling home the second part as they preferred using their own.

when i was a teenager, taking public transport to school, all ingredients measured out by my dm, in a big cake tin

It was the fashion at my school, for girls, to use a wicker basket for your ingredients.

This happened when my children did food tech , but they did have adequate fridge space .
Does pee me off too , i just cannot find a meal such as a curry made at school appealing to eat , i think it would be so much better and a sociable experience if the kids cooked the meal then sat together and ate it at lunch time ,i appreciate the logistics of this may be difficult.
Also annoying having costly left over ingredients .

What exactly are food tech lessons supposed to achieve? When I did them at school, we started with lessons in how to find our way around a kitchen, equipment, how to use a cooler etc...and then worked on small cooking tasks, building up to planning a meal. There were also lessons in nutrition and so forth. It would be more sensible to set a 'budget' for a term and teach about things like meal planning, stretching ingredients across more than one meal and generally teaching skills they can apply in real life.

I feel your pain OP. DD is in yr 9 and food tech is the bane of my life. Her teacher seems to want to always get them to make expensive meals and because they only use a small amount of things I end up with the leftovers which isn't enough to actually make the same meal at home.

Also she does food tech every other Thursday but her teacher doesn't put the shopping list on google classroom until Wednesday evening. Usually about 5pm. Numerous parents have complained about this but she keeps doing it which always means a dash to the supermarket on a Wednesday night. It's so infuriating.

Schools are aware of the col crisis so I genuinely don't understand why they aren't taking the opportunity to teach kids to make budget meals that are filling and nutritious etc.

Encourage them to make it again as a family meal with the leftovers.

I bought a container for transporting salad dressing for packed lunches. They fit a couple of tablespoons and weee useful got recipes like 1 tbsp milk as well.

Way, way back in the dim and distant past when I was at school we had to provide our own eyes, hearts and kidneys for direction in Biology class.

Obviously not our own personal body parts I hasten to add!