Domestic science atrocity.

[WingBingo]

DS12 cooked food for the first time at school today

This is what the teacher thought was a good idea for them to cook. It really is the end of a loaf, covered in tomato sauce and sprinkled with grated cheese.

I do wonder what was going through their mind when they decided this was a good idea.

Yum.

Started Home Economics (as it was then called) in the mid 1980s

First lesson - tea & toast 🤨

Second lesson - fresh fruit salad (basically chopping)

Third lesson - bread & butter pudding

I can’t remember the fourth lesson but it was something like 3 courses inc soufflé & venison en croute (this is not true but used to illustrate the fact that we went from nought to 60 in about 3 term time weeks)

HE teacher - Mrs Gibson. Looked like Nurse Gladys Emmanuel. Never forgotten her 😀

Ours was called Mrs Wilkinson. She looked like a bloke. She did teach us to cook brilliantly though (late 70s).

Pineapple Upsidedown Cake, Beef Stew, Spaghetti Bolognaise and Victoria Sponge. 1976 all girls school.

My first ‘cooking’ experience at school was making a cup of cocoa. After weeks of laundering a handkerchief, pillowcase and a dress.

I spent half a term designing, and then ultimately making, a sandwich.

I chose textiles for the mandatory d&t gcse

I think I baked a cake for me first cookery lesson

Then spaghetti bolognaise the next week.

Tuna and sweetcorn, for the record

In the 70s.
Two of us at a time.
Plan a three course menu to a budget.
Buy all the food and prepare the meal.
Invite the teacher of your choice to dinner in the "flat" in the cookery room.
The bar has fallen low.

That wasn't you first lesson though was it

It’s probably healthier than a lot of kids get at home

No it was the equivalent of year 9.
But to reach that we didn't start with cheese on toast or sandwiches.

My DC in 2010 spent weeks planning and making a sandwich.

My son's first lesson was scones. To be fair they looked great but you could have used them as missiles they were that hard!

I did food tech and designed a sandwich with packaging
we never actually made the sandwich

thankfully despite this I can cook!

We had to make an open sandwich. We had to take a slice of white bread, a tea spoon of butter in a tub and some grated cheese and 2 slices of ham.

The process as difficult as it was remains ingrained for life 😄 🤣 😂

Wash hands
Butter said bread
Sprinkle cheese add ham on top. Cut in half.

We also had to take home to eat... u can imagine what the tub looked like !

Washing up was also one lesson.

Glasses 1st to keep shiny -Then non 'dirty 'crockery - cutlery , no knifes in bowl - dirty items ie plates with ketchup.

Do they really still call it Domestic Science? It was Food Tech when I last taught at High School two years ago. I remember my DD’s first food tech practical was a pitta bread pizza. I don’t know what it looked like because she scoffed it at break.

I remember doing Home Economics decades ago when I was at school , we were told to bring in a freshly washed man’s shirt, and had to practice ironing it. The boys did woodwork instead. Thank goodness times have changed. We also did a bit of cooking, I remember making a horrible stew, and it sloshing around in my bag in a Tupperware container all the way home. Even the dog turned his nose up at it. Happy days.

Our first HE lesson we were shown how to make crumble.

As someone who had spent many a happy Sunday pre-lunchtime squidging rubbing butter into flour I was decidedly unimpressed.

Ds1 made macaroni cheese last week, from scratch. He’s y8. His next practical is an assessment and he has chosen to make cheese straws to resemble light sabres.

He’s a scout and well used to cooking there and at home. Him and his 10 year old brother take turns to plan and cook a meal one evening a week. They are all expected to produce a recipe and shopping list. Assistance is given if needed. They both enjoy baking and ds1 makes an excellent roulade.
Food brought home from school I often refuse to eat as it has been improperly stored and he knows I love him but I like my food without a side of food poisoning. They are encouraged to consume it at lunch time.

if it was something enjoyable to eat it would make more sense.

Your plate is absolutely beautiful.

Back in my day, we made Irish soda bread, Irish stew, baked stuffed fish, apple pie, spaghetti and meatballs, mashed potatoes and meatloaf, and deviled eggs. The boys used to wait outside the kitchen and beg for food (they had to do metalwork or woodwork).

Tbh I’d be pleased with this . Our ingredient lists are insane sometimes and cost £££.
the brownies one cost about ten times the cost of a pack of brownies. We had another that was a three course meal, prawn cocktail starter, chilli chocolate fajitas , and a trifle .
It was only when I bumped into another mum and she was buying the ingredients for her child’s carbonara at the same time that I realised the kids had devised the menu themselves 😅.
In the nineties at my school we did food tech but bizarrely it didn’t involve any actual cooking. I remember we had to dissect a pot noodle with tweezers to identify the ingredients. I think the home ec classrooms had been redesigned as science labs in the name of modernity.

We started with fruit salad. Butcher a load of fruit and chuck them all in bowl and mix them so they look awful, add fruit juice, leave in the warm for three hours then take home and serve.
Brown apples, mushy banana, mashed orange.

It didn't help that I'd been cooking and baking at home with dm for years, so had it done in half the lesson time.

We made a baked apple the first week
Apple crumble the second week.
This was the 80s
Can't remember what else.
We also had to make our own blue gingham apron

Dd made pizzas out of English muffins cut in half at Brownies. They were quite nice and easy for them to make themselves as a quick lunch

Cucumber sandwiches. White bread, buttered thinly, right up to the edges, crusts off. Peeled cucumber, sliced thinly. Light sprinkling of salt before the top layer of bread went on, then cut the bread into four triangles.

Then wash up: glass, cutlery, non-greasy, greasy.

When we did fruit salad, we did have to extract orange segments from their cases, and make a thickened juice from orange juice and arrowroot.

All these things made me realise my m9ther did not cook to the same finicky standards as teachers in class did.