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.

Oh good grief!

In my first Home Ec lesson aged 11, we were taught the correct order in which to do the washing up. We all had to practise it in the lesson and then write up the procedure for our homework. To be fair, once we actually got onto the cooking, we made some quite interesting and tasty things iirc.

I totally forgot the fruit kebab my DS made! I duly sent him in with the requested expensive, out of season, air freighted fruit which came back in the form of mangled mush on sticks. Yum.

Yes, rock cakes and raspberry buns. Victoria sponge the following week, ginger cake the week after.

I think there would be something to be said for bringing in food tech lessons focusing on meals that can be prepared using three or four ingredients in 10 mins, whilst still being nutritious, even if it doesn’t involve cooking. When life is busy, they’re the meals that get you through. I have a whole alternative curriculum for this in my head

Have not rtft but please can someone explain why and whether you should
wash chicken and how and whether and why it has changed?

In my first Home Ec lesson we made welsh rarebit (which I have never made since) and a cup of tea (we had to bring in a nice cup and saucer) and ate it as well.

i think it would be fun to do ready steady cook style cooking classes. The kids bring in whatever random stuff they have in that the parents will let them have and then the class and the teacher have to work out how to make it into something (various dishes) you would want to eat. It would be difficult but educational

No, don’t wash chicken. You don’t need to

Our first lesson was welsh rarebit too! Don't suppose it was a school near Aberdeen in the 80s, was it?!

DS and DH both have food issues so very limited diets. I bloody hate being the default cook every day so do the bare minimum (using the air fryer mostly) and consequently, DS (17) doesn’t know how to cook either.

He only did a few cookery lessons at secondary school in his first year (not in UK) which were done in groups and I suspect he mostly stood and watched.

But reading this thread has made me think I really should be making more effort to teach DS some basics. Whenever I’ve tried in the past to make something with him, he loses interest and wanders off after about 10 minutes.

He’s staying with a friend this week so I’ll have a chat with him at the weekend and see if we can work out a plan of things he could learn to cook.

(School broke up for the summer hols mid May, before anyone queries why he’s not in school.)

There is a book by Dena Attar on the history and politics of home economics which is pointedly entitled 'Wasting girls' time'.

I asked my daughter’s teacher why they did this sort of thing and her answer was that many children didn’t know how to make toast or a milkshake let alone how to hold a knife. My daughter was 12 at the time and could cook a full meal with some supervision but they had to start somewhere.

Girls grammar school in the 60's. I don't ever remember making anything savoury; it was always cakes and puddings. Except for a couple of useless and wasteful lessons. In one, they were presumably trying to show us why we needed correct cooking temperatures; half of us made Yorkshire puddings the right way, with a hot oven and hot fat. The other half had to use a cool oven and cold fat, with predictable results. Admittedly, I do remember the lesson, but what a waste! In the other one, we were shown how to cook cheese-again, hot and fast or cool and slow. The cheese cooked hot went all rubbery, as the fat melted out of it.

It depends on what you are trying to do to be fair...

If, for some reason, you want to coat your sink and surrounding work surfaces in a fine mist of salmonella then I find holding a raw chicken under a high pressure kitchen tap is one of the most efficient ways to do it.

If you do teach him also the clearing up as you go and washing up! Dealing with a big pile of washing up and flour everywhere can be more mentally daunting than trying to cook something unfamiliar. So then having the mental skills to do that is important

My son loved cooking and was actually really good at combining flavours and textures in really nice ways. But when he was about 12/13 I realised that the kitchen was always a mess afterwards (I was happy to tidy up if he cooked) and actually while that's fine for a 12 year old it's not helpful if they go into the world not knowing how to clean up afterwards.

One of the skills I did learn in home ec was the tidying up as you go along and shutting cupboard doors so no-one else bangs their head (our teacher used to shout if she saw a door left open). I think that stuffs as important as the cooking. Otherwise when left to their own devices adults might cook for themselves at first but as the mess slowly builds and the kitchen becomes less inviting they stop because tidying the kitchen before cooking is too much effort.

Very true. I don’t eat chicken anyway since I had campylobacter

excellent points @Persephonia1966

DH makes an horrific mess when he cooks. Can’t even put a lid back on a jar, but that’s another thread.

My first cookery lesson, many decades ago, was Potato Surprise. It was mashed potato ...with half a tomato on top. Mum looked at it and said, 'What's the Surprise... the tomato?' She was pretty disgusted. It set the tone for the rest of my cookery lessons...

OMG, brings back memories. I still have my school recipie book from 45 years ago,wrapped in wallpaper!😆Still use it sometimes.

back in the 1970s we did a very varied but useful syllabus. it included;
gutting and serving fish
how to prepare and serve poultry and meat
using a washing machine and ironing
make Christmas puds and a cake then ice it
prepare a three course meal and serve to teachers
using a pressure cooker
make pastry, puff and short crust from basic not bought

DD's class had a lesson on gutting and cleaning fish, in primary school. Wasn't a food tech lesson, they didn't cook it, I think the teaching assistant just wanted her fishing catch gutted and cleaned for her

For my first domestic science lesson (back in 1994 in yr 7) we made a nesquik milkshake 😂

don't know if it was just my school but we had little wooden cupboards with one drawer and one cupboard with formica top. each cupboard and drawer was equipped with same items, each cupboard was colour coded with a dot on each item plus the cupboard. Heaven help us if we put wrong thing in one cupboard. there was a gap underneath for a hard rickety stool

I never wash chicken, @Newstartplease24 - as previous posters have said, it risks spreading a fine mist of bacteria everywhere, and as you are going to cook the chicken, any bacteria on it will be killed by the heat - more efficiently than by rinsing, too.

I'm ancient and was at secondary school in the 70s. My first cookery lesson was scrambled egg, cocoa (not drinking chocolate) and how to peel and segment an orange. Very sensible if you ask me. I learnt how to make a roux sauce of 3 thicknesses, shortcrust pastry, rough puff pastry, various stewing/braising techniques, various cake making techniques (creamed, melt-in etc) and made the Christmas cake one year including home made marzipan and homemade fondant icing. It was brilliant and I loved it. I even loved the one very bizarre lesson we did where we all had to bring half a pig's head from the butcher's and made brawn. This involved first cleaning out the ear and cutting out the eye ball. We also cleaned the oven one week and had to bring in one of those sponge pads with a reservoir of caustic cleaning solution. Can you imagine the H&S rumpus now!

I’ve got a degree in microbiology, that woman is an idiot.