To think that food tech in highschool should teach more than

[loopylou6]

How to cook a cheese toasty?

Oh pointydog I remember when we moved on to liver. I had copied the ingredients for liver casserole down from the blackboard and showed it to my Mum so she could get me the things for next time. She was a bit disgruntled that the list included "half a pound of beef steak" and commented that this was quite an extravagant liver casserole. Anyway, when the lesson came round it turned out I had copied it down wrong and it should have been "half a pint of beef stock" Everyone else had an Oxo cube and I had a slab of steak.

My casserole turned out nicer than everyone else's though!

to be fair Pointy.. there aint any cheese involved in Bruscetta..

We made (and this is only 8 years ago- pre jamie you see!)

-beef and beans pie
-butterfly cakes (mine got an F for being to flashy)
-coconut towers

we also put toppings on a pizza base

(disclaimer, we actually had turkey twizzlers in our school)

buzz- of course we dont tell the kids its posh cheese on toast- was trying to relate it to the OP who said their child had done cheese on toast.
Most of our kids put cheese on their bruschetta - so it is essentially just a posh cheese on toast... at least it has more skills than just a cheese toastie.

I'd say it's far more useful to cover the basics for everyone that making fancy stuff - when I left school I had cooked swiss roll, bread and butter pudding etc. but had no idea how to heat up a tin of baked beans without burning them (or how to make a cheese toastie, for that matter!).

Yup, my first cooking lesson was a smoothie (or a milkshake as we called it back then in the good old 90s!)

We went on to simple things like tuna pasta salad, pizza and then cakes. Also cooked cooked cottage pie.

They start small, learn about the utensils they need, timing, washing up, putting away etc. Sounds reasonable to me.

My DD doesn't do the food tech module till the summer term, but from a brief look at the course book, they don't just make a smoothie, they have to design it too

I think cheese and courgette muffins figure somewhere too.

I'd guess that schools veer away from too much meat - hindus won't do beef, Muslims and Jews wont do pork, veggies won't want to touch any at all - must make it difficult to do much 'real' food until they're old enough not to all have to do basically the same thing.

I remember my first Dom. Sci lesson (70s) only too well. Coconut pyramids - first step, break and separate an egg. The yolk broke, of course everyone only had one egg so I was a bit stuck (I think the teacher managed to borrow one from the older class next door but it was so embarrassing).

Second lesson, 'savory meringue eggs'. Sausages in baked beans covered with beaten egg white with the yolk dropped on top, baked. Ew. At least I managed the egg ok that time.

Thats a fair point too Grimma. I hadnt really thought about that. It didnt come into the equation when I was at school.

I always think that by the time I've chopped, weighed and assembled all the bloody ingredients I might as well have made the darn thing myself.

grumble, grumble

mayqueene- make your children weigh out their own ingredients! I get so annoyed by children who have no idea what anything is because they didnt prepare their own ingredients. It makes a huge difference in the actual lesson- the ones who have weighed their own ingredients are ready to go- and the ones where mum has done it are still figuring out what it is.

the first thing i cooked at secondry school ( late 80s ) was cheesy pasta cooked pasta with butter and grated cheese >

when i was at school we made a filo pastry chicken pie, my mum went out and bought the ingredients and it cost over 10 quid!!! We did allsorts though, sweet and sour, soups, cakes, and then when i was in gcse food tech it got very technical!! :-D

Smoothie = safe use of knives (to cut fruit) and electrical equipment (smoothie maker/liquidiser). And exploration of flavour combinations, hopefully.

Cheese toastie = safe use of hot grill, remembering to watch so doesn't burn and more use of knives/graters.

Both sound like reasonable projects for early in a course for 11 year olds. Easy ingredients so everyone can concentrate on the techniques. And the teacher can concentrate on assessing which of them know what they are doing and which are liabilities around hot or sharp objects!

johnthepong

of course you're right, I'm way too soft and just end up doing it myself to make it quicker (given I'm usually given the ingerdients list at 10pm lol

My 18, 15 and 11 year olds can all cook pretty well tbh anyway, (and my 5 year old makes a mean fairy cake)so food tech feels like a bit of an irrelevance to them. Ds2 and DD in particular sometimes cook for us all (6 in total) so they're always a bit bemused by the fact that making scones is such a big deal for some kids.

I do think its important that cooking happens at home though because not all parents can or want to cook

Doh! Ingredients (as opposed to "ingerdients"

I do think home economics (food tech) is an important subject if you look at what you learnt at school and what you've subsequently used as an adult. I've used quadratic equations about twice in the past 20 odd years but make the yummy lasagne I was taught in home economics on average twice a month !

i stand their and make my two weigh and pack the ingredients as they can learn measurments ,ingredients etc

though have to admit when they first started was tempted to do it myself

fight the urge

Our first cookery lesson at senior school was always scrambled eggs on toast which we were then expected to eat.

I hated scrambled eggs at the time with a vengeance and although I could scramble them fine, just didn't want to eat them - however teacher was a bit of a dragon who was insistent that everybody had to eat them while she was watching. horrible. still brings back memories of being very (actual colour I felt rather than envy!) to this day...

Mind you, third lesson was always a basic chocolate fridge cake, and there would always be plenty of older kids hanging around when they had been made to see if they could share some!

I wish I had been able to this TBH. Food tech wasn't offered at my school at all and neither of my parents ever cooked anything from scratch. End result was me not being able to cook at all when leaving home and still struggling like hell now.
There will be people in the class who are like this and who need the class to be this basic at first.

DS was in year 7 last year. They made meatballs with spaghetti and sauce, muffins, vegetable stirfry, fruit crumble and savoury muffins. The first week they made flapjacks and had to select ingredients to make the flapjacks healthier. There is always a vegetarian choice if it is a meat based meal.

Croque Monsieur at DD's school.

Ee, we're posh.