Bloody school cookery!!!

[mrsshears]

DD has just announced that she needs all the ingredients for this for tomorrow,as i think is standard with most teenagers.
so we have just rushed to the supermarket to get everything,dd then produces the booklet from school which lists everything in ounces and pints etc erm i thought we were now working in mls and grammes ?? and then tells me i have to send a dish into school to cook it in and weigh out all the ingredients at home before hand! why the hell don't we just cook the thing at home!!! AIBU?

Dd is in year 7 at a school where most children board so ingredients are bought for them.

Quite a large proportion of children will leave hone/boarding at 16 to attend colleges and live in shared accommodation/with landladies. She said there us a big emphasis in their Food & Nutrition lessons on preparing them for this so they ate taught to make nutritious meals cheaply.

So far it's been pasta carbonara, chicken drumsticks with homemade barbecue sauce & coleslaw & cheese toasters.

Glancing through her booklet it looks like we've got crumble, with a choice of 4 different fillings, home made pasta sauce, bolognese & veg soup to come.

This is what cookery should be. Teaching them to cook basic meals on a budget.

They cooked the dish between them, just before lunch, and the finished dish would be something they could eat for lunch. One day they had made lasagne.

Oh boy, that brings back memories! I spent more than 1 cookery session during my prep school years doing my work in the head master's office, I couldn't always be in the cooking room with my class - the juice and biscuits he used to hand out were worth it though

Today dd learnt how to boil an egg.

DD1 made apple and blackberry crumble today - it's in the fridge, just needs warming through in the oven for tomorrow, yum!

She's also learned a flapjack recipe which is frankly stunning, and an alternative (gluten free) pizza base that works, so a few useful things there. The no-bake citrus cheesecake she learned was a sell out at a recent cake sale at my work.

But it's all a bit redundant really, since she and DD2 help with cooking as a matter of course and can make a lot of things already. Let's face it, most DCs are going to learn to cook from their parents, not at school.

i must admit this does tick me off a bit at my daughters last school she had to buy the "exact" ingredients which included regular flour which we dont have fortunately since we changed school we have a teacher who understands we have a lot of allergies in our house so i can finally taste my daughters cooking!! today she took in gluten free flour and fake egg so my son can eat too (as she left off the cheese from his part)

i like it when she does free week and can make anything so we just cupboard shop!

although i do agree they shouldn't really be learning pounds ounces cups etc we went metric years ago i learned to cook metric why does my daughter have to learn the same measurements my mother grandmother and american cousin use? (btw i taught my mom metric years ago)

DD's school is all metric but she can do both - this is because I'm Dutch and in my 40s, and when I spent a year at school in the UK (late 70s) everything was still Imperial measures. So I can convert the whole lot in my head - weights, lengths, fluid measures, the lot. I want my DDs to be able to do the same because it helps with maths.

I think it would be helpful if the teacher told the children what ingredients to take into school. Ds2 should have been given his list when the register was taken, 2nd week in a row this hasnt happened.
I may guess for tomorrow and let him make onion soup!
Ds1 is at a different school. We used to send 10 a term. Much less stressful for everyone.

YANBU. Drives me up wall. And I was a bit irritated when my vegetarian DS replaced the chicken breasts with an unbreaded quorn fillet and got told off for it.

My 16y cooks in Ounces.
Massively easier if your dyslexic 4 is easier to remember than 125 (113.4g to be accurate). Both of us have the short term memory of a goldfish. Our tropical fishers is longer.

Cakes are stupid in metric.
Each egg needs 2oz of sugar, fat and flour is so simple.

Fishes' are longer

My DS1 once made a Backwell tart in food tech which cost me £13, including the dish I had to buy for it to be cooked in.

I'm pretty sure he could have brought it home in tin foil.

And if he is unable to weight out his own ingredients at home aged 12, then I would be be bloody ashamed. Even my dyslexic 8yo can weigh out ingredients. So, yes, at 11 pm teh night before a food tech lesson I may well weigh out and bag up the ingredients for them. (I usually do double, as I just know at least one friend will forget to bring any ingredients).

EcoLady

I see your towel and raise you - I had to borrow my cousin's basket. It had the cover with her name on. We were at different schools, I was terrified it would go missing because I couldn't put my name on it.

You're the mother. Why are you even involved? It's her work.