To get fed up with having to spend a fiver each week on ingredients..

[HexagonalQueenofEverything]

...For DD1's cookery lesson at school.

The recipes each week are getting more and more unusual and more and more expensive. Brands are often specified, and there are obscure ingredients that we don't have at home half the time, that I have to buy. What's worse too is a) cooking isn't DD1's strong point and b) the lesson is first thing in the morning and they ae not allowed to put their food in a fridge as there isn't the room, so DD ends up walking round all day with a box of spaghetti bolognaise or chicken salad, that isn't edible by the time she gets home at 4pm.

Oh and they get a detention if they don't have all the ingredients. Fortunately we can afford it but it must be a struggle for those that don't have any spare money.

AIBU to be peed off with it?

They are not allowed

YANBU. Bloody ridiculous not being able to keep it in the fridge until home time, what a waste of food. I think I'd be writing the school a letter telling them what idiots they are and pointing out that there will be families who can't afford to be chucking a fivers worth of food in the bin each week.

They can't even put them in a fridge? What's the point then?

I think I am going to write a letter. The detention if you don't bring it in thing is annoying me too. I thought schools had to provide everything a child needs to participate in compulsory lessons?

It seems pretty poor that in the cookery lesson they dont also teach basic food safety (storing the food) In meantime, you could send her with a small coolbag with ice pack to help keep food cold?

I know it doesnt really address the issues but at this point in the school year, they wont pay much attention. Id have kicked up a fuss last September tbh.

Thats terrible. Definately complain about lack of hygenic storage in the fridge.

They didn't do any cooking for months. Not quite sure what they were doing in the lesson tbh. I'd say the cooking started around February time. They did cakes and jam tarts at first, then the 'meals' started...

I do agree but think of the life skills she is learning.

On Friday she is doing a lasagne; she's got to take in 800g of minced beef! Even buying value that will be well over £2. Plus the lasagne sheets, jars of sauce (yes, they're even told to take jars!!), cheese. It's probably going to cost me way over a fiver this week.

YANBU. This sort of cookery seems to be all about process and nothing at all about the point of it - an edible result! Quite how families who can't afford to throw away food manage I really don't know but even when the cost isn't a factor, the sheer waste is dreadful. What's worse is that all this woeful waste and extravagance rarely seems to equip the students with any ability to cook either.

I still remember the two years that ds2 spent doing what I, in my naivety, assumed was some sort of cookery. I'd been fooled by the use of the word "food" in Food Technology. Every week I was required to send him off with two organic, free range chicken breasts, a tin of coconut milk and a range of fairly esoteric spices (which varied). Every week he cooked a Chicken Korma. He then took pictures of it, created packaging and marketing strategies for it and, after class, carted it around without the benefit of refrigeration. By the time it came home it could have featured in Lives of the Great Poisoners.

YANBU

is a phenomenal waste if the food will not be edible

and unaffordable to many IMO

detention unfair

Is it possible to meet DC after cookery lesson to take the food home, I hate food waste and in this current climate it more important not to throw an entire meal in the bin

yanbu.

I guess I could, but the school is about 5 miles away, and she has a lesson straight afterwards so I probably wouldn't be able to meet he immediately. Also I don't have access to a car everyday if my DH is using it for work,so it would depend on that.

Could you send your DD in with a freezer bag and ice blocks so the food could still be safe to eat by the time she gets home?

Not that you should btw the school should provide a way to safely store food

I feel your pain. Schools are out of order expecting families to afford £5 per week for a cookery lesson. And food carried round in backpacks. Madness!! Once the lid of a tin of black treacle came of in DD's backpack. It was for treacle scones.

YANBU.

Apart from the cost, they want jars of sauce for a lasagne? Why not spend the lesson learning how to make the sauce? It's cheaper, healthier... What next, bring a microwave meal in for nuking?!

800g of meat that is going to waste

times that by 30 (?) kids in the class and tgat is is disgusting waste of food.

pkease do speak to the school. Can they maybe donate the cooked meals to be distributed to some kind of charity directly after the lesson rather than being carted round all day, ready for the bin when it gets home?

YANBU. If you can't even eat the food at the end of it then it's a disgusting waste of food and money. You need to complain.

YANBU

This really pisses me off too.

DS2 was making a curry the other week and it specified fresh chicken breasts (unless vegetarian) so I defrosted a couple I had in the freezer but was saving for a family dinner.

Anyway, when he gets home he mentions that cookery wasn't until the afternoon so he'd spent half the day walking around with them in his bag because there wasn't enough room in the school fridges

It wasn't just the cost that pissed me off, it was the wasted food and the fact he luckily mentioned it before any of us ate it!

I rang the school to complain because I was worried that other families might come down with fucking food poisoning, only to be told it was his choice as he could have used 'tinned chicken'???

Can you buy tinned chicken? Is there such a thing?