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?

You can buy tinned chicken but it'd be absolutely vile.

I have no idea Noqontrol and I'm hoping I'll never find out

They made an apple crumble the other week but because they apparently don't get much time in cookery class, they were told to make it with tinned apples?

Fucking hell, even my DS was amused at that!

Mmm, delicious. Apple crumble with tinned apples. They're allocating about 5 nanoseconds to that lesson then. Swift and brisk.

yanbu, food waste is disgusting and it must horrible for the families who can't afford it to have to take money from their own food/utility bills to pay for this. Many people are really struggling, that is just added stress on them.

That's appalling.

800g of mince! My two-meals lasagne has about 500g. How fucking- big is this lasagne going to be?

Admittedly, learning to cook actual food is a darn sight better than the endless smoothies some children seem to do (but then that's £5+ of soft fruit in a blender for a small glass of fruity drink that's gone in sixty seconds), but how about practicality?!

That is poor. We used to provide ingredients and charge the kids a quid. They had to provide for more complicated recipes they wanted to do themselves but we were on a rota so the fridges could be used. The food dept sounds very poorly managed.

£5 x 30 kids - if all the parents sent in £5 they could buy a new fridge just for that class.

Making lasagne out of jars is not 'learning to cook'

Yanbu

Tinned chicken! I hope you asked if they were joking?

That is ridiculous. I would bitterly complain. My experience of any school cookery is a complete disaster.

So many bad examples, like the time the teacher made some big fuss, sent out some fancy articles all about gourmet pizza and 'getting creative'. So I schlepped round Waitrose buying all this unpronouncable stuff and duck and gruyere and bla bla bla for it to go on a piece of fucking baguette.

I assumed they would be making the bases and the school normal provides flour and basics but no apparently teacher turn up with a load of french sticks meaning instead of gourmet pizza it was glorified cheese on toast.

They hadn't even been allowed to make the sauce, were told to just squirt some tomato puree out and spread it. DS had such a strop about it all I took him to Pizza Express for his tea in the end.

Time is the killer in any tech lesson.

Few schools do double periods, children do not have the capacity to learn in 120 min chunks these days.

With regard to apple crumble, how do you propose a teacher demonstrates, then sets off 30 children of vary abilities and speeds to peel, core, par cook and them move along to the crumble when the whole product requires 45 min whole cooking time?

A lot of children cook at home and have those skills but there are a lot of children who do live on take aways and frozen meals and have never seen anyone cook from scratch in a kitchen. They have to be taught the fundamentals because there are far too many inept parents out there.

YANBU.
This is one of my gripes at the moment dd3 made curry from scratch last week,by the time I had bought all the spices,and the chicken breast,veg and rice it came to about £7, and, like other posters have said, it was inedible after being carried around all day

I would suggest that if the lesson is only an hour (or however long /short it is) that the teacher should use a recipe that does not require a long cooking period. The fundamentals of apple crumble do not involve a tin. Learning to 'cook' lasagna with a jar of sauce is not learning to cook lasagna (and what a daft choice in any case as lasagna is very labour intensive and there are loads of quicker pasta options). Plus if you don't eat the food you cook how can you ever really learn to be a good cook?

Remembering elderly nun who taught home ec at my school.... All very 'how to be thrifty for your husband' and I'm convinced she would have died before use a sauce in a jar or packet!

YANBU. I don't see how a lasagne can even be made in a single lesson and 800g of mince is ridiculous.

800g meat? Is she bringing in for the whole class?

DD does/did one term of cookery a year (dropping it for options!) We have very rarely seen any of the food as she seemed to eat it for her lunch/share it with friends! They provided just about all of the ingredients - the children occasionally had to take in something extra to "improve" the recipe.

YANBU

Would it not be better for the school to buy the ingredients and parents contribute? That way when making lasagna for example a 50p jar of basil can be used by the whole class. The pp who manetioned the different abilities, surely this applies to all subjects in school. Is it not the job of the teacher to teach the children who can't cook how to cook? Presumably those that can cook can start off whilst the teacher helps those that don't know what they are doing.

800g of meat , I do lasagne for 4 with 250 stretched out....i agree there should be a place for storage and they collect the offerings at end of school.

Well in that case Jumping the lessons would be better spent with them all learning how to prepare vegetables, boil eggs etc rather than waste ££££ cooking 'meals' that no-one will eat.

I would be going to the head and the governors. 20 kilos of meat will be wasted when they do that lasagne, that could feed 100 people. It is actually criminal.

I'd send her in with quarter of the ingredients - and in fact I wouldn't send her in with a jar. I'd have her stand up in front of the class with a list of ingredients copied from the label - with sugar coming in at no doubt #2 and #3 and I'd have her absolutely destroy the backwards-thinking nutritional values of this woman.

I'd then make her eat it at break-time/lunchtime.

And I wouldn't care if it were cold. Every man and his dog knows that pizza is best cold.

YANBU. Especially as some schools seem to manage Food Tech better.

Firstly the do do food safety including storage. I'm pretty sure its right at the start of the KS3 Nat. Curr.

DDs school, they have fridges. She has to take ingredients which need to be kept cold in a separate bag as there isn't room for people to randomly put in flour etc, but this is fine. They put the finished result back in the fridge if it's perishable. The school provides things like cardamom seeds and herbs and baking powder - the sort of thing it would be really ridiculous to have to buy if you don't normally use them. And oil, which is sensible.

They have a 2-hr lesson for tech (they do blocks of Food, Electronics and DT in yrs 7&8, she's yr8)

Some of what she makes is now 'real food', the quantities are not excessive and there's usually some choice. Last week spag bol with 250g minced beef (or you could take quorn or soya mince). This week a range of curries - she opted for the chickpea so that was quite reasonable.

So if some schools can do it, there's not much excuse for others being as poorly thought out as the OPs seems to be.

Oh, and the detention for pupils who don't have all the ingredients - even apart from the expense, there's a certain amount of organisation required - those children who don't have good parental support, what are they supposed to do if they need ingredients and the parents are unwilling or really unable to get them?

YANBU. That is ridiculous. I would complain. If they are short on time why not use the lesson to make a cheese/ béchamel sauce or something similar instead of taking in jars! Shocking
And 800g of meat? I use 500g at the most for a big lasagne

YANBU over the food storage, using jars (that isn't cooking), or detention for those whose families genuinely can't afford it. But, imo, YABU over complaining about one term of spending £5 a week towards the education of your child in what is, I believe, an optional subject. How else do you expect the school to fund the ingredients? I was at secondary school more than 35 years ago and we had to take in ingredients.

I would only complain about this if you are going to present constructive ways in which the present system can be improved.

Sounds like the teacher is lazy and does not teach them actual cooking.

Lots of other dishes she could chose that does not involve jars of sauce and expensive ingredients.

YANBU! Whoever came up with this plan clearly lives in a parallel universe.

In my day (many moons ago). I seem to remember a photocopied sheet appearing at the beginning of term. Which listed what we would be making and the ingredients we would need for each lesson for the coming term.

At least then you would have some notice, and could plan/buy on offer/bulk buy common ingredients/use some of it yourself.

As for the refrigeration issue....I think what others have said is quite right, you need to speak up. You cannot be expected to spend money on food which is basically going to go straight in the bin.

Food tech isn't optional in KS3. Not clear what stage the OPs DS is at - but even if it's GCSE, I don't think there's any other subject where the parent's ability to pay extra figures into the child's option choices.