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?

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.

That's exactly what happens now at DDs school, surely that's still the norm?

Is it a family sized meal, or just a token portion? Anyway she could just have it for her lunch?

They should get them to help with preparing/cooking food for the canteen! They're still learning and no food goes to waste.

I appreciate there may be a few holes in my plan....

An hour is plenty of time to cook many things!

Jars of sauce

One suspects they may be asking some parents to supply large quantities of mince to cover those whose parents can't/won't.

Lasagne reheated hard will be perfectly OK.
I often batch cook spaghetti Bol and just stick it somewhere cool for 24 hours, eat half and then transfer the rest to the fridge in a box that fits.

Chicken etc. they need a fridge or at least a proper cool box with ice packs and not to be carrying it round.

DD1 doesn't cook often, but they have a fridge and her stuff has always taste nice and no food poisoning

See if you can get hold of their Health and Safety manual (I found an example https://czone.eastsussex.gov.uk/schoolmanagement/healthsafety/curriculum/Documents/DT%20Code%20of%20Practice.pdf here. That one doesn't explicitly say that the food produced should be refrigerated but given that it details separate storage of different types of food it's implicit I think.

If the HSE docs mention all sorts of safety issues relating to preparation, equipment etc but fail on the most basic issue of storage which everyone knows is vital for the safety in actually eating the result then it is spectacularly missing the point!

Hello I am a food teacher, currently on a free period so will have to be quick

We have plenty of cold storage at school- this is something that needs to be addressed and I would speak to the teacher about.

I have never asked a pupil to bring a jar of sauce in- however plenty do- sometimes they adapt the recipes I give them and bring in jars instead of making it themselves (grrrr). We have to do one design and make project each year in KS3 and some of the pupils may opt to do lasagne. At this stage we would have taught them how to make a basic cheese sauce and a tomato sauce but during the course of the project it is up to them to research their own method for compiling the lasagne. Again it is not uncommon for them to turn up with jars of sauce although it is not something I actively encourage!

I have never (and seriously dont know any teacher that would) make pupils use organic chicken. However, plenty of pupils do turn up with expensive organic corn fed chicken breasts but that is their parents choice.

An hour is not a long time to do a practical in. Pupils generally dont arrive until 5 mins after the bell (if its after a long assembly/ PE etc it can be 10 mins). Once they arrive I need to do the register, and go over the method/highlight health and safety/hygiene issues (this in itself can take 10 mins) You get them on task and plenty of pupils then spend 10 minutes identifying what ingredient is what because mum packed their bag for them.
After cooking it probably takes a good 20 mins to get the room clean and everybody out. In this time Im also supposed to complete a plenary. What you can cook at home will take at least double the amount of time at school.

Pupils on low incomes will get ingredients provided if they speak to the school. There is no problem with this whatsoever. However I couldnt do it for every pupil as it takes an inordinate amount of time to do the shopping and I dont have time in my timetable to do this- I end up doing it at weekends/evenings.

As for the recipe for 800g mince- not sure why she was given that quantity- I would just send her in with 200g and quarter all the other ingredients in the recipe.

Lasagna made with jars of sauce? FFS that's not a cookery lesson. You just need to read the label for that. What value is this teacher adding exactly?
And what an outrageous waste of food it all is. Disgraceful.

Lots of interesting/helpful replies there!

marriedinwhite, it's not an optional subject!! She is KS3 but not at the options stage yet. I haven't got an issue with spending the £5 per week on my DD's education, but it's not going on her education,it's going on food that is going in the bin!! And from what she says she doesn't actually learn anything anyway, just as I never did from my 'home economics' lessons. We were never taught anything at all, just given a recipe to cook each week and expected to cook it whilst the teacher sat on her bum drinking coffee!

johnthepong there doesn't seem to be the scheme at DD's school where those on low incomes get their ingredients provided. DD's 2 best friends are both from families in receipt of income support and free school meals and they still have to provide their own ingredients. One of her friends is a twin, and so their mum has to find £10 per week, although it may be slightly less as I'm assuming they share things like herbs and spices.

Hex- they need to go and speak to the teacher/head of dept/headteacher. There will be some money allocated to this. It wont be advertised but it will be there.

Thanks johnthepong, I'll tell the parents the next time it comes up in conversation.

I can remember walking around school with soggy cooking when i was at high school, DD2 does hospitality and we pay at the start of the new term I think it was £30 this year which is much better,

YANBU, cooking at school is expensive and ridiculous.

The veneer of 'we're learning about healthy food!!' is crap - all they do is make muffins but substitute wholemeal flour and marg for butter and raisins for chocolate chips, and the results are gross. If you're being healthy you would have something else, not endless nasty muffins!

School cookery lessons should be: how to tell if some chicken is going to kill you, and how to make an acceptable pasta sauce. Not fucking 'healthy trifle' and 'healthy rice dish' which comes home looking congealed and disgusting and goes straight in the bin.

It is the single most annoying feature of my dd's secondary experience so far, actually!

We eat DDs food it is a tiny portion but we always taste it, her school allows them to leave it in class though, I have reheated stuff and it was fine,

Dd was told in year 9 that she had to make a trifle, and could not make any alternative, although she did say everyone in her house hated trifle - apparently there is no other dish from which you can 'learn the right skills'.

She had to make it from whipped cream, a carton of custard, no jelly as no time to set, and some cake. We did a work-to-rule and bought everything ready made, she tipped it all into the box and I told her not to bring it home at the end of the day. It's probably still in the cupboard in the classroom. Well worth the loss of a tupperware box, I think.

Madness. Definitely write, and get into a fight if necessary.

Total waste of food and money. Which is pretty much the opposite of what Home Economics should teach, surely?

Please contact the school about the food storage issues, I am sure other parents aren't happy about this. I remember my mum not being able to afford the ingredients for cookery classes in secondary school so sending me into school with my tub of stork and cake mixes (the teacher rolled her eyes at me.)

I'm not surprised about jars, DD1 is so short of time you have to do half the prep at home. We've ended up weighing and chopping stuff because the teacher insists on leaving so much clearing up time.

We used to weigh it out ready at home, partly because a bag of flour is quite heavy to carry and an opened bag of flour is quite heavy to carry home!

But she got in trouble for that.

Honestly, this is the one thing about secondary education that gets me really cross, it's an absolute waste of time and money and effort. If Michael Gove banned it, I think even I would applaud him. Disclaimer: Even though he is a cunt, obviously.

DS's school gets it right. Most things are provided communally (for 50p to £1 a week) and they are asked to sort out and bring in some extras in small groups -- so they'll make bread rolls, say, from the communal flour sack, but add cheese/seeds/raisins. Anyone who's forgotten just shares (yes, i can see the problem there with freeloaders, but hey).

Then they scoff the results, and jeer at each other's efforts evaluate the taste for homework.

Anything that takes too long for one lesson seems to be deep-frozen for the next.

Some of it even makes it home, and is surprisingly edible.

Nit, that's weird - dds school specifies eg '200g plain flour' and you're meant to weigh it at home. Having kids lug around whole bags of flour and sugar is insane.

DD prepares most of her veg at home too because she's slow and methodical at that sort of practical work - no complaints.

It is too much 'food tech' with some daftnesses in the curriculum rather than 'Home economics' which might well be more usful (I heard that when designing the national curriculum they completely forgot about 'domestic science' and had to shoehorn it into Tech and so felt obliged to make it not just Sensible Cooking). But, done the way DDs school does it, its fine, she is learning from it. They have appropriate kit (inc fridges, obv) and the teacher isn't too prescriptive - for example, when making curries a friend from an Indian family brought in all sorts of unspecified extras and guess what, this was welcomed !

How do you make your sauces for lasagne, then?

The base of my sauce is a tin of toms-so is that so different to using a jar of sauce?

er, yes. If you're doing a meat lasagne, the meat sauce can be pretty much the same as bolgnese. Which has a tin of tomatoes or passata in it, but also onions, garlic, carrot, celery. I suppose the jarred sauce saves time chopping and sauteeing those (don't know, never use them because they always contain salt which DH cant have).