To expect to at least be able to eat what dd2 has cooked, seeing as it cost me £10 for the stuff ??

[TheOriginalNutcracker]

ARGH bloody cooking lessons.

Dd2 was doing chicken tikka. So, £10 of ingrediants later and off to school she trots.

She's just come home and said that they couldn't get the lid to fit on her tupperware container and so the teacher is just going to chuck it. The lid does bloody fit, it's just stiff and surely the teacher had something else that dd could have used if not.

£10 down the drain, just like that.

[TheWombat]

I agree with you OP.
Surely wasting food (let alone money) is not a good food tech lesson...?

[LineRunner]

Oh dear God. That's vile. Expensive and vile.

[maybeyoushoulddrive]

YANBU. I agree if we could all pay at the beginning of the term and ingredients be provided by the school it wouldn't be nearly as wasteful.

Also most parents are weighing the ingredients out for their dcs - surely part of the lesson should be the measuring and seeing the effects on what is produced if the measurements are wrong??

So far dd has made:

Rocky Road - cost a fortune and she only brought home 3 small squares of it, we had subsidised the children who 'forgot'.

Tuna pizza and mozzarella dn tomato sald. The list asked for 4 balls of mozzarella, six large tomatoes, six cherry tomatoes and a tin of tuna as well as all the ingredients for the base. To be fair she did bring it all home - it weighed a tonne and would have fed a family of six

[reastie]

Just want to make a couple of points.

Re: paying termly for ingredients for food tech - this may be easier for the parents but the very nature of the subject now means there's alot of modifying/adapting recipes as part of the syllabus. Often part of the theory work is to adapt, say, a basic apple crumble. Students might design it one week and cook their design the next. The school just would not be able to supply so many different ingredients for different designs. It would be a logistical nightmare! Secondly, there are lots of special dietary needs students have, and lots of food preferences which can be accommodated by bringing in your own ingredients. For example today I made rock buns with one of my groups. They were given a basic rock bun recipe but also some ideas to chance the recipe if they preferred (e.g. using chocolate chips or dates). It's not only nicer for the students to adapt things to what they like to eat but it's also good for the group as you can compare all the different ingredients used in the rock buns and how they differ when they come out of the oven. Students get spurred on by seeing what other ingredients their classmates have chosen and you can see their brains ticking about what they might try if they go home to make the same thing again (there are alot of students I teach who seem to cook recipes from school at home). Finally, most Food tech lessons are very short - often an hour. It's important for students to do things like preweigh ingredients, even though it does seem annoying to you as a parent as there wouldn't be time to do that in class time. if ingredients were bought in bulk by the school, then unless the lessons were long enough for students to weigh ingredients or recipes were simple enough to give time for this (which would limit what your DC can learn) then technicians and teachers would spend literally hours a week preweighing all ingredients for the students. I genuinely don't have time to weigh out everyones ingredients before the class! . I hope that lets you see it from the other perspective.

[Quenelle]

See, in my day (early 80s) it was called Home Economics and economy was a key part of the lesson.

Why does it have to be three chicken breasts when you could just scale the recipe down and use one? Or if the intention is for the dish to be the family's evening meal you have to make every effort to ensure it gets home in one piece and is edible.

About paying at the start of the year, I expect lots of parents would rather not have another big outlay at the beginning of term, there's plenty of stuff to shell out for already at that time.

But the teacher could put in the recipe things like 'one tbsp of golden syrup - or 10p to use school-provided bottle'.

[reastie]

Oh, and I give ingredients pre weighed as homework for students - that means they should be weighing everything as part of their self study, not you!!!!!

[Quenelle]

Understood reastie.

But couldn't you have, for instance, jars of curry spices that get handed round the class for each student to take their teaspoonful at 5p a go? So that parents don't have to buy 2 or 3 different jars that just end up consigned to the back of their cupboard.

[lostconfusedwhatnext]

reachie, you seem to be teaching in quite a different way from the teacher of the OP's child.
If my child were to say "teacher says we can suggest different things to put in rock buns" we could say "have these raisins, because everyone likes them" or "have these dates because god knows what else I am going to do with them". This is quite a different scenario from a child saying "Teacher says you have to go to a shop and spend £10 on a bucket of some very specific ingredient nobody likes, a fraction of which will be used in the recipe, and the outcome thrown away".

In my mind the former sort of scenario is part of knowing how to cook (using what you have sensibly); the latter is just being stupid.

[Lovecat]

Quenelle, that's exactly what we did - I remember the theory part of our o'level being 'create a weekly food plan for a family of 4 where the father is a manual worker on a budget of £#' and we had to explain and justify every part of the meals (protein/carbs/fat etc). It was all about budgeting and economy.

And we had the 'pay .05p for a teaspoon of basil' out of the teacher's jar - she used to go round in the last week of term chasing up all the debtors! - because no way would anyone have had or used a jar of basil at home back then.

[ifherbumwereabungalow]

I agree with everyone suggesting paying some money up front, rather than faffing about buying ingredients only to use half a teaspoon.

Re: the soup, I am sure I heard somewhere that chicken tikka was invented in a Birmingham curry house when a customer asked for a sauce to have with his tandoori chicken and the inventive chef chucked in a tin of tomato soup.

That may be a food myth though...

[crypes]

Quenelle, you just bought back terrific memories of me taking an empty icecream tub with some self raising flour in it, an egg and two 10p coins all mixed in! I cant remember what on earth we were making.

[MrsReiver]

I've made that curry... and it was lovely

[LineRunner]

Well why not let them make sandwiches?

[FryOneFatManic]

reastie Are you sure you're not my DD's teacher

DD has just finished her block of food lessons, and the vast majority of recipes were cheap, basic healthy recipes that could easily be replicated at home. Eg, macaroni cheese, cheese and potato pie, apple crumble, pizza using a bread mix base.

And as she was having her lessons in the afternoon, the food was perfectly fine to eat that evening.

She's started cooking the odd dinner at home, and is contemplating cookery as an option for GCSE. Not holding my breath though, as she still in Yr 8.

[reastie]

Lostconfused I wasn't really referring to the OP there, more the other posters commenting about paying per term for ingredients.

Quenelle Yes, I agree that would be useful. We have salt/pepper/some spices/oil we use etc in our store cupboard as well as flour/sugar/marg etc. I also give out allbeit grudgingly the foil takeaway dishes to students who forget containers at no cost to students but at the cost of about £40 a year to my department budget! Students use this if needed at no extra cost to them with me

Fry I'm not your DDs teacher as I haven't just finished with a block of students! But I also teach macaroni cheese, cheese and potato pie, apple crumble AND pizza with a bread mix base!!!!

[FryOneFatManic]

Hope there's more teachers like reastie I do my best to teach the DCs but sometimes it helps to have lessons with someone else.

[LineRunner]

It still strikes me as barmy to ask a child to bring in 'one spoonful of syrup' and/or 'two spoons of vegetable oil'.

In a school bag. Next to their homework

[littleducks]

I wouldn't eat food tech good either. I hate to waste food but don't fancy eating stuff from poorly washed equipment, badly stored and often had other people touching.

I caught threadworms at girl guide camp, I don't trust teenagers hands!

[AppleAndBlackberry]

YANBU, who throws food in the bin???

[BrianButterfield]

The number of logs I get for students not bringing their ingredients is incredible - and this is usually pretty good students we're talking about. There are also a lot for not doing Food Tech homework - yes, homework - I've seen it and it's literally worksheets on drawing a cereal bar! Now far be it from me to suggest any schoolwork is pointless, but...erm...I do get a bit eye-rolly as a form tutor to see this stuff in planners time and time again.

[BertieBotts]

A spoonful of syrup must be pretty difficult to transport. For the oil you could put it into a small bottle.

[LineRunner]

I like the idea of having a range of tiny coloured glass bottles, like a medieval apothecary - DS (14) less so, sadly.

[stifnstav]

I have a rule not to eat anything that has been made by someone under 16.

[LineRunner]

My DS says the plates, cutlery and pans are disgusting. And they can't clean the ovens properly because they are still so hot. In fact he burned himself a few weeks ago trying.