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AIBU?

To think that this is excessive for a Food Tech ingredients list

121 replies

ModreB · 13/05/2013 19:02

DS3 has food tech and was given a long list of specific ingredients to bring. Went to a big supermarket on the way home, got the list and the total came to nearly £9 Shock. I wasn't buying branded products either, but supermarket own brands.

I am in the lucky position that I can afford this, albeit through gritted teeth Angry but AIBU to think that some families would really struggle to pay this amount of money for 1 recipe, to make 1 portion to cook for 1 lesson, and that the sodding school and teacher should at least have some consideration for this!

What happened to teaching how to make affordable food as well Angry

OP posts:
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anklebitersmum · 14/05/2013 12:43

fuzzpig Nope, said fresh fruit. Bought all fresh. DS was gutted when he was marked down for having real fruit. I was like [wtf] and so double checked the list again to make sure I wasn't having a moment

Not anti tinned fruit with juice myself but DS would have got a better grade in cooking for emptying something out of a tin. Confused

and she didn't know how to chop a mango properly..teaching cooking my Aunt Fanny

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Remotecontrolduck · 14/05/2013 13:01

Food tech is bloody crap isn't it, it'a compulsory years 7-9 here and then optional for GCSE.

So much potential to teach real life, essential skills and get people to enjoy cooking and preparing fresh food. This would have so, so many benefits to everyone in society.

Instead we have time constraints which mean it isnt possible to cook from scratch properly, ridiculous short cuts which mean the children learn sod all about how to actually cook, and recipes which really, aren't recipes at all. Fruit salad being an example, how about teaching them to make meatballs in sauce or something? And of course, the ridiculous costs.

It makes me Angry at how poorly thought out food tech in general seems to be, they might as well not bother tbh.

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GinOnTwoWheels · 14/05/2013 13:18

YY Remotecontrolduck.

No DCs but everything I've heard about cooking lessons in schools indicate that it is no longer useful and more about processed food.

Eg, my sister was once complaining that her DD had to make a fruit salad and take in a selection of fruit that meant she had to buy several packs of fruit to take in 5 strawberries, 10 grapes, one kiwi etc to make fruit salad IN MARCH. Teaches nothing about seasonality and not wasting food as they also had the rest of the strawberries, grapes, kiwis and other stuff that I forget and there was only the two of them and not big fruit eaters - also expensive as she was a single parent at the time.

Nothing wrong with fruit salad, but it needs to respect the seasons and would be better if the school supplied the fruit and the parents contributed towards the cost.

There was a government consultation a few years ago about making school cooking lessons more useful - I sent in a long rant about nieces out of season fruit salad, use of processed ingredients and the need for students to learn to cook, but it seems not to have changed anything yet.

People learning how to cook would be so useful as there is a perception that home cooking is more expensive than processed food, which is Just Not True. People being able to cook properly would stop them existing on poor quality processed shite

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fuzzpig · 14/05/2013 13:30

OMFG ankle so it actually said fresh... and the teacher thought that meant tinned Hmm

Remote/Gin yes that is exactly what pisses me off, the wasted potential. Food lessons, started early and with a varied, mostly practical curriculum, would be BRILLIANT and I really believe it would have an impact on the health of future generations. But as it appears to be done now it is a joke.

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fuzzpig · 14/05/2013 13:34

I remember DD doing a term on food in reception last year. They just got asked to each bring in one piece of fruit to make a fruit salad as a class. I thought that was good as parents could choose an apple from a cheap multipack etc if they didn't want to buy something specific.

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ryanboy · 14/05/2013 13:37

Bit OT but why do people think spag bol is healthy? Beef mince tomatoes,onions , flour, (usually dried) egg? how

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WouldBeHarrietVane · 14/05/2013 13:47

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

seeker · 14/05/2013 13:53

What's unhealthy about a good spaghetti bolognaise?

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MrsMangelFanciedPaulRobinson · 14/05/2013 14:01

I have argued with DD1's school about this til I am blue in the face!

She cooks usually once every 3 weeks and each time it is a ridiculously complicated dish, with very pricey ingredients. It's rare that I am left with change from a tenner after buying these ingredients. If they don't take exactly what is on the list then they get a detention.

At the end of this term, they are having an assesment and have to make a recipe book and cook 8 different recipes at home to photograph for their recipe book, and write the method that they used to cook it. Again, totally fucking obscure dishes, things that we wouldn't eat/want for meals here. It's not even like she's doing it next year either as she's not taken it as a GCSE option. It's all just a waste of time, money and effort.

I've spoken to her Food Tech teacher many a time but she just doesn't seem to 'get' my point. I've suggested cooking more budget recipes but the teacher seems to think that the recipes they cook are budget ones.

Bangs head on brick wall!

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fuzzpig · 14/05/2013 14:07

A Spag Bol can be healthy if DCs are shown how to make a really good sauce with loads of tomatoes and extra veg (we put loads in ours, like grated carrot/courgette) drain fat off the mince etc - and that would be something food tech should teach - how to get as much nutrition as possible from simple family food.

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NoWayPedro · 14/05/2013 14:08

Some of these home ec teachers are really taking the piss/know nothing about nutrition, food prep and budgeting.

Back in the 90's our home ec teacher was a nutcase but knew about health and nutrition and waste (god forbid you threw any of a pepper away). Hilarious that one day we saw her chuffing a load of fags in the staff room Grin

No-ones perfect though eh :)

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MrsMangelFanciedPaulRobinson · 14/05/2013 14:32

The thing that gets me with DD's food tech lessons is the sheer random-ness of the recipes they have to cook:

Cherry gateaux (cost a fortune in ingredients)
A weird potato cake thing
Spaghetti bolognaise (would have been fine had they been allowed to refrigerate it after cooking, but they weren't as an assessment had gone on in another year group and they needed the fridges to store their work)
A strange pudding that required the purchasing of ready made meringue nests for DD to bash up or the topping of the pudding.

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ChunkyPickle · 14/05/2013 14:37

They let the kids at DS (2.5)'s playgroup chop slice the fruit at snack time for goodness sake!

And he's is perfectly capable of making the kind of pizza where you just scatter the ingredients from pre-prepared bowls (although a fair bit gets diverted straight to his mouth)..

Mind you, my home tech was similar 20 years ago - I remember having to 'design a sandwich' and make breakfast (from a finite list of ingredients - cold - nothing cooked).

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theroseofwait · 14/05/2013 14:37

teacher told them to stick then in the oven for 5 minutes when they got home!! WTF!!!

I've done this many a time and sent things home still in baking trays - what else do you expect us to do when we have the next class waiting at the door to come in? We can't just leave things in the oven as we need them for the next class. . . .

And FWIW, I don't want an 'easy life' but I'm sure that if I asked an English teacher to source (in their own time,) pay for (and then have to claim the money back) and transport to school several sets of new books a week they'd just laugh at me. Why should Food teachers have to do it?

And as for And finally, leaving the resulting half to sit and do nothing is not inclusive, which is poor practice .

This happened to me just this morning, they weren't doing nothing, I set them a design task, but you must, must, must concentrate on the kids doing practical from a H and S point of view and quite often the ones not cooking are off task. We've even consulted the team at our local LEA for an answer to this but the D and T advisor just shrugged his shoulders and said 'what can you do?'

If parents really want us to teach simple home cooking then we need a, some pressure to get rid of Food Tech, Catering and all it's other forms and go back to Home Economics and b, them to teach their kids basic skills like using an oven, washing up and chopping before they hit secondary school. If we could start at a fairly sensible point in terms of skills and not have to fanny around doing things my four year old could do (and I do realise that I'm probably preaching to the converted on this thread) then we might have a fighting chance!

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ChunkyPickle · 14/05/2013 14:43

theroseofwait - I do see your point, but I teachers of other subjects that I know do do that - do make sure that they have spares of anything that might be needed for a lesson, do spend the time researching/sourcing goodness knows what for lessons (and sometimes a darn site more obscure than a tin of tomatos!)

If you had all the ingredients, and doled them out to each student, then every student would be sure to have the right basics, so no-one would be sat out, no-one would be trying to work with the wrong stuff, it would all be consistent which would surely be easier than trying to work with half a class that have forgotten some or all of their ingredients, or brought the wrong ones.

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theroseofwait · 14/05/2013 15:23

But it's not just a tin of tomatoes though, is it - it's 25, times how many times I'm doing it that week, plus 6 kg of mince and 25 peppers, 150 mushrooms etc times how many times I'm doing it that week, and then say I'm doing Fairy Cakes with my four year 7 classes, that's 10 kilos of flour, sugar and margarine and 200 eggs, and so on for 22 periods a week. That I have to buy, pay for out of my own money initially, carry to school, carry up to my room, store, weigh out, distribute, collect money for when I should be planning, marking and feeding back to kids. Get real . . .

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DameFanny · 14/05/2013 15:27

After reading through all this, I'm more than ever determined that DS will get a good schooling in cooking etc as soon as he's tall enough to use the hob safely. I've already told him that in another 4 inches he's going to learn one new thing a week, which he'll then be doing on his own the following week. I'm planning on starting with things like a decent roux for cheese sauce, so he can get used to doing it before someone tells him it's supposed to be hard...

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DameFanny · 14/05/2013 15:29

Therose - but can't the school organise the budget for you, so you just need to put in an order online to whichever supermarket?

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MrsMangelFanciedPaulRobinson · 14/05/2013 15:29

I can totally see why it wouldn't be a viable option for the teachers to supply the ingredients.

I am more than happy to send ingredients in with my daughter, but what I do resent is the assumption from the school that a) we all have the money for ridiculous ingredients and b) we all have the time to go and source them!

If my DD was cooking normal, useful, family recipes that use storecupboard ingredients plus other basics I wouldn't complain at all.

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ChunkyPickle · 14/05/2013 15:37

Yes, if organised like that, it absolutely is an unmanageable hassle (although, I would still find the individual crisises possibly as stressful on a day to day basis)

I don't have the answer - but other schools do it - perhaps with collaboration from the office, the catering staff, local suppliers, parent helpers etc.

I don't think that the problem is unsolvable, and I don't think that throwing hands up in the air and saying that we all just have to put up with it rather than try and find a better way is particularly helpful.

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GinOnTwoWheels · 14/05/2013 15:42

therose, think about how many nectar points you could rack up though!

OK, fair enough the home ec teacher shouldn't be expected to go out and shop for ingredients but I see no reason why the school can't order in the storecupboard ingredients where only a small bit of a pack is needed per student.

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MrsMangelFanciedPaulRobinson · 14/05/2013 15:45

I agree, Gin; things like herbs and spices, different types of vinegar and syrups, those kinds of things that are difficult to find (if you live in a rural town as I do) and expensive to buy, and then end up wasted once a small amount has been used in the lesson

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MadameDefarge · 14/05/2013 15:49

DS's school provides all the ingredients and loans the students a tupperware box for the duration. He has made chilli con carne, fruit salad, chicken goujons and wedge potatoes....can't remember the rest! But I was impressed.

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pigletmania · 14/05/2013 15:50

Yanbu at all shocking. I made pizza from scratch, Noway did it cost £9 Shock. The teacher sounds lazy (ready grated cheese and ready chopped onions). I most certainly would have sent in those in a grated and chopped at home in a cool bag with a cooler thingy. With a 60p jar of pasta sauce, and a packet of bread flour and packet of yeast, from my cupboard, and tough shit if te school protest I'm shrt of money, £9 is a hell of a lot for one meal

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theroseofwait · 14/05/2013 15:55

DameFanny - no regarding the budget. I did manage it a couple of times but it's got something to do with the county's finance department not recognising any of the supermarkets as approved suppliers, and when I did do it I paid with a school debit card, they have now been withdrawn due to too much fraud!!!!

ChunkyPickle - yes, other schools do manage. They have a full time food technician who's paid to shop, weigh, store manage etc. We've been asking for one for nine years to my knowledge, and it was the same story at the school I was in before that. It's all down to cost, which again is why we can't just have spare ingredients to give to kids who we know can barely afford to eat as it is. We've had our budget cut down by 40% this year with more to follow and the hardship fund was the first thing to go. This is the first year in my entire career where I've had to stand in front of kids and advise them not to pick my subject if they think money may be an issue at home. Sad

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