to think that this teacher is being unreasonable

[happyhebe]

DD had to make a pasta salad at school today which meant taking in ingredients from a list of suggestions. She chose wholemeal pasta, chargrilled chicken, cherry tomatoes, cucumber and lettuce. but decided against the optional salad dressing because she hates it - we did go to the shop and look at the different types available but none were what she fancied.

Today they assembled their salad (hardly cooking when all they had to do was cook the pasta) and DD was told off for not having any salad dressing because "you aren't going to learn to cook if you don't use salad dressing"

DD is 13 and can cook spag. bol, lasagna, a roast dinner and fajitas from scratch so can already cook a decent meal anyway.

Since when was assembling a salad learning how to cook and why is salad dressing going to make the difference anyway?

I would just have laughed it off with my DD. It's clearly nonsense.

Oh my daughter's first cooking lesson involved drawing a pizza. I don't know what's happened to this subject - when I was at school we were all taught to cook, but that seems to have gone out of the window now.

My son's teacher used to let them teach whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, so someone would be making a cake, someone else would be making pastry, someone else meringues, someone else a casserole. It didn't make any sense! How she kept control of the class, I don't know.

Rant over!

Seems an odd concern for teacher to have, I can see why they might have wanted her to make one from scratch but not otherwise!

Using a purchased salad dressing is hardly cooking. Don't they make their own?

Some salad dressings are high in calories , not all are low fat. odd thing for her to say really. The meal sounded fine and she she cooked the pasta! Not sure what she is on about!

YANBU.

The teacher is clearly off their rocker but I would be very cross if DD was truly shamed by the comment. It says far more about the teacher than DD.

It's ridiculous but not something I could get worked up about. I don't like salad dressings either. Laugh it off.

Dd thought it was fairly silly, yes.

It's particularly bizarre given that the dressing was optional.
And yes "food tech" at school is ridiculous. It's all about imagining that you're "in the industry" and having to come up with new designs/concepts for dishes within a set "brief". You don't learn practical stuff like spaghetti bolognese/shepherd's pie/etc, it's all "design your own layered dessert" (a task I genuinely had at school).