Excessive cooking ingredients?

[Rosebel]

My children are at secondary school. Eldest is doing cooking as her GCSE subject so does cooking every week. Youngest is doing cooking this term but will change to another DT subject after Easter.
We pay £20 a term for eldest cookery and it covers things like milk, oil and stock. We pay £10 a term towards materials for youngest daughter. This is fine don't mind but what is getting ridiculous is the ingredients my daughter has to take to school.
Youngest is reasonable. This week it's chicken, peppers,carrot and noddles. My eldest on the other hand is lemongrass, chilli, ginger, onion, chicken, thai lime leaves (whatever they are), lime juice, fresh coriander,, coconut milk and green beans.
This is one of her shorter lists. It seems ridiculous. Lemongrass and Thai line leaves, not sure where to buy them and doubt they will be cheap. I understand cooking is about exploring different tastes but it is costing us a lot of extra money every week. Am I unreasonable to think this list a bit excessive and they could teach the children to make something just as nice but cheaper?

If it’s GCSE, they’ll be following the course requirements, so there isn’t much flexibility.

You can freeze a lot of fresh stuff, even if you have to do something to it first eg spare ginger and garlic can be blitzed into a paste and frozen into ice cube trays.

I am pleased neither of my DC are currently doing cookery. They never learnt any budget meals or basics like making a roux or white sauce. They would come home with "recipes" for fruit kebabs or chicken fajitas using packet mix seasoning. There is also no fridges or room available to store food so who really is going to eat food prepared around grotty kids then stored in a sweaty lunch box all day. It seems like such a waste.

Could the students in the class not divvy up the list between themselves? So, for this week, say, for everyone (or a group of say, 4 or 6):
a) gets the lemongrass, lime leaves and fresh coriander (an Asian supermarket possibly would have all easily)
b) gets the chilli, ginger and onion
c) gets the chicken
d) gets the limes (for juicing) or a bottle of lime juice
e) gets the green beans
f) gets the coconut milk

Make sure to spread around the more expensive ingredients across the group (so it's not always the same girl getting the meat) and also spreading out any harder to find ingredients. But you would probably find that, rather than 1 teaspoon each out of 6 boxes of 1 type of spice some weeks, 1 box may well hold 6 teaspoons and mean far less waste. Anyone who really likes the recipe, or whose family would use the leftovers in other recipes, takes any leftovers of ingredients - that will probably work out over time as relatively fair as different families like different types of food generally.

Or agree that 1 week in 4, each girl will get everything for all 4 girls in a group (for example) for that particular week, but then not need to buy anything for the next 3 weeks as the other 3 take their turn.

@Biddypop - no way would that work - someone would forget something every week - or there's always one person in the group that never takes in anything.
My kids left GCSE food able to skin and bone a chicken/fish, make fresh pasta, bread, meatballs, falafel and the confidence to tackle any recipe they fancy - but the 2 year GCSE was painful because the teacher did not plan in advance - so we got last minute shopping lists and she found teaching very stressful so she did a lot of saucepan slamming on the desk and screaming. But when all's said and done - I'm glad they did it but I was also glad it was over.

I'm so glad that I'm in Edinburgh as at my two older kids high school and even when I was there we were never asked to bring anything in for cooking as it was all provided by the school

My son is doing gcse food and nutrition. The theme for his examining board is British cuisine. He needs a lot of ingredients as they have to make 3 dishes for their final piece. They have to show multiple skills so obviously will require more ingredients.

I think I'd consider shopping as part of the learning opportunity and send the DC to the shops themselves. Then ask them to do a meal for the rest of the family using their new skills with the left overs.

However, i would have no problem handing a tenner over and leaving them to it. It's sad and unfair that cost will exclude some people from the class.

@CaptainMerica doesn’t quite work like that when you are emailed a list of ingredients on a Friday evening for a Monday morning and you’re at grandmas 3hrs away for the weekend with only the 24 hour garage to shop in on the way home. Planning is important but often the teachers need to lead by example.

DD1 did GCSE food and nutrition and the ingredients often cost a lot more than we would pay for a family meal (5 people), it was also at a time when we didn't have spare cash. Sometimes if the meals didn't work right it as wasted - I'm talking about the time they made a fish pie that sat on a hot bench all afternoon as it was made over two sessions spanning lunchtime!

I never understood why the meal plans didn't include working out costs - like a chef/kitchen would - and spreading them between groups of students instead of each indivdual student having to bring in all of the ingredients - things like herbs/spices/flours/sugar. Hoping DD2 doesn't choose it.