AIBU To pull my son out of food tech?

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To pull my son out of food tech.
My son isn't a bad cook at home, but at school most of the dishes are costing between £5-8 to make and are inedible. We have also lost 3 containers because of kids just grabbing whichever one looks best rather than their own!
AIBU to refuse to send stuff in from now on? He is only in year 8 so we have at least another year of this shit.

Can you not label his containers? At least that way the parents should notice it's not theirs. Where are the containers kept after the lesson? I don't recall this happening at my school.

Our school asks for a contribution at the beginning of the year, around £20 and they provide all ingredients. It works really well, they often provide containers as well.

My son’s food tech is £13.50 for the year. We make a contribution and the school buy the ingredients. Saves for stressing on a morning or the night before

I wish we could pay up front for the term. Ours a few weeks ago was bolognese bake. So a packet of mince, whole block of cheese as we buy grated at home and they have to grate it at school, tinned tomatoes, fresh herbs (we use dried herbs at home), tomato puree (never bother sticking that in my bolognese), mushrooms, onions and fresh pasta as not enough time for boiling dried pasta.
Then it’s not eaten as it’s been sloshed around in her school bag all the way home.

OP I pulled my son out of it. It final straw was the spaghetti that he was supposed to make with the expensive pasta flour. It came home as a grey ball of dough. He’s got ADHD though so they probably agreed on those grounds. I felt like I was setting fire to a couple of £10 notes each week.

Put your kid’s name all over the Tupperware in sharpie.

We don’t know that he’s been asked to make ‘crap’ though? Ours haven’t.

Teachers and resources vary widely. Lots of children waste years' worth of lessons (in many subjects) learning nothing.

It's completely plausible that this boy is a decent cook, following instructions, not dicking about and bringing home inedible food.

In this case, it should be possible to:

• Send him in with Tupperware marked with name in black sharpie. Use old takeaway boxes if you have any
• Float the idea of a yearly or termly cost for ingredients so that the teacher can buy these in bulk

The food might still be terrible but at least the costs will go down!

Ours also asks for 20 pounds for the year for DT and they provide the food (and fabric, materials for DT etc). I don't think it's even compulsory to pay if you can't afford it, I always pay at some point in the year, but they don't seem to chase it. OP I just send my kid with an old plastic box left over from a take away (not saying we have a takeaway every week before people go thinking that). I think they sell them in Poundland if you never get a takeaway.

Tinned apples ? Why ?
I made apple pie albeit a long time ago with fresh apples and making the pastry from scratch. All under the keen eye of the cookery teacher.
Nothing wrong with a crumble mix from scratch. Easy to do.

I don't think you can pull them out but definitely email the teacher to voice your concern.
My 14 year olds class made risotto. Everyone burnt theirs which was a total waste and who the hell starts them off with risotto? Even chefs say how difficult it is to make. 🤦‍♂️😡

Basic skills should be transferable across recipes - even recipes you don't particularly like.

Or are you meaning he doesn't make an effort because he doesn't like the recipe?

Some possible approaches which could be taken here:

• Substitute or omit the herbs / spices you don't use at home. My kid's school has no issue with this. They welcome, in fact, they praise reasonable substitutions and pragmatic adaptations. Sure, a kedgeree without the spice might not push all your gustatory buttons, but it'll still be edible and it'll provide higher quality nutrition than a great many things that a great many people choose to eat for dinners.
• Use the rest of the jar / tub of whatever you've bought for your kid's lesson. Try some new recipes / cuisines.
• Look over the recipe and suggest tweaks where small changes would make your family more likely to enjoy eating the resulting dish.
• Substitute expensive smoked haddock for cheaper smoked basa. This works fine in a kedgeree recipe. Increase the seasoning, cook the fish for a shorter time, handle it more gently. This also demonstrates a basic proficiency and understanding of food and cooking in a way that robotically following a recipe doesn't.

It's fine so long as you pay attention, give it time and keep stirring frequently. I think it is more that chefs say it takes time, not that it is hard? It was one of the first things I taught mine because I find it pretty easy.

You start off with sponge cakes…. Not risotto !

Yes sponge cake is better still!

why are they inedible?

write name in sharpie on every tupperware

@Monty36 Apparently many schools start off with a salad to ensure all the kids have a basic understanding of how to use a knife safely. It's pretty sad, but I guess there'll be kids who haven't grown up around food being prepared and cooked at home, and those who simply don't have a kitchen at home, so have no other place to learn these basic life skills.

Mine did risotto at school in year 7. It turned out well. They’ve done a variety of different basic skills, so for example they did a pasta bake which involved making a bechamel sauce. They also did a ‘mother’ tomato sauce which they could then use as a base for a variety of recipes, such as bolognese. Mine used it as a base for chickpea curry. They’re also allowed to adapt the recipe depending on their tastes, so the pasta bake had a ‘base’ recipe and then they could add extras such as ham, tomatoes, chorizo etc. Same with the crumble, DD did a tropical mango and pineapple crumble.

Yes I guess with a lot of ready meals these days that can happen. They just assumed we knew how to hold a knife at what it was for !

I am pleased cookery is at least being taught in schools. For a while it was just theory. And nothing practical. Good life skill to learn.

No adult supervision?

Risotto isn't hard. It's just stirring, and adding stock slowly. I could cook a risotto by 14 and so could my kids. But then, they've been helping stir since they were little.

Thanks all. Sorry for the late reply.
He can actually cook. At home he makes pstry, bread and steaks. When cooking supervised by me doing hello fresh meals it has always been good.
I don't think they get enough time to actually cook. They get 1 hour to make it. They made a chilli. One hour to prep and cook a chilli? Not enough. The meat was horribly chewy becasue it had only had half an hour on the hob, flavour was okay though. Mac and cheese was all congealed, this weeks sweet and sour chicken wasn't even his that he brought home. It was the pnly one left in the fridge apparently so someone took his, and now he has theirs. They are labelled but they just don't care.
Next time I buying just the main ingredients and sending a sandwich bag to bring it home. I'd prefer to pay a lump sum at the start of the term like others have mentioned but they don't do that.

@Monty36 I reckon it must be quite difficult delivering a lesson which is going to benefit every kid in a class where:

• some kids don't have kitchens at home, haven't handled a cooking knife for food prep purposes, wouldn't know how to turn on a cooker or work out how to use an oven;
• some kids only eat ready meals, pizzas, chicken nuggets and oven chips and don't get to see much in the way of food prep going on;
• some kids see some meals cooked from scratch, but don't get involved themselves;
• some kids are already regularly cooking dinners for their families and really aren't going to learn anything new in food tech, aside from perhaps realising that they're unusual in this regard;
• some kids are already learning how to butcher a cow;

and everything in-between.

I guess if the students finish their food tech lessons knowing how to operate basic kitchen equipment, how to tell when something's cooked, how to follow a recipe and how to maintain kitchen hygiene, then they've got a chance of being able to feed themselves well when they're independent, if that's what they choose to do.