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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

to think this is unrealistically short notice to provide food tech ingredients...?

69 replies

hatesponge · 14/10/2009 20:46

DS is in Year 7.

He has food tech (or cookery/domestic science as it was called back when I was at school.....) tomorrow. He has to make a fruit crumble or pie. He got the list of ingredients in his lesson today

I think it is entirely unrealistic to have less than 24 hours notice. DS was at football practice after school, his dad brought him home to me at 7 - which was when I first heard about it. I then - after we had dinner - had to run down to Asda (which as I dont drive is luckily is 10 mins walk down the road) & buy it all. Frankly having been out since 7.30am at work, the last thing i wanted to do was have to bolt my dinner down to go back out to the shops!

I have asked DS if he had any earlier notice of this. He says not - and given that I have told him I intend to phone the school about it, I know he wouldn't lie as he would so easily get caught out.

So AIBU..........?

OP posts:

ChunkyMonkeysMum · 15/10/2009 08:14

hatesponge - Please let us know how you go this morning when you talk to the school

BigHairyLeggedSpider · 15/10/2009 08:19

Bumping to follow thread.

sarah293 · 15/10/2009 08:33

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

cory · 15/10/2009 08:37

love dd's school which takes money off us and provides the ingredients

piscesmoon · 15/10/2009 08:37

YABU-didn't you know that parents are supposed to have a magic wand?!

Ivykaty44 · 15/10/2009 08:50

YANBU

Why not contact the school and ask if they can give more notice - then at least they know that there is a problem with giving out the list so late. Otherwise how are they to know that people dont have all the stuff in their cuboards

Otherwise you may well find it happens every week

I would think they can put it on the school website (if they have one) - for the year and as the lessons will be the same for all three terms

theroseofwait · 15/10/2009 09:11

Another Food Tech teacher here, and I also make sure parents have a weeks notice at least. I will echo what Ditdot said about kids not mentioning it until the night before though, and I have known parents drop off ingredients at reception before the lesson as they've not been told until that morning!

Planning for a year is not always that easy, I tend to give the students a couple of lessons to assess their abilities before I set anything in stone, and also the amount of students with food allergies is increasing
and this obviously has a knock on effect on my planning.

Finally, rightly or wrongly, I think we do expect people to have the basics like eggs, flour, butter etc. in. I had a conversation with a parent a couple of weeks ago who was complaining that she had to buy six eggs when the lesson required only one. The comment that really floored me was 'what am I supoosed to do with the rest?!'
It had never entered my head before that someone wouldn't have a use for eggs. . . . .

ChopsTheDuck · 15/10/2009 09:25

I like the pay in advance method, but the only problem is then you don't know what they are cooking and when.
Dd came home with chicken kebabs during a period of no meat allowed which had to go in the bin.

I agree one days notice is not good enough, and I'd have probably not ran to asda that evening.

PixiNanny · 15/10/2009 10:04

I hate to play Devil's Advocate, but are you sure he didn't just forget to give you the ingredients list last week and told a white lie to avoid your disappointment? I used to forget to tell my Mum until the day before which led to her raving at the school about how they were unorganised... then she discovered my little mishaps...

Just be sure to double check his bag after those lessons as he may be forgetting about the list and then doing the same as me

cocobongo · 15/10/2009 10:15

On a related note, it strikes me as bizarre that parents are expected to pay for ingredients for a compulsary class. I mean, you wouldn't be expected to pay for books for English classes, would you? So why are parents put in this position for what is ostensibly a free education? Puts a lot of pressure on those who can't afford it.

notagrannyyet · 15/10/2009 10:16

We've always had a weeks notice of what DC will be cooking.

Doesn't mean I haven't had the occasional late night dash to the shops.

I think DC taking the ingredients in is part of it. I do have all the basics at home but if something more unusuall is need they come to the shops with me to get it. Mine nearly always try the recipe out at home but my DS enjoy cooking anyway.

That someone couldn't use up extra eggs.

doubleexpresso · 15/10/2009 10:23

YANBU. I would have been furious and I wouldn't have been able to get to a shop easily. We've been given the list for the whole term which was really useful. The thing I'm struggling with is packing it all up. DS needed 15ml of passata last time... Then the teacher had to give him an extra tupperware to bring the pizza home in...tasted nice though.

scaryteacher · 15/10/2009 10:32

ds has cooking on a Friday one week and a Tuesday the next, so we get a week and a bit in notice one week for the following week, and then effectively 3 days notice, and supermarkets do not open on a Sunday in Belgium.

His school are great in that they provide the store cupboard stuff and we have to provide the meat/tomatoes/biscuits/cream etc.

My mum always paid for my Home Ec ingredients when I was at comp in the late 70s/early 80s, so it's not unusual to pay imo.

duchesse · 15/10/2009 11:08

How many cookery lessons does he have a week? I would have thought there wouldn't be time on the curriculum for more than one or a double. Am surprised he has two on consecutive days.

Disenchanted3 · 15/10/2009 11:19

Duchess, when I was at school food was a module of DT (others were design, woodwork etc) and we had it on a tuesday then a double the next day, this was usually so we could do an hour of prep work then do the practical stuff for 2 hours the next day, the following week we would ahve no DT as it was a fortnightly rota.

HarrumphingAndBosomAdjusting · 15/10/2009 11:33

I can understand having to provide fresh ingredients eg cheese, meat, fish, veg etc. but store cupboard ingredients should be bought in bluk by school then parents should make a small contribution.
My teenage brother does Food Tech, and his ingredients frquently include 'a pinch of salt' or 'half a teaspoon of chilli powder.'
How, in the name of all that is holy, do you transport a pinch of salt? Surely it would make more sense to have a big communal store of dry ingredients?
Would also be easier to get ingredients together if DC had been unqble to being them for some reason.
Oh, and a day's notice is completlely unreasonable, obviously!

islandofsodor · 15/10/2009 11:38

By cocobongo on Thu 15-Oct-09 10:15:48 On a related note, it strikes me as bizarre that parents are expected to pay for ingredients for a compulsary class. I mean, you wouldn't be expected to pay for books for English classes, would you?

Actually yes, when I was at 6th form we had to buy all our own set texts for English.

nostrila · 15/10/2009 11:40

Last year my daughter (for food tech) had to take in '30 ml Milk' for a recipe. She was flapping in the morning because I had to give her a whole pint - I couldn't find a leak proof container to transport said 30ml milk into!!!

DITDOT · 15/10/2009 13:25

I agree with everything you are all saying and I can't believe a school asks you to take a pinch of salt or a teaspoon of a spice/herb that you never use.

My Y9 are making kebabs next week and we provide cumin and a clove of garlic as this is the sort of thing parents may not use a whole jar/bulb of.

Cocobongo - If school had to pay for everything then there would be no cooking as such as there is no money provided in school budget for this!

Also the schools that ask for payment and provide ingredients sound good BUT for me as a food tech teacher, I don't have a full time technician and would have to buy and weigh everything myself (no time to weigh, make and wash up in 55 minute lessons!). When would I do that? Not part of a teachers job although we do do it and most food tech teachers will visit supermarkets on a nightly basis!!

We give out booklets with recipes in to each year group so parents have some idea what their child will be cooking for the term but not the date.

It is annoying that some food tech teachers give the rest of us a bad reputation!!

hanaflower · 15/10/2009 13:30

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Pyrocanthus · 15/10/2009 13:38

We've been told that the quantities would be specified to avoid waste. If it's something fresh, I don't particularly want DD carting the leftovers round in her bag for the rest of the day.

We've not been asked for microquantities of salt though.

theroseofwait · 15/10/2009 14:48

The quantities in our case are specific to avoid eating into lesson time. We are a split site so by the time some of the students arrive it can be 10 or 15 minutes into a 60 minute lesson and then if they all have to stand and weigh out their ingredients then we'd never get anything done! My particular pet hate is when I request a specific amount of grated cheese to be brought in, and it comes in in a block which takes up valuable time to grate. . . .

I am lucky that my HOD allows the weighing out of ingredients to be set as homework, although I know that's not the case in all schools!

Again the school buying in ingredients is a great idea in theory but putting into practise is a nightmare - where does the money come from in the first instance? Who goes and buys it, weighs it out etc? (No way could I do it if you want planned lessons and marked work!) and what do I do with a child who has brought in the basics but has no money to buy the extras? Say no and waste the other ingredients? Give them the stuff and risk having to write the cost off?

I do try and provide things like salt,and if I've made the dish myself in class then life is a lot easier as there are usually ingredients left over to use up, but I have been known to request 15ml of passata myself. How do I teach a child to use a recipe properly if I say 'Just bring the jar and bung on what you like!?'

hanaflower · 15/10/2009 15:00

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

theroseofwait · 15/10/2009 15:17

Well, to an extent I agree hanaflower, but I am a qualified chef and a trained food teacher. A Year 7 (who are asked to bring in said passata) would not have the experience to use the 'guestimate' technique with pizza and then not with scones or pastry. If you've ever made scones or rock cakes with 24 children and asked them to 'not add all your egg and milk at once, just a bit at a time until you have a dough. .. ' and then witnessed the carnage that can follow (despite a demonstration) then you'll know exactly what I mean!

I do give alternatives to passata, such as puree or pizza sauce but I think a lesson on soggy/dry pizza a bit of a waste of time, tbh. Now, the differences between scone/bread/ready made bases are a different matter altogether. ... .

yummyyummyyummy · 15/10/2009 15:20

I very much doubt that your DS has Food tech more than once a week.They would have been told then.

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