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Cooking lessons at school

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
All children will learn basic cooking at school.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/pressass/20080122/tuk-compulsory-cooking-class-for-pupils-6323e80_2.html

About time! At my school we did food technology, so we learned about quality control and food manufacturing, but nothing actually relevent to daily life, such as how to boil an egg, nutrition, making pasta, etc.

Did you have cooking lessons at school?

"Mr Balls wants members of the public to suggest the dishes to be taught. They must be healthy, easy to prepare and the kind of meals that teenagers will want to eat.

He is asking anyone with suggestions to email the Government."

I'd say cauliflower and broccoli cheese, pasta sauces, stir fries maybe?

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    we did basic cooking, cakes, buns etc.. at primary school and then in high school we did it for one term in technology for the first 3 years, made meals, pizzas, pasta all and we also had to do the theory behind healthy eating and food groups and all that stuff.

    probably all changed now seen as these things go through phases of whats good and whats not
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Like it has already been said, when I was at school we never learnt anything useful to daily life.
    they should include lessons on special diets so kids can learn about what a vegetarian might eat, or what someone who has diabetes might eat, foods from other cultures etc - although it might be more of an idea for older kids.

    I second this.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yeah they could have Indian day, and the kids all make Indian food for the other classes, everyone pays a few quid, then Mexican day, Italian day, veggie day, etc.
  • **helen****helen** Deactivated Posts: 9,235 Supreme Poster
    katchika wrote: »
    such as how to boil an egg, nutrition, making pasta, etc.

    Those are exactly the things I did learn - but it was a bit rubbish because there was never enough time and we had to take in all our own ingredients - not fun sitting on a crowded school bus with a box of eggs!

    But, I was lucky because my parents were really proactive in teaching me how to cook, so I'd try out the stuff they tried to teach us in school at home and learn how to make it actually taste nice :D
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Same for me Helen, my mum's school did really good home economics with lots of cooking and things like sewing as well as part of it. They even did stuff like make their own puff pastry. She's always been really good with cooking at home too and taught me, my sisters and brother to cook well. My brother is only just 13 and he's won 2 cookery competitions from all the secondary schools in the county.

    I wish I knew more about nutrition than I do though and I think that was something that wasn't focussed on enough at my school, although I only did home ec for the first 3 years or school (I did resistant materials for GCSE) and they might have covered it more in the GCSE course, I'm not sure.

    When I did home ec though I think there was too much onus on the pupils - we had to think of something to cook each week rather than actually being shown how to cook. We always had to eat some of it afterwards as well and I was really fussy back then and so wasn't very creative for fear of having to eat something I didn't like!

    Cooking definitely needs to be back on the curriculum but I think some of the comments on that article are important - such as pupils being required to bring their own ingredients. This is fine for some people but not everyone can afford to provide ingredients for their children, especially if they don't already have cupboards full of cooking stuff like my mum did, and have to buy far more than they need just for one lesson.

    Oh god yeah and it was always SUCH a pain carrying your cooking around with you after the lesson - if the lesson was first thing you either had to cart it round with you for the rest of the day, or the teacher would grudgingly let you leave it in the fridge but then you'd have to beg your last lesson teacher to let you leave a bit early to go and collect it so that you could get to the bus on time. Great fun carrying it on the bus as well. Oh and all the bossy popular twatty annoying older kids would try and take it off you to eat it on the way home too. Good times :yeees:
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I remember taking baskets on the school bus at the age of 11, like an old lady!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Wish I'd had a basket! :hyper:

    The worst one was having to transport SOUP home ... my mum gave me a 3ltr empty robinson's squash bottle and my teacher was really cross when she couldn't get the soup in (although I was doing fine on my own!) and sliced the top of the bottle off and tried to keep it sealed with a bit of clingfilm...

    Other memories from cooking include one boy putting his scone-based pizza on a grill tray rather than a baking tray and it falling all down the back of the oven and clogging up the gas jets, my friend frying some chicken and melting a hole in the plastic bowl holding the chicken as it was too close to the gas and then me opening a cupboard and 6 of those earthenware mixing bowls falling out and smashing on the floor :o
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I loved cooking class at school! I think it was called home economics and was all about cooking, although in the last year it was more about nutrition.

    My school was a bit posh so we all hand woven baskets to bring our food in!! Like little red riding hood :D

    We made soups, bread and butter pudding, pasta, scones, and I can't remember what else..:p
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Other memories from cooking include one boy putting his scone-based pizza on a grill tray rather than a baking tray and it falling all down the back of the oven and clogging up the gas jets

    LOL!!!

    I remember baking bread and leaving it to rise under a tea towel and when I went to cook it all the dough was stuck to the tea towel :no:

    We had this proper nazi food tech teacher and she wouldn't ever let us check how the food was doing in the oven, even though all the ovens were so cranky they all took different times. I remember my friend trying to get her food out the oven and the teacher shouting 'DON'T OPEN THE OVEN DOOR!!!' and my friend trying to explain that she had to because her food would be ready and the teacher was having none of it. In the end it was burnt and she got told off :D
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    :lol:

    my sister had a crap time with home ec too - she's a really good cook but she was put in a class that was made up of 20 disruptive special needs kids and her. she never got any help from the teacher, the teacher wouldn't let her change to the other group and she was generally a rubbish teacher as well who couldn't control the class or anything. My sister did her GCSE coursework on the night before it was due in, under threats of no lifts anywhere for a year if she didn't get it done.

    and then she got a sodding A*!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    lol I had to draw an pie in my food tech exam! quelle point???
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I won the cooking competition at school.. I just made up a recipe on the spot and bunged in loads of ingredients to make a pretzel shaped gooey italien bread. Mwaha
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I learned to cook chocolate rum balls, jam roly poly, scones and pizza. A wonderfully balanced and healthy diet.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    my mum reckons i did food tech for 3 terms although i dont remember it! i remember cooking a pizza in one class and some cookies but thats about it.

    I think kids should learn to cook from early on; my mum runs a nursery and she does cookery with them.they made ginerbread men before and they made fruit salads etc obviously only simple stuff as under 5!

    i think the government should have done something about cookery ages ago. teach kids how to make spag bog,carbonara, pasta bake, sheperd's pie all the kind of stuff they can do at home easily.

    Also how about how to cook veg!! i always overcook my carrots lol
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I think this is a really good idea :)

    I'm not a terrible cook now, but you never would have known it from school... one particular highlight was my crunchy chocolate mousse :D
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    such as how to boil an egg, nutrition, making pasta, etc.

    yeh its really important to teach kids these sorts of things as they would never be able to work out how to do them on thier own. boiling eggs especially.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru

    Oh god yeah and it was always SUCH a pain carrying your cooking around with you after the lesson - if the lesson was first thing you either had to cart it round with you for the rest of the day, or the teacher would grudgingly let you leave it in the fridge but then you'd have to beg your last lesson teacher to let you leave a bit early to go and collect it so that you could get to the bus on time. Great fun carrying it on the bus as well. Oh and all the bossy popular twatty annoying older kids would try and take it off you to eat it on the way home too. Good times :yeees:

    :yes: exactly the same here!!

    :lol: We had home ec from 1st-2nd yr, but it wasn't healthy food, I recall being taught how to make a cheese toastie (white bread, slice of processed cheese, stick it under grill) and a lot of it was really basic.

    I hated it, yet I did it for another two years, and again, although it was optional then, the focus wasn't so much on healthy eating - more, "What can we cook in 80 minutes that isn't too difficult?", usually shortbread or cakes etc..
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    minimi38 wrote: »
    such as how to boil an egg, nutrition, making pasta, etc.

    yeh its really important to teach kids these sorts of things as they would never be able to work out how to do them on thier own. boiling eggs especially.

    The thing is though i had friends at uni and even now who are so hopeless that they've actually rang me before asking for instructions on how to boil an egg! God forbid they tried to cook pasta or even make something as simple as a stir fry :nervous:
  • SkiveSkive Posts: 15,282 Skive's The Limit
    I always treated cookery lessons as a doss and never paid attention. Now i love to cook. This mandatory cooking at school is a good thing.
    Weekender Offender 
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I think it's a brilliant idea. We had to do a year of cookery in the 2nd or 3rd year of comp and it was 4 hours a week, 2 double lessons, so we had the time to make a wide variety of stuff. Then picked it up as an option for the last 2 years and it was one of the best things i ever learnt at school.

    I think they should teach the basics like how to make a white sauce, a tomato based sauce, basic cake, biscuits, bread, how to prepare and cook vegetables and show the difference, and value, of different cuts of meat. And mundane things like beans on toast and scrambled eggs. I know a few people who can't even to really basic stuff like boil and egg and make chips !

    It'd also be a good idea to show that you can make healthy versions of food like burgers, fish and chips, pizza and pasta.

    As for taking food home on the bus. One day we made Queen of Puddings and that little cow Sharron tripped me up on the bus and it fell on the floor and this little jam smothered island of meringue floated down the aisle of the bus :)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    We used to have Food Technology. I took it for GCSE as well but it was half written work by then and we had to do loads about what was actually in the product fat content etc, which was quite interesting.

    In year 7 I remember the first things we made were salads, soup and bread. Then we did buscuits, pasta dishes and stuff.
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