Economy Gastronomy - new budget cookery programme; BBC

Butterfly_Brain

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

My DD1 did food tech. Four weeks studying the theory of the sandwich. Then they got the practical. Shopping list: 2 slices white bread, 1 jar jam. Next was chicken tarragon. Shopping list - 1 chicken breast, 1 onion, 1 chicken oxo - plus bring £1.50 to pay for the expensive ingredients (1tbsp tarragon vinegar). They produced 4 items all term.

At the end of term, they had the chance to cook anything they wanted. I sent DD1 and her friend in with ingredients for cup cakes, covered in glace icing and edible flowers/crystallised violets/rose petals, etc - really pretty girly things.

Wrote out the instructions. Included usual advice that if the mix curdles, just add some of the flour and keep going - it'll sort itself out. Food Tech 'teacher' was very suspicious and wasn't convinced that flowers were edible. Then made snorting noise when DD1 said the recipe was Mum's. They ignored her and continued their baking. When the teacher saw their cake mix curdle, she shoved them out of the way, snatched mixture and went to throw it in the bin. But DD1 stopped her.

Usually placid DD1 went spare at the woman, asked her exactly where she got her ideas from, as she obviously had never had to actually feed a family real food, and told her, as she had apparently never cooked in real conditions, perhaps she would like to explain to Mum (me) why exactly she had tried to chuck £x worth of perfectly good ingredients - but, if she didn't understand the principles of baking, Mum was very patient and would explain it to her very carefully.

DD1 then went on to complete the cakes with her friend and, when the head popped in to see the class, he asked if he could try one of her 'lovely flower cakes' and remarked that Food Tech teacher was wonderful if they had learned to make things like that with her.

Humph!

Good food tech. teachers are a rare breed indeed.

I know exactly where you are coming from my DD brought home the most disgusting concoctions from school, overpowered by garlic or as you said cakes or biscuits.
Most of the lessons where spent on theory not practical and she only got to cook about two or three times a term.
When I went to school........ A long long time ago we had double lessons and cooked every week. I can remember doing Minestrone Soup, Lamb Chops, Roast dinner, Shepherds Pie, Lemon Curd, Bread, Christmas Cake, Mince Pies, Peppermint mice and in year 5 (now year 10, we left school at 15) two pupils went into the "Flat" for a week which was a kitchen, Dining Room, Sitting Room next to the cookery rooms and had to cook a lunch for two teachers every day, we had to plan our own menu, budget for it, go shopping for the ingredients , prepare it, cook it, present it hot and on time then we had to clean the flat from top to bottom, it was a very useful first step in running a home.
But these days running a home is not an important lesson, what a sad state of affairs when all the government wants is for everyone to work and pay taxes.
I come from a different and sometimes I think better era when we had no computers, playstations etc and home making was as important as getting high grades in academic studies

[Deleted User]

canned fruit has to be boiled, canned and processed. I keep most of my fresh fruit in the fridge, rather than all in the bowl. I just take a few bits out at a time and add to the bowl and it doesn`t go off. Frozen fruit is good eg raspberries

I never did cookery in school after year 1, when we made very basic things. I had to choose and I went the science route. I used to envy the girls their lovely decorated christmas cakes and the gondola baskets they carried with them

one of the important staples in our house is fresh juice, made in my old green life juicer. http://www.discountjuicers.com/images/greenlife.jpg It masticates slowly with magnetic rollers so there is minimum loss of nutrients. Its a big, ugly machine but does the job as I want it. Cost me a bomb 15 years ago but will go on for ever. I make juice ftrom veg most days and yesterday was celery, cucumber, broccolli and granny smiths. Juiced then whizzed with spirulina powder. Tastes surprisingly ok. I think that alone gives us at least 6 servings of veg

I was surprised at the amount of sugar and fat that was going into the recipes, no wonder the muffins looked and tasted nice

helyg

cw18 wrote: »

Two of my three (now 25 and 20) took "Food Tech" as a GCSE. How they passed the exam still amazes me, as I had an almost monthly request for the ingredients to make apple crumble, and very rarely anything else. Given they attended different schools, run by different education authorities, and about 40 miles apart, this can't possibly have been a fluke can it

My youngest (who attended yet another school, but only a few miles from the one my middle child went to) decided not to take that particular subject..... I think 4 years of Apple Crumble for pudding (in the space of 7) was more than enough for him :rolleyes2

I'm slightly older than that (31) but when I was in school Food Tech was rubbish too... it tended to involve planning and marketing a product for a whole term, then ultimately right at the end of term cooking it. The product would be something like a cake to sell in a cafe or a sandwich to sell in a sandwich bar. I enjoyed it as a subject, but it didn't teach me anything about cooking! It would have been far more practical to teach us how to make nutritious main meals from scratch. I have learnt to cook as an adult (with a lot of help from Delia!), but I can understand how a lot of people my age have no idea how to cook real food. And if we don't know, what hope do our children have?

cheerfulness4

tracyk wrote: »

Maybe if we use real sausages in the 'hotpot' it could be a nice recipe??

Yes, I think it would be better that way and I was surprised to notice that real sausages were pictured in the top corner of the recipe page on their website, not hotdogs. (unless I'm totally blind :rolleyes: )

misskool

cw18 wrote: »

I was also intrigued by the chilli......

I only ever buy fresh when on Whoopsie, tending to rely on powder (but the hot version here).

But I was always told to remove the seeds, yet on the show they said to leave them in as they're the strongest part So do I leave them in the part that gets cooked, but only use the outer to sprinkle? Or do I use the whole thing for both?

For hot chillies, the least spicy bit is the skin + fleshy bit, then the seeds bit. but the spiciest one is the meaty tendrils holding the chilli seeds to the flesh.

mum26

Butterfly_Brain wrote: »

I know exactly where you are coming from my DD brought home the most disgusting concoctions from school, overpowered by garlic or as you said cakes or biscuits.
Most of the lessons where spent on theory not practical and she only got to cook about two or three times a term.
When I went to school........ A long long time ago we had double lessons and cooked every week. I can remember doing Minestrone Soup, Lamb Cops, Roast dinner, Shepherds Pie, Lemon Curd, Bread, Christmas Cake, Mince Pies, Peppermint mice and in year 5 (now year 10, we left school at 15) two pupils went into the "Flat" for a week which was a kitchen, Dining Room, Sitting Room next to the cookery rooms and had to cook a lunch for two teachers every day, we had to plan our own menu, budget for it, go shopping for the ingredients , prepare it, cook it, present it hot and on time then we had to clean the flat from top to bottom, it was a very useful first step in running a home.
But these days running a home is not an important lesson, what a sad state of affairs when all the government wants is for everyone to work and pay taxes.
I come from a different and sometimes I think better era when we had no computers, playstations etc and home making was as important as getting high grades in academic studies

Exactly, kids are being prepared to be good little worker drones rather than independant well rounded individuals. I'm doing my best to teach my lot to cook, the cookery teaching at our schools is just as bad, I was asked to send in a load of ingrediants (inc a small jr of mayonaise) in the last week of term, as we are on a very tight budget at the moment it was stuff I could have done without sending, and she came home having not made anything but sat in front of a dvd for that lesson! Useless.

tori.k

my foster son is doing GCSE catering at school and his catering teacher spat her dummy out at me when i asked why she was sending him home with recipes that cost a fourtune to make and that half the time they had to finish at home as they didnt have time to cook, to me they need to be taught seasonal budget food (think grub on a grant) that would be of use to them if they go on to uni, save the fancy stuff for catering college, her take is they havent the time to do cheaper recipes as meat etc takes longer to cook, (utter rot imo)

finnigan

I home school my 15 yr old, one GCSE he wanted to do when he was at school was food tech so now I give him a challenge once a week along the lines of - a meal for 7 of us including pudding and a new technique he hasn't used before costing under £x. He then has to decide what to cook, source the ingredients and I teach him the new technique. Last term he made lasagne, plum flapjacks, apple crumble :rotfl: and chicken chasseur amongst others. The idea is he will not be scared to cook for himself when he needs to (he also irons :cool:)

CLARABEL

Hiya

I feel I need to support Food teachers here. I agree that in a lot of schools the stuff they're taught is irrelevent and pointless, ( mine was) but it certainly isn't the case everywhere.

My friend is a food teacher who lets students choose their own recipes, and cook them on the proviso they are strictly budgeted, with proof of how much the ingredients cost them. She often has a room full of 20 different recipes going on, ( and obviosly the nightmare that it entails!!!! )
Students who cook a cake / pud, are encouraged to cook proper meals to take home for their families next time.
It's very easy to criticise the teacher when in fact, the time constraints ( often 1 1 hour lesson in a week only!) and lack of facilities available cause a lot of the problems.
schools are always looking for people to help, and I think teaching the basics could be something more people offer to help out with....we could show everyone a thing or two!!

Clara.x

randomer

I agree about time being a problem but surely some basics eg a simple white sauce,soup,pasta could be taught as easily as scones or cakes. The take a cake and stick icing thing did it for me!