My war on waste!!!

Pollycat

Justamum wrote: »

The Poppy Shop has a huge range of products. I wear the small metal poppies. You can get them with the year on. Last year they had one with the years 1914/2014 on, and this year they've done a 1915 one. They'll probably done one for each of the years of WWI. This year there was a special three legs of Mann one sold just over here (I believe) which I bought. I'm getting quite a collection! I do, however, buy a couple of paper poppies because my children have to wear a paper one if they're going on parade with Scouts.

I think it's a good idea to recycle the bits they can.

In our local Tesco they had the metal poppies, paper poppies, different coloured rubber wristbands, circular poppies with white or black backgrounds on red, black or yellow elasti, rulers & fluorescent poppies.

GreyQueen

Most of the people in my block of flats are relatively young, say under 25 and pretty hard up. If you're flush, you don't get council accomodation.

Our bins are constantly full of fast-food wrappers (KFC, pizza boxes, cola bottles etc etc) and these type of items seem to be the major dietary components of many young men's diets. I was chatting with a lad in passing as I bought something at a £1 store (I was buying quantities of something to use as an ingredient, he was curious) and he told me he couldn't cook and lived on kebabs etc.

As well as making me very sad that he hadn't had a parent competant and caring enough to equip him with a very basic lifeskill, it made me frankly scared of the health timebomb which is approaching in 20-40 + years' time, if not sooner. These are youngsters in their prime of life and they are in appalling physical condition in many cases. I shudder to think what is probably going on inside their cardiovascular systems.

I think I must have been one of the last generations to have had Home Economics lessons. It seems to me probably purposeful to take useful things out of the currriculum and replace them with things of dubious merit, as a way of serving up a generation of consumers as easy pickings for the food industry.

But maybe I'm just a cynical conspiracy theorist?

fuddle

Home Economics, or Food Technology, is in schools today The Middle School my DD has been attending have been making these recipes this term.

bread and butter pudding
cheesy pasta
fruity mousse
leek and potato soup
lemon cheesecake
quiche lorraine
short bread
soda bread
tomato and mozzerella tart

But yeah, having been brought up on ready made food I can see there's a big problem. I am relatively new to cookery and bakery and I have to admit that DH makes our Christmas Dinner every year as he's a much better cook than I. :cool:

Justamum

My children have had Food Tech lessons at school, but they're not a patch on our old Home Economics lessons. For instance if they need to make a pie the ingredients list includes bought pastry! Making bread involved buying a bread mix. They weren't being taught the basics of cooking. I refused to buy pastry, so showed them at home how to make it and take it in, and I also showed them how to make up their own bread mix.

[Deleted User]

When I was young it was called 'Housecraft ' and we learned how to cook, hand wash clothes, iron and clean.Most of the stuff my friends and I already did with our Mums anyway. its sad that with all the cookery programmes on TV so few young men learn how to feed themselves.I have five grandsons and they all have been taught by me how to do at least basic food prep.

I do try to instill into them the advantages ,financially at least to making your own food rather than just take-away or junk food.In fact my DD ,even thouh she works full-time along with her OH expects the boys to eat a 'proper' dinner in the evening and its rare to feed them anything from the likes of the high street take-away shops.In the last half term they even made their own pizza's with their choice of toppings. The boys all make a darned good cuppa as well even the youngest at 11

eandjsmum

I hated home economics at school. I gave it up as soon as I could, I didn't get on with the teacher and I think she was glad that i didn't do O'level Home Ec. I taught myself to cook and look after house,(it was that or starve). I did buy some simple cook-books. One was called How to Boil and egg by Jan Arkless . I only have a small collection of cook-bookss, but I do have a journal where I have added recipes culled from magazines ect.

My DD was given her first cook-book as part of a government initiative.

DS refuses to learn to cook. I am willing to teach him.

meritaten

Well our school called it 'Cookery'! but our teacher was a lady who taught it exactly as JackieO describes. We were actually taught how to wash our hands! did ironing, learned to set tables properly, but the old bat did teach us the basic skills needed for almost every type of cooking. We baked, we grilled we used the hob. made everything from proper cocoa to Christmas cakes - along with my nan and my aunts teaching I was actually a better cook than my mother by the time I was twelve.

my DD is now approaching forty and during her school years 'Food Technology' was all the rage. and the cooking component of her final exam was to make 'an egg salad' I believe! mostly she knew the main exports/imports of different countries in the world!
I taught all my kids to cook the basics at least (even those who didn't want to) and ALL my grandkids are either competent or well onto the path. Heck, my 7 year old granddaughter taught her mum and her friend how to make 'proper' gravy, instead of using granules!lol apparently, she told them off because they were going to 'waste perfectly good meat juice'!

mumps

My eldest two were doing A levels in the 1980s at an all boys grammar school. They did bachelor survival, the HT told us that the boys didn't like cookery or home economics on the timetable but bachelor survival was considered quite cool and good preparation for university. They did stuff like ironing, simple sewing tasks (sewing a button on or repairing a hem) and basic cookery. I suppose that seems quite sexist now but both of them were well equipped when they went to university (they did like cooking at home and had helped with baking and things from an early age,)

I always think if they have been taught to read then they should be able to follow a recipe.

meritaten

I agree mumps - but, recipes are easy to follow only if you know the 'basics' in some cases.
lol - I have had my kids ring me up to explain cookery 'terms' to them! for example 'baste' had my son in a tailspin - he had absolutely no idea what it meant and the book didn't explain! it just said 'baste frequently'!
This is the son who painstakingly took all the 'beans' out of runner beans and discarded the green pods! then complained there wasn't enough to feed a sparrow! mind you he was only about twelve at the time! but, it made me think, if you haven't been shown 'HOW' veg is prepped or heard these terms before - then attempting recipes out of the book could be a very scary thing!

I then spent hours on the computer compiling 'Fifty Favourite Family Recipes'. and each recipe took at least two pages, as I explained every step or term in detail. Gave each of my offspring a copy. Sadly that computer died.............and I lost all that work, the kids had suggested I get it published to help 'students and non-cooks'.

Pollycat

It was called Domestic Science when I was at school.
I actually have a Domestic Science 'O' level.