school cooking lessons

[vixnpips]

good for you.. guys .. Have to say I was always the slightly strange arty type LOL

[Stonehead]

Getting back on-topic, our oldest cooked dinner for us on Friday night. He's seven so it was relatively simple, but still a good and fun challenge for him.

He did baked potatoes, cooked up bacon, beans and onions to go on them, split the potatoes and filled them, grated cheese from a large block, put the cheese over the top, and then served the food out.

He's also good with fry-up breakfasts - sausage, bacon, eggs, baked beans and toast - and is a dab hand at baking - making flapjacks and fairy cakes on his own within the past week. (He is supervised but is largely left to get on with it.)

It's easy to point the finger at schools, but parents have a lot to do with it as well.

[vixnpips]

totally agree that it is up to the parents.. yet schools could really step in here when we all know that there are parents out there that don't "cook" themselves let alone show the kids how to.

I was far more irritated that the school told my boy to take in jars of stuff really.. when we make a point of showing are kids how to cook.

Good on you and yours tho... won't be long before he's serving a good fry up as brekkie in bed to you

my 8 year old has taken a real shine to cooking, he loves it.. 12 year old is happy to get stuck in, in the kitchen and the 4 year old will mix, stir and taste anything LOL..

[red]

yeh I agree - it IS up to the parents to teach their kids how to cook - but is seems the school is determined to undermine parents who actually do cook but insisting on the kids bring in jars or pre-made food, and critising any other action. half the point of schools is to make up for the parents who dont have the skills to pass on - but whats the pint of the school teaches rubbish?

what's next? how to make findus pancakes...1 open the box...2 slide contents onto grill.....
or how to order a takeaway..

[vixnpips]

There is another point to schools asking for the students to take in manufactured foods.
And thats the food mile issue.. linking in to greener issues. The schools do make a point of bringing this up in other lessons.. but then asking the pupils to take in items of food that have quite a few "miles" on them..

[glenniedragon]

I wonder if there's some health and safety issue the schools are acting on? are foods in jars 'aseptic' and therefore not risking bringing food poisioning in to the school kitchens (I don't believe thats the right stance, but it would be interesting to find out) We're kinda preaching to the converted here, I dare say we all do cook with our kids (and show them how to wash up! ) But schools should teach the skills needed to those kids whose parents can't/don't/won't cook with their kids. Cooking could be a great lesson you could incorporate geography,history, numeracy, envionment, sociology, science all in a single dollop of a class, ah come the revolution!

kind thoughts
Deb

[ina]

I think part of their reasoning behind the "everything shop bought" issue may be that they are afraid of hygiene problems - possible food poisoning and then parents blaming the school for allowing "unclean" foodstuffs in with other children... Sad, but not unknown. I read somewhere that parents weren't allowed to bring in homemade cakes for a Christmas do; they weren't even allowed to bring in whole shop bought cakes (as there was a chance for contamination during the slicing process!). Everything brought in had to be individual portions, individually wrapped.

How to teach your children to take care of the environment.

We didn't learn cooking at school - I went to what's called a Gymnasium in Germany, i.e. we were prepared not for life, but for University, and ordinary life skills like cooking weren't on the agenda. Needlework was, though; maybe that was considered a suitable hobby for the educated woman... (Woodworking was for the guys only, of course.) My mum taught me all the basics of cooking, and by the time I was a teenager, I could do it better than she - I always had to do the fancy stuff when there were visitors coming. (Mind you, fancy stuff in the 70s was not what I'd like to do nowadays!)

[vixnpips]

Hadn't thought of the H&S issue I have to say.

Maybe the schools should change what they teach to include a health and safety food handlers course and certificate LOL, in seriousness when I did mine I was shocked at the amount of different food poisonings you can get!
They could also include how to wash hands.. as Sooooo many people don't know how to do this properly. LOL

[Stonehead]

Hmm, if the school insists of food in jars etc, then why not provide your own? In our case, we make vast amounts of jams, preserves, chutneys, pickles, relishes and the like.

I wonder how the school would react to a jar of pickled eggs, a jar of pickled beans and dill, a jar of pickled baby carrots, some rhubarb chutney, and a jar of strawberry jam. After all, it's all in sealed jars with pretty labels...

[ina]

I wonder how the school would react to a jar of pickled eggs, a jar of pickled beans and dill, a jar of pickled baby carrots, some rhubarb chutney, and a jar of strawberry jam. After all, it's all in sealed jars with pretty labels...

Yes, but they don't come from a nice big factory with a "proper" Health and Safety official on the staff list! Not that having an official like that could guarantee the safety of anything; in the end it comes down to common sense, and lots of people seem to leave that behind and rely totally on all those written records of safety measures carried out... As if they'd prove anything.

[vixnpips]

okay had to read through the dfes guidelines for food tech again.. they do cover food saftey etc.. they cover issues about local foods.. eco issues, marketing and design food for different groups. Making food in batches etc.
the bit that my boy was doing was this part.

Children:
Demonstrate and ask the pupils to practise a range of techniques for preparing and processing foods.
For example, pupils could:

change raw foods using a range of unit operations, eg cleaning, sorting, peeling, shredding, cooking
group unit operations to make a process, eg when making a vegetable samosa:
cleaning, sorting, peeling, shredding and cooking for the filling
sieving, mixing and kneading, and rolling for the dough
filling, shaping, frying, draining and cooking for the samosa
learn how to make pastry and practise making a pasty or samosa from a set recipe
create a range of edible cases, eg batter coating
combine materials to change their performance characteristics, eg consistency
choose and use a range of cooking methods, eg frying, baking, boiling, steaming
Pupils could practise these skills by making simple items quickly, eg salads, drinks, a pasty, a samosa, a spring roll, a baked potato with filling.
know what is meant by 'unit operations' and know how to group unit operations into simple production plans, eg as a flow chart
select and use appropriate simple food processing techniques safely
know that combining different materials/ingredients, eg white flour and wholemeal flour, can change their performance characteristics

From this I can only gather that our issue was down the individual teacher.. rather than gov guide lines... please see that it actually says...

learn how to make pastry and practise making a pasty or samosa from a set recipe

Now teachers are to use these as guide lines and can change what they actually cook.. i.e pastry orsalad.. or strange cous couse chicken thing with creme fresh and chilli sause???.. but it looks like ours threw the book away!

[Masco&Bongo]

group unit operations to make a process, eg when making a vegetable samosa:
cleaning, sorting, peeling, shredding and cooking for the filling
sieving, mixing and kneading, and rolling for the dough
filling, shaping, frying, draining and cooking for the samosa
learn how to make pastry and practise making a pasty or samosa from a set recipe

Samosa?? Very multicultural... I had to make bakewell tarts!

Interesting how the guidelines have changed to be very inclusive, rather than just saying "pastry". There are loads of different types of pastry (most of which I still struggle with) before you even get to what I think of as specialist stuff (e.g. samosas), so I wonder why they feel the need to include that specifically?

[vixnpips]

It wouldn't surprise me as with most things.. all gone very PC.

[Magpie]

Aren't education dpts full of crap? Why on earth is it important to "know what is meant by unit operations"? And what the heck are unit operations? Is this why I'm not a great cook?

[vixnpips]

I think that unit operations are..weighing out.. mixing..cooking..etc..don't quote me i could be wrong LOL and probably am.. hense my cooking can be trying at times LOL

Mind if I had forgone the basics but learnt about unit operations maybe my family would be a lot happier LOL LOL