So, I'm teaching at the girl's school

[tamidon]

Anyone want to check out my proposal and comment? If you were taking a basic cooking skills course, is there something you'ld look for?


A 10 person class, meeting for 1.5 hours per week. Each class period will cover one category of cooking,not just covering recipes

1: cutting veggies and meat leading to stir frying

2.Browning meat and onions, leading to chilli, spaghetti sauce,and lasagna

3: roasting a chicken,carving it and using up the leftovers

4.Making a roux, leading to white sauce, cheese sauce, mac-n-cheese, etc

5:Meatloaf,meatballs, etc...

6:Soup

7:Side dishes:rice,mashed potatoes,maybe barley and other grains

8:Custard,quiche and pie dough

9:fruit pie,crumbles,cobblers

10: Kids' choice, to be decided in advance.

Students from Upper El and Middle School can sign up

There is one rule: any horsing around with knives or hot surfaces will mean immediate expulsion from the course.

Thrughout the course I intend to touch on information about food safety,food cleanliness, and proper knife skills.
Each student will go home from class with a handout and a small portion of some of what was made for the day..

Comments

[donnad.livejournal.com]

Are you planning on discussing how to follow recipes and measuring ingredients properly? Yes I know you rarely use recipes, but most of these kids aren't going to be that skilled and will likely use recipes more often than not. Understanding how to read a recipe and what the terms mean is an important skill.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

But otherwise it sounds reasonable to me

[donnad.livejournal.com]

oh one more thing, you might want to put soup after roasting the chicken, Chicken soup and stock is a good way to use up leftovers.

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

good idea, done

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

I'll briefly touch on that, but am really trying to focus on skills instead.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

wow. if there were an adult version, i'd be tempted. :-)

the only things i think is missing is something about food storage and dealing with leftovers -- "should i store this in the fridge, freezer, under a cabinet? how long are those leftovers good for? can i take something out of the freezer, thaw it, cook some, and re-freeze the rest? can i reheat this in the microwave or do i have to use a toaster oven? there's fuzzy stuff on this cheese, can i eat the non-fuzzy parts? what about the non-fuzzy parts of bread?"

in the roasting a chicken, are you including stuffing? in particular, making sure the stuffing is hot enough to be safe?

and, since they're kids, maybe teach them how to make their own potato chips?

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

that's part of food hygeine

[rmd.livejournal.com]

cool. i wasn't sure if "storage" was included in "hygeine".

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

Early on, you may want to hone knife skills and produce selection skills with a "Salad" course.

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

that's the purpose of the stir fry class up first.

[cutieperson]

i think kids would be more into cookies than custard or quiche? but i suppose it depends on whether your approach is to give them what will be most useful later in life or what they will be most interested in now...

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I agree. I don't know a single kid who'd not want to know how to make cookies. It was what I started on, when I was about 6. Bar cookies and drop cookies first, then cut cookies. Custard and quiche are "oogy" to a lot of kids.

[roozle.livejournal.com]

How old are the kids? Some of these things are REALLY practical but maybe too far away from what they want to make for themselves and their friends.

Pizza, for example, might be fun. Whereas meatloaf just doesn't sound as fun.

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

The ability to make a pan sauce is damned useful. Does that fit in anywhere? Maybe with the roasted chicken?

[missionista.livejournal.com]

THis seems really meat intensive. Is there a way to bring more veg. into the course? It would be really cool to introduce them to veg. in such a way that they begin to like what they haven't enjoyed before.

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

You might consider doing a little bit of ethnicity with various kinds of food. Quiche is French in origin, Stiry Fry comes from various parts of Asia. Etc. Incorporate a bit of that food's cultural significance and history as you are teaching it. Roast chicken was easy because of open hearths and long cook times and flexibility of the age and quality of the poultry etc....

I would second Roozle's point about picking things that kids will actually WANT to make for themselves and their friends. Pizza, spagetti and meatballs, mac & cheese, cookies, pocket sandwiches.turnovers.

[quezz.livejournal.com]

I think the menu for this course is not so "kid-specific" as has been said.

I'd do chopped veggie pizza instead of stir fry to learn chopping skills, or do raw veggies and teach them to make dip.

I'd NOT make a roux with children. Too easy to burn.

How to boil eggs, to boil rice, make bread, and bake cookies I'd definitely do. If you can do chocolate molds for candy or something like that, it would be cool.

Your course looks like an ADULT basic cooking course -- a kids' home-ec course would not be so complicated.

[dbang.livejournal.com]

I second what others have said about making the menu appealing to kid palates. Also, what about bread? I don't see either yeast-risen or quick breads. You could get the yeast dough in pizza, and make muffins for quick breads. (Toss in some chopped up apples or other fruit for more knife practice)

(Also the curriculum developer in me is thinking: What does it mean that she's going to cover "Browning meat and onions, leading to chilli, spaghetti sauce,and lasagna"? Does that means she's going to give them hands-on experience browning the meat, and then a lecture about how that can be used for other things? Which skills are covered verbally vs. which are hands on? Hands on exercises invariably take 3-4 times longer than you, the experienced one, think they "should", and it seems ambitious to plan to walk them through ALL the skills in making lasagna in 1.5 hours.)

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Teach them how to read a recipe -- read it all the way through once, then read it again as you go, so you don't get the end of the line syndrome (where the line continues and has a different context or meaning, such as:

Brown the meat
only when the sauce is finished
)

And so they'll know if they have to do anything quickly, or make sure they have boiling water, or don't get to the end of the recipe where it says "bake in a 400 degree preheated oven".

Also teach them how to change a recipe -- double or halve it -- and have them write next to the recipe (or on a different piece of paper) the proper ingredients instead of doing the math "as they go".

A conversion thingy is useful, 16 tbsp in a cup has always been one of the more useful pieces of information I know.

That way, you can teach them that if they don't like so much garlic or want more chocolate, they can play with the recipe.

Have the girls bring in some recipes from the internet that they would like to make -- then spend some time in the 8th or 9th week going through them and showing them why or why not that recipe would be practical (ie, rolled cookies take a long time, nobody wants to stand that long. This recipe states you need a double-boiler and we don't have that).

Also, have them write a short paragraph or 2 about their favorite and least-favorite food and why that is. Teach them that texture can be as important as flavor. Or maybe that's a good icebreaker.

[koshmom.livejournal.com]

how about Teaching them how to time things so all dishes are finished cooking at the same time (so if you eat dinner, you don't eat the veggies, then 2 hours later: the meat, etc.)

Baking potatoes (poke them with a fork so they don't explode)

Microwave stuff (poke these sorts of items so they don't explode, include reheating frozen stuff...)

Teaching them what to do with leftovers: for instance, baked potatoes make great homefries the next morning. Chinese food goes great with scrambled eggs the next day. etc.

making balanced meals..all the food groups (veggies/carbs/meat/fruits/etc)

[aliza250.livejournal.com]

Making biscuits, and then modifying the basic recipe to make cinnamon rolls would be a lot more useful to kids than making bread, though bread has the coolness factor.

I agree with all the comments about how meat-centric this outline is. How about a baked butternut squash (put cinnamon and brown sugar on it and the kids will love it even if it's less healthy.)? Where's the information about how to cook basic vegetables for a plain side dish?

And do remember that a lot of middle-school kids will have NEVER cooked before. How long do veggies and meats stay fresh after you buy them? How many onions do you have to buy to get a cup of chopped? What are the spices beyond salt and pepper?