uk1

Graduates scramble to learn cooking for dummies

stut

Hmm.

OK, it's one thing that young people aren't learning to cook. And I know young people whose parents view it as offensive that they want to learn to cook ("but they can always come to us for food!")

But I'm more concerned about the dying art of journalism, replaced by gossip, parroted press releases and thinly veiled adverts posing as stories...

gooselee

Mass media long ago turned the corner from delivering information to audiences to delivering eyeballs to advertisers.

stut

To be fair, this one struck me more as a journalist who fancied a freebie cookery course...

BamaVol

My kids all learned how to cook in my kitchen. All of them worked in restaurants at times. One is still a professional cook and one manages a restaurant. I suppose with fewer parents cooking at home, it's easier to graduate without learning the basics. My mother was a terrible cook but it was still possible to learn what I needed to know by watching what went on in her kitchen (and working on improvement from there).

As far as journalism is concerned, I've given up. Most "news" is a combination of fluff, gossip and the media looking down its collecitve nose at the rest of us. I ignore the vast majority of it and read a local paper for local stories that matter in my life. The rest is crap I can live without.

uk1

Journalism aside .....

I am suprised that having a bustling town close by we have not had a fishmonger for as long as I can remember ... and supermarkets rarely are able to sell "fresh fish". In our other home we overlook the water and one of the UK's main fishing ports ... but you cannot buy any good fresh fish close by.

We do better in supermakets with fresh meat even though I miss the family butchers. Most family butchers seem to be struggling except those that specilaise in premium priced products.

The problem is that too few now learn to cook. They think that reheating is cooking. They think that fine home dining is adding a garnish to their micro-waveable food. So what would they do with fresh fish .... or any meat that is still red and not shaped like a patty?

What is even sadder is that those that really need to learn to cook never seem really interested. Those bringing up young families on limited budgets could improve their eating and their health with just some basic cooking skills. Why doesn't the government pay the very small costs of a national scheme for cookery classes for all using schools over weekends and school holidays and offer them for free? How much would it cost? If incomes are so limited for many this would be a way of helping them become healthier and stretch their budgets. A way of "increasing income" or "stretching benefits" And what would it do to social cohesion if families sat down again to a meal that mum or dad cooked as in the past? Most kids have now never smelled a vat of vegetable soup bubbling away in the kitchen (no one will notice if you ladle out ac taster to see if it needs any more salt added ..... ) or the smell of a fresh loaf. And it is all really cheap and shows "love"

It's a shame that so many kids leave school unable to cook. I'd prefer them to leave shcool having learned to cook rather than have it instilled in them that one day they are going to be discovered and be a very famous star and very rich.

devdas

Or they have just ended up in lifestyles without the time and/or access to cook?

While you may enjoy cooking, a lot of people do not, and taking time out of an already busy day (or week) to cook isn't a good choice for many people until they are forced to do so.

uk1

My post wasn't about my cooking but was about basic cooking generally to eat and survive and about the lack of the most basic skills across society.

It wasn't just about recreational cooking for enjoyment at an advanced level. It touches on obesity and the breakdown of familes and the lack of affordability for basic eating. I'm suprised to think that some feel it healthy that we have new generations that are almost unable to make tea or boil an egg or make toast ... or even how to open a tin of baked beans to put on it. I am talking about where they cannot eat healthily because they have not been forced to learn the most basic of food preperation either at school or by their parents who couldn't teach them because they couldn't do the basics either. To me this is more than liefestyle choices as you suggest. It is about the basics of life. For hundreds of thousands of years all could cook. Every adult passed these skills on to their children. To learn to hunt, harvest and cook. If they did not learn all three of those skills they would die. We have in less than a hundred years or so lost two out of the three. I think the last one is therefore a very important one.

I'm sorry - you are completely right ..... I should have expressed it clearer.



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BamaVol

We had cooking classes in junior high school back in my day (grades 7/8/9). Unfortunately they were restricted to girls. What a shame this wasn't opened to all and continued.

uk1

In my school the girls got cooking and the boys had a choice between woodwork or metalwork. I was told I would do woodwork. So I spent two years learning how to make a toilet roll holder for mummy and the girls made food that would then eat. I was then expelled.

It wasn't bleedin' fair. Or fare.

tentseller

Not only this generation doesn't know how to cook., they also do not know which end is the handle on a screwdriver, hammer and knife.

uk1

Or knife or and knife?

You are right .. none of them have three hands. Disgraceful.

gfunkdave

I guess I was fortunate - my junior high school blended them all together into a "life skills sequence" or something like that. If you chose that class, you did 8 weeks each of woodworking, home economics (sewing and cooking), typing, and something else that I forget at the moment...though I don't remember anything about how to use a sewing machine.

There was also a class I took in 8th grade called "food for fitness," taught by the home ec teacher, where we learned basic nutrition and how to cook healthily.

CMK10

I'd learned simple things growing up. Pasta, eggs, french toast etc. The rest I was able to learn when I got my first apartment mainly by trial and error. So much of it is common sense though (don't burn your food but don't undercook it, seasoning is good etc.)

Now that it's 2015, all you have to do is Google "how do I cook x?" anyway so I don't think I need to worry much about these graduates.

cubbie

When I was in junior high school (6th/7th/8th grades) in the US, in the mid 1970s, we girls weren't taught cooking in "home ec", just sewing. (They still called it "home ec" even though we didn't learn a single thing about home economics--other than, I suppose, that it was implied that it's cheaper to know how to sew than not to know.) I assume this was because the costs were much lower for sewing. The school already owned half a dozen sewing machines, and we had to provide all our own fabric, patterns, thread, and other supplies. I can't imagine the school having the budget for any food for cooking classes, so we probably would have had to bring in food supplies, but I don't think the school had any stoves or refrigerators or cooking classroom by then.

The boys took "shop", which by then was just woodworking, no metal work. In some sort of short-lived exchange program, we girls got to take shop for about two weeks, during which I drill pressed, sanded, and waxed a nice wood candleholder for my parents. I wonder what the boys sewed.

My cooking education came from my mom. My education in power tools and basic electrical repairs and how to change a car tire came from my dad.