Domestic science...

Did you do it at school?

I was good at the cookery part but rubbish at sewing!

I did. They don't do it now like they used to. (They may do again, I keep forgetting that my daughter left school left 13 years ago so it could all have changed back again).
When my daughter did cookery, she was never shown how to do anything or even told what to cook, she had to chhose a type of person to cook for. She chose the elderly, one week she cooked breakfast, another lunch then dinner.
She only did cooking in school for a couple of terms.
We were shown how to iron shirts, blouses & trousers.
Then made an apron before we were even allowed in the kitchen.
Tea must be made with boiling water, (possibly why I hate tea out as the water generally isn't boiling) coffee just under boiling.
Then I think that we made a packet mix of buns, those with the green & red bits on them, were they tough glase cherries?
I loved cookery classes.
We didn't do any more sewing unfortunately, I would love to be able to sew things, I keep looking on ebay for sewing machines going cheap locally but I think that so many people are now going back to making their own.
I think that schools should teach kids budgeting, meal planning etc. Not everyone has parents who can teach them things like that.

Aha - hermum and I are a similar age, and had the same DS at school - sew an apron and only then were we let loose in the kitchen. I learnt so much cookery at school, but I was absolutely hopeless at sewing. Funny, because I'm a very good - and very patient - knitter. Girls in my class were making hooded zipped bomber jackets while I was still sweating over an A-line skirt. Usually the teacher ended up finishing my things for me, but I never wore anything I made - too many awful memories associated with them!

Hi,

We didn't do the sewing and homemaking aspect of domestic science but we did do "home economics" which was pretty much cooking with a bit of financial management thrown in. Cookery was actually pretty good we made normal stuff like cheese and potato pie and cakes to more strenuous stuff like profiteroles and we even made cheese. I learned to use a sewing machine in art class though so that was useful. Pupils that were expected to get C or above in any GCSE's weren't allowed to take cookery GCSE though as it was "a waste of talent". Our schools has a good basis in cookery though, I know I did it from infant school as my mum used to come in and show us how to make things. We made rock buns when we were about 5 and moved on from there.

My first lesson in cookery was making a Blancmange from a packet, teacher must of been terrifed of 30 odd 11 yr olds boiling a pint of milk at the same time and then we had to decorate it with a glace cherry and got marked out of ten. Even more odd looking back we spent the lesson the week before writing out the ingredients and the method of cooking Good lord must of wrote 1 pint of milk 1 packet of blancmange two table spoons of sugar and 1 cherry and the daft part thinking of it now the instuctions are on the packets

Sounds a bit like our home ec lessons dolly blue, in 3 half years (did needlework the other half) we made sandwiches, fairy cakes, 1 starter, 1 main course and 1 pudding! Didn't help that the home ec teacher was completely obsesve about her kitchen being clinically clean and on the rare occasions we made anything we had to spend at least half the lesson cleaning up afterwards! I swear it was so clean you coulod have operated in there!

In my cookery exam I made mince beef cobbler but left the mince at home so bodged it. Still got an O Level grade B though so god knows who tasted it! lol

life_in_termoil wrote:In my cookery exam I made mince beef cobbler but left the mince at home so bodged it. Still got an O Level grade B though so god knows who tasted it! lol

I loved cobbler, I think that was something that we made in school.
How did you manage to bodge together a mince beef cobbler, without the mince?
I bet you went hot & sweaty when you opened your tin to realise that the main ingredient was still at home.

I did it at school, and hated it. My cookery teacher told me she oitied the man who eventually married me, if anyone should ever be so silly to do so :-( Once married, we had wonderful neighbours our age, and we did a Saturday night get together every Saturday taking it in turns to host, and I found I really loved cooking and have done since :-)
Anne x

ours was called Home Economics.