Rant warning! Are we becoming a nation of bone idle wastrels.

I am a retired teacher of Home Economics, which then became Food Technology. I taught in the seventies and eighties and it was the only subject taught in schools which included details of most of the other subjects taught, i.e. Maths, English, Geography, History, Science, I.T., etc. I was able to teach pupils how to cook from basic ingredients, not from frozen pastry and such and they learned skills to be used and adapted when preparing meals. After having my children I returned part time and the emphasis for staff in practical lessons, was on keeping an eye on the clock and for a typical lesson of an hour and ten minutes time was needed to be allowed for preparation, cooking, washing up and clearing away, leaving very little time for the appreciation of method, skills and presentation of the finished dish. Food in the fast lane. So sad.

Hands up everyone who doesn't use frozen peas!

Crozziefan23, how true and how sad as well. DH who s a retired secondary school head has just been saying the same thing about the demise of practical subjects. Eldest son was once required to bring a tin of mince as part of a lasagne recipe. We made that part of the dish from scratch and measured it into an empty tin! DD told me of a friend whose idea of home cooked chilli con carne was minced beef with two jars of expensive chilli con carne sauce stirred in. Sweet and nasty was the verdict ! Ironic that there are more cooking programmes on TV than ever before and yet so many people in their 20s and 30s cannot manage basic meals, unless they were taught at home.

I am also a retired Food Tech teacher and we had to dream up all sorts of short cuts to enable the students to complete a practical lesson in one hour.

This would include setting up the equipment for them so they could get stuck in as soon as they had washed their hands. I used to joke that I'd have their mums and dads on my case if they thought they could get away with that at home.

We also used to get them to chop onions and dice carrots etc., at home as their set homework which could also save time. Not all parents approved of this but we were up against the clock all the time.

In year 9 the food module covered one pot meals which could be prepared and cooked in 45 mins., to allow time for clearing up. Would you believe it, we had complaints from some parents about the ingredients required for dishes like Sweet and Sour Chicken, Chilli-con-Carne, Pork Stroganoff etc.
I'd like a pound for every time I heard, 'We don't eat that stuff so we're not buying it!'

They don't make it easy for food teachers these days.

I used to make chilli con carni "from scratch" in the 70s, but I think I used ready cooked red kidney beans out of a tin.

Maybe the parents just ate traditional British meat and two veg meals merlot. Shock horror!

Oh dear!! Guilty guilty guilty. Grated cheese, lettuce, fruit anything going.But no waste just enough for the two of us so i dont eat more than I should and I love the crustless bread. Very light and I feel virtuous on the calories.

I know what you mean, jingl but we obviously allowed meals to be modified to suit all tastes.

Traditional British meals actually take longer to cook. Shepherd's pie could not be done in one hour unless the meat was tinned.

We covered things like macaroni cheese in yr 7 so obviously wanted to encourage the older students to be more adventurous. The keen ones were a joy to teach because they would give up their lunch hour to complete a dish and give it some finishing touches of their own.

When I did cookery at school we had two hours which meant we could easily cope with stews, pies and simple roasts.

When I was at school we never had to take any ingredients in for our Domestic Science lessons, as they were called back in the '60s. The system at our school - and I've never once come across another school that did this - was that the school provided all the ingredients and parents received a bill at the end of each term to cover the costs. I can see that this could present administrative problems, that there would always be people who didn't pay up and so on, but it completely did away with the problem of expecting parents to buy, for example, a whole jar of ground nutmeg just for one recipe if that wasn't a regular store cupboard ingredient in their home.

I don't recall my mum having to send me to school in the 1950s with the mutton needed for a horrible Irish stew which even the dog wouldn't eat when I got it home. We had to buy an enamel pie dish and a ration-conscious cookery book called the Dundee Cook Book with recipes for things like cheese potatoes - peel, boil and mash spuds, add cheese and brown in oven. Even I couldn't get that wrong.

We didn't expect parents to buy ingredients like dried herbs and spices. They were provided by the school. We also provided things like Soy sauce, tomato puree, baking powder etc.

The school would also provide ingredients for the kids whose parents couldn't afford to pay for them and we would also take in produce from our own gardens if appropriate.

Sometimes it could be a rewarding subject to teach but I wouldn't want to be starting down that route now.

indinana my school provided ingredients too, but I think we had to pay cash at each lesson, based on the cost of the ingredients.
The fat used for pastry and cakes was a sort of white vegetable fat which my mother viewed with disdain, so most of my creations were put out for the birds.

The packaging - oceans of plastic and foil, vs. waste from fresh fruit = compost. Does this cross the mind of the time-poor shoppers?
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My concern is very basic . I too taught domestic science/home ec/food tech, from the late sixties through to the mid nineties and therefore through all the government changes. I see the problems today as a lack of education. I strongly believe that education should be for life as well as your future career/job hand. As far a the teaching of sensible nutrition goes I think we let our children down. Well that's how it seems from reports in the media re obesity. I think a return to homecraft skills and nutrition theory are long overdue.

My concern is very basic . I too taught domestic science/home ec/food tech, from the late sixties through to the mid nineties and therefore through all the government changes. I see the problems today as a lack of education. I strongly believe that education should be for life as well as your future career/job hand. As far a the teaching of sensible nutrition goes I think we let our children down. Well that's how it seems from reports in the media re obesity. I think a return to homecraft skills and nutrition theory are long overdue.

We're mixing two issues here, not that they're unrelated.

The OP referred to ready-chopped fruit & veg and prepared foods which are obviously more expensive. Buying such products is not restricted to young people who haven't been taught domestic science.

Most members on GN seem to be quite accomplished and adventurous cooks and very knowledgeable about nutrition, like to think I'm one, and many of us have no hesitation in paying for the convenience of prepared foods as and when needed.

Pamish on the ecology front - one could argue how heavier the carbon emissions are with transporting all those tons of peel, pips, pith, crusts, etc.

I wonder how much of a whole pineapple is actually eaten

I always have fresh fruit for breakfast. A chopped up (by me) pineapple kept in the fridge lasts the best part of a week. The little packs that can be bought are very handy when away from home but very expensive to use all the time. The thing I have most trouble with is the dreaded swede. If I could find a ready-chopped one, fresh or frozen, in our local shops I would buy it. (I know there has recently been a thread on mastering the swede).

I think that I've spotted swede in those packs of ready-chopped soup vegetables in supermarkets, usually frozen, but there might be fresh ones as well. However, I would rather do without swedes altogether!

Butternut squash ready chopped is money well spent.

The only ready-chopped I buy is butternut squash (sometimes with sweet potato mixed in there too) - mainly cos I HATE cutting up a butternut squash!
I do also like the twinpacks of lettuce you can buy in Morrisons - each one is just the right size portion, with a little sliced cucumber and a sprinkling of mustard and cress to be served with stuffed mushrooms. Yummy!

That's capitalism for you! Businesses will exploit every opportunity to make money and busy mums and dads will buy products to save time. Young families work hard, provide their kids with every opportunity their lives are like whirl winds. It is not laziness but the consequence of the world we now live in. On one level they appear to have it all, but at what cost.

That's capitalism for you! Businesses will exploit every opportunity to make money and busy mums and dads will buy products to save time. Young families work hard, provide their kids with every opportunity their lives are like whirl winds. It is not laziness but the consequence of the world we now live in. On one level they appear to have it all, but at what cost.

That's capitalism for you! Businesses will exploit every opportunity to make money and busy mums and dads will buy products to save time. Young families work hard, provide their kids with every opportunity their lives are like whirl winds. It is not laziness but the consequence of the world we now live in. On one level they appear to have it all, but at what cost.

That's capitalism for you! Businesses will exploit every opportunity to make money and busy mums and dads will buy products to save time. Young families work hard, provide their kids with every opportunity their lives are like whirl winds. It is not laziness but the consequence of the world we now live in. On one level they appear to have it all, but at what cost.