Search This Blog

Friday 23 May 2008

Food Technology: Cooking but not as we know it

Two minutes before he's due to leave for school, Boy announces "OhmygodI'mmakingcornishpasties!!!!!" As I am engaged in the delightful morning task of scooping out kitten shite from the litter tray, I pay zero attention. But it's true and it's a DRAMA. Boy is indeed making Cornish pasties for Food Technology (where the children learn all the accoutrements of an egg, except how to actually cook it) and I have to provide a raft of ingredients. "But it's ok because today we're just making the pastry". There is a pause. "What's in pastry?"
Apparently the business of making Cornish pasties is so complicated, they have to do it in two parts.

I clearly remember what I first made in Domestic Science. Scrambled eggs on toast. It was a horrible experience because my mother made her own wholemeal bread which needed an hour in a nuclear reactor to toast. Yes my mother's cooking is at least partly responsible for my lifelong good health, but who gives a shit when you're the only one in class who hasn't bought plastic white bread?

The next thing I made was sausage rolls, and again, mum didn't just give me a lump of pink sausagemeat. She mashed loads of garlic and herbs into it. Alas, I was cooking next to a fat frizzy girl with a speech impediment whose mother would give her a sweet allowance every day and who MY mother routinely described with some accuracy as "A Big Fat Heap". Frizzy girl stood next to me in cooking and started shrieking, "Eurghhh! Garlic! I hate garlic!" etc. Had I been more confident I might have asked if her antipathy meant she was a vampire, but then again, vampires were usually thin and sexy, and not lumpen and frizzy with BO. But then again I was only nine.

My point being that I've always gone out of my way to provide the right ingredients for Boy's food technology. And been extravagant in my praise. So about five minutes ago he arrived home with his pasty all wrapped up. I had a nibble and it was really good!

In fact I've just finished it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello, I found your blog via a comment you left on the F word.

My first Home Economics project was tea and cheese on toast. This was fine, and I stumbled through the classes until a couple of months later when we had to make apple meringue pie. Burnt my apples. Forgot to remove egg yolk before whisking. Ended up with burnt apples topped with scrambled eggs.

Then my tupperware opened in my bag on the way home. Not my finest hour.

Jane said...

Ah the horror of Home Economics! That girl I mention who squealed with horror at my garlicky sausagemeat. I also had the misfortune to sit next to her on a school trip to Arundel Castle. Mum had packed me a really wholesome lunch, while I gazed enviously at this girl's lunch which consisted of a packet of Tuc biscuits and two penguin biscuits (she says censoriously).