Ready-Prepared?

Let me say at the outset, that I am not a trained cook or even an enthusiastic cook.  I do, however, cook.   My enthusiasm is saved for baking and only comes to the fore when I am in the right mood, exploring a theme, or have nothing better to do.

Almost 45 years of marriage and three children have diminished the fun of getting three meals a day together.    I cook all our meals from scratch, not because I am a saint, but simply because they taste better, the textures are as they should be and, most importantly, I know what has gone into them.

Ready meals, ready-prepared foods, no matter how high class the shop, or fancy the packaging, are made to be profitable in a highly competitive market.    They contain additives, to extend the shelf life and lower the cost. 

When I bake, I use butter, sugar, flour and so on, basic ingredients, I do not use hydrogenated oils or emulsifiers, or palm oil.

I can feel myself going way off tack here.  Focus, Elaine!

The point is, I can cook and I do cook.    I know how to cook.   The basics I learned from my mother, the rest I learned as I went along through life.   

These days there seem to be a lot of people who haven't been educated to identify good food, and even if they have, they don't feel they have the time to cook - or, more probably, don't know how to cook.   

I understand that it is much more difficult, for people on their own, to get motivated to cook a decent meal each day.   When all my children had either moved out, or were away at university, my husband was away working abroad, I had to do the same.    I could quite happily have settled for a slice of (homemade) bread and a piece of cheese, with an apple for pudding...actually, I still could. 

It is the don't know how to group which concerns me the most.     Children are growing up in homes where takeaways and ready meals, oven chips and cheap burgers or pizzas are the norm.  Vegetables and fruit are a mystery to them.

This is certainly true of some of the children in my daughter's class.   She recently moved schools, and has begun teaching in a very low income/deprived part of Lincolnshire.   The children in her class are the new intakes, the very youngest ones in the school.    She was determined to introduce them to good food, teach them some of the basics of cooking and baking - these are children of just 5 years of age.

Of course, these days, this involves a lot of permission forms, risk assessments, and so on.    Then she set about her first lesson, a very gentle introduction which she hoped would get the children's interest, chocolate biscuits.    Not necessarily healthy, but definitely designed to make them happy.

The children had a wonderful time, the biscuits turned out brilliantly, they learned a lot about measuring and mixing, baking and waiting.    The most interesting thing to me, though, was the reaction of her teaching assistant.    She got into a blind panic.    She can't cook, can't bake.      My daughter is 40 years old, her teaching assistant is heading towards 50 years of age, married and has had a family of her own.

The second lesson was vegetable soup.   This meant that they had to peel vegetables and help to cut them up - terrifying thought - but the soup was made and some of the children learned, for the first time, that onions make you cry.   Many of them had never seen a vegetable being prepared, ever.   Again, lots of teaching opportunities.      The children all tried the soup and, apart from one or two, they LOVED it.   It was something new to them.

Remember, these children are from very low income households, often with other problems going on in the background.    They are country children but most didn't know where vegetables came from.      These lessons have become the highlight of the week for them.

We can only hope the lessons and skills they are learning will be lodged in their memory banks and serve them well later in life.
 
You never know, even the teaching assistant may one day find that she is able to cook a meal.



ps  I have to smile, my daughter doesn't cook at home.   She has a husband to do that!