Tuesday 17 February 2015

Food Education

When I was at school, cooking ('domestic science') was definitely for girls. Us lads didn't get a look-in, it was woodwork and metalwork for us chaps. And that was okay until I left home to go to Uni, and had to fend for myself, foodwise. I'd never been encouraged to cook at home, although I could manage things like frying an egg, making beans on toast etc. Remember, this was the olden days, the 1970s, when access to information was nowhere near as splendid and easy as it is now. The interwebz did not yet exist, and knowledge was acquired from school or the public library (the cook-book industry was nowhere near as big as it is now, in fact I don't think my mother owned a single cookery book). So I would phone my mother in a panic to find out how to make Yorkshire pudding, for instance.

I mention all this because last week, a new GCSE curriculum was announced in the UK for cooking and nutrition. It will take effect from September 2015, and the contents of it are, frankly, amazing. I would quite like to do the course myself!