Teaching a Cooking Lesson

[Barbara L]

There are a lot of good ideas here. I was thinking you might want to start with something basic but versatile, like a tomato based meat sauce, using ground beef. There are so many directions you can go from there. You can show how you can add certain herbs and spices (and sometimes vegetables) and serve it with pasta, potatoes, rice, in a wrap, in a salad, chili, soup, casserole etc.

Barbara

[bethzaring]

what about teaching them to make pizza? You could teach the basics of bread making (no knead bread?), sauce making, creative toppings??

[Adillo303]

I dunno, maybe this is crazy, I am not a chef or teacher, but how about the first day, you tale a poll of what a good meal would be. Discuss it among the class to resolve the differences and come up with a menu.

Next class you research (either book or internet) for recipies.

Next break the recipies down into a shopping list. (Homeowrk - go to a grocery store and get prices) Alos have them look at differences in grades of meat, and other components.

Extra credit set a budget to make it more real.

If the class is practical in nature then you can go into actual prep.

Homework, what components require careful handling storeage ame prep. Cover kitchen cleanlieness and safe food handling.

Eat the meal and have an evaluation session.

Depending on time and number of classes - Setup and stocking of pantry staples.

Maybe another meal.

HTH

AC

[bethzaring]

I think there is only one class.

[VeraBlue]

Originally Posted by expatgirl

Gee, VeraBlue, I sure wished that you had been my home ec teacher........ours taught us zip in 1968 and I mean zip.........we spent most of the semester taking notes....I think we learned to make hot cocoa and a few cookies and one stupid dress...that was it

I wanted to be a home ec teacher....till I saw that it was being cut from budgets faster than a tick on dog's ear.

[Chausiubao]

Each college dorm has a set of resident assistants, they're there to take care of the students and make sure they don't do anything TOO bad too themselves. They're also in charge of events, and this cooking lesson is one of the events that they were thinking of putting on.

So it is a one time thing.

The students also all come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and since this isn't a mandatory thing, theres no way to predict the variety of backgrounds or experience levels. So it'll be a little difficult to design a lesson for any one group.

On the bright side, I'll probably have about two hours or maybe even more for the single lesson, so there is room for some expansion of whatever topic I decide to cover.

VeraBlue, those are some wonderful suggestions, and I will be sure to implement as many as I can!

Auntdot, those rules sound very good too, I'll have to think of those things when I'm putting this together.

Bethzaring, I don't think I have enough time to proof any dough, so pizza might be a little taxing. Maybe a quickbread though.

I'm relatively certain I'll go with those two suggestions, an ordered lecture and a simple dish with many concepts thrown in.

Thanks for all the ideas!

[expatgirl]

CB, please write the recipes down for them and save them on your computer in case they need a copy in the future