Until recently, I was intimidated by eggplant. I have never cooked a fresh artichoke. I don't like Victor watching me in the kitchen, because he was a real chef and I'm afraid he'll point out that I'm incompetent.
I just read this article: Cooking 101: Add 1 Cup of Simplicity. I feel so smug. Not only did I go 5-for-5 on the cooking quiz, I have never started a fire by greasing the outside bottom of a pan.
The article mentions home ec in junior high as one place where people do learn basic cooking skills. Thinking back to when I was a kid, seventh grade home ec wasn't where I learned the basics. We cooked in grade school. For an "international dinner" in first grade we made yakitori, in second grade we had a class garden and we made a big lunch to eat the harvest. (I ate broccoli, because that was "my" plant...I had taken the seedlings home to water them over spring break. Interestingly enough, I wouldn't eat broccoli again until I was 18.)
(Of course I also saw my mom and my grandmothers cook, but the fact that this doesn't happen so much now is a point of the article.)
In a seemingly unrelated topic, yesterday Victor and I were discussing science and how it's taught (actually it started with talking about the TGN1412 trial). I hated "science" as a subject in school, and I maintain that's because nobody ever related the stuff that I did like...like cooking...to science. I think teachers should incorporate better. A class garden (which we all loved...what kid wouldn't rather be outside playing in dirt than sitting at a desk?) could be biology, home ec, chemistry, even algebra.
It's probably harder to measure those results on a standardized test, though.
Posted by Nic at March 18, 2006 08:40 AM | TrackBack