A common question when you meet someone is what type of work they do. When you say something like "teacher," you are typically rewarded with a light of recognition on the other person's face. "Ahh," they will say, "what grade? What do you teach?" Being a Family and Consumer Science (FACS) teacher means that when I answer that question, I'm met with "Uh-huh...what exactly is that?" I then have to explain that I'm licensed teach a myriad of subjects, ranging from foods/cooking classes, to interior design, to clothing construction, to child development, to personal finance. What I teach from year to year all depends on what students register for when they sign up for their courses. Some of our classes come and go, but let's be real...kids are always going to want to take a class where they can eat.
Being a teacher sounds great, right? You get your summers "off," you don't have to work on holidays, you get to hang out with kids all day and feel like you're making a difference.
Being a foods teacher is...chaos. At all times. I wish I was exaggerating.
One of the first things I do when I decide on a dish I want to try making with my students is find a recipe that I think will be successful and re-write it in "teenager language." I've actually gotten pretty good at this and can type up recipes to send off to the printer or post on our learning management system quite quickly. Next comes making the grocery lists (1 recipe times "x" amount of classes times 6 lab groups per class period...this is known as foods-teacher-math), grocery shopping for carts full of ingredients and then getting said ingredients into the building with a point of entry nowhere near my classroom...and that's just the set-up.
When lab day arrives (I typically do between 1 and 3 labs per week), I will be supervising up to 36 high school students who typically don't like to read through recipes and are using equipment like stoves, griddles, sharp knives, blenders and expensive mixers...all while trying to make sure they, you know, actually LEARN something in the process. Did I mention I have 52 minutes per class period to get this done?
Think you could do it? It's not for the faint of heart (or for people who don't like to sweat profusely at work). After 16 years, I've honed my crowd control tactics and realized that I can't hope for everything to go perfectly on lab days, but I can hope that I pass on SOMETHING that will be useful.
One thing I have noticed over the years is that your average high school student is perfectly content to make a recipe (mostly) as written, plate it up and then sit down and eat...without ever trying the food they are making during the process. Early on in the semester, I talk about the importance of actually TASTING your food as you go, not only so that you can learn how different things taste and what flavors "go" together, but also so that if you taste it and it's not good, you can figure out how to fix it. In the melee of lab days I find myself shouting things like this:
"TASTE your food please, and if it's not awesome, figure out how you can adjust it to make it awesome! Too sweet, add some acid, too bland, add some salt! Let's make food we actually want to eat!" As the semester wears on, I find myself simply yelling, "Taste and adjust, taste and adjust!" because they'll know what I mean.
You might think a foods teacher has no desire to cook when they get home each night (I'm sure some don't), but that's not me. At home, I don't have to worry about whether or not students will like the recipe I've chosen, because unlike my students my family is stuck with me :) and I've turned them into adventurous eaters by making things they might not like. We're real big on the "no thank you" bite at our dinner table: if my kids try the food and legitimately don't like it, they can always have a peanut butter sandwich. However the rule is they have to give it a shot. I also do not repeat recipes more than twice a month, at most. My kids have liked dishes I never thought they would, like Korean Beef Bowls, Black Bean Burgers and pasta dishes with eggplant and capers.
Another passion of mine is entertaining. Events we host annually at our house are Thanksgiving, Mother's Day brunch and birthday parties for our three kids. These gatherings have ranged in size from about 15 people to as many as 25 family members. We also love to host gatherings with our friends, typically dinners that include everyone bringing their kids to play together. These can get pretty wild as we usually have about 8 kids running around ranging in age from 2 to 8 years old. I personally love these gatherings because our friends are game to try anything, and it's an awesome opportunity for me to try new recipes and get instant feedback.
My goal for this blog is to marry my two worlds by doing the following: Help introduce you to new recipes that might normally intimidate you or that you're not sure you'll like, and anticipate what issues you *might* run into and write you up some helpful tips to reference. I also aim to give some advice for entertaining, if that is something you'd like to dabble in but aren't sure where to start.
Happy tasting :)
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