Making The Art Of Cooking Mainstream.

 Changing perceptions, changing curriculums.

This will give my age away but there, I'll say it; when I was in school it was mandatory to take a Home-Economics class. In other words learning how to manage a household and more importantly, how to cook.

At the time it seemed a bit sexist assuming that we girls had to grow up to take care of house and home regardless of what profession we would learn. Granted, seeing that I was in an all girls school there was no way of knowing whether the boys school did the same. Somehow I doubt it!

We learnt many things but what I remember the most was how to throw together ingredients in order to make meals. Easy stuff.  My mum had already shown me how to cook by letting me watch her cook and of course I was always a lover of food and thus had taken the effort to take out cookbooks from the local library. 

This skill, absorbed from home and learnt partly at school, has come in handy throughout my adult life. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that it was the best skill learnt only equaled by the ability to handle money. How to budget it, how to save it and how to earn it. Contrary to current popular belief, money doesn't come from those little square cards in our wallets.

The climate; we all have seen those mountains of used packaging being pushed around in a rubbish dump. Have you ever wondered how much of it is purely from food packaging, ie, take-a-ways, convenience and processed food? All of it uses up a lot of packaging, not to mention the oodles of plastic everything is wrapped in.

Imagine if everyone knows how to cook a basic meal and thus wouldn't have to pay someone else to cook for them, be it take-a-away or supermarket microwave food? If we learnt to keep an adequate supply of food at home. Onions, rice, pastas, potatoes, tomatoes, flour, sugar and fruit, to name but a few. Not saying that everyone will cook for themselves, but at least the main reason for buying those packaging intensive take-a-away's will be sorted. Money could be saved and family meals around the table had.

Schools should make Home Economics a main subject which everyone has to take. Perhaps it shouldn't be taught by strict teachers but rather by ordinary mothers or grandmothers who can convey the fun and joy of throwing together a nice meal using what one has at home, thereby reducing food waste, increasing personal satisfaction and obviously reducing packaging and thus helping to stop climate change.

Biggi