The Demise of Home Ec - Part 2
Who'd have thought I'd have struck such a nerve, revisiting Home Ec? Seems a lot of folks also enjoyed their time in that class. I say "folks" because in my last post, I neglected to mention that young men also took the class - called "Single Living". Interesting that, in the early '70s, before women's lib caught on, girls taking the class were being prepared to be wives and mothers...Guys taking it were being prepared to be independent. Hmmm...
Anyway, the other part of the class was cooking and baking. Now, I'm not talking about the cuisine we see on the Food Network. I'm talking basic stuff, like measuring ingredients, reading a cookbook, easy foods....Oh, oh, here comes that darn Math and the need to follow directions again. (See previous home ec post) With all that knowledge imparted, we were ready to go...cranking out pancakes, french toast, scrambled eggs, like it was our job.
The best part of this class was that we got to eat our creations --that, plus the fact that there was no style show! (Also see previous home ec post). I wouldn't go so far as to say that students who weren't in our class were jealous, but the aromas, wafting through the school halls, had to be tough to ignore.
After we mastered the breakfast portion, we moved on to more complex dishes - like chocolate chip cookies, from scratch, tuna salad and puff pastry. I remember these dishes because I probably haven't made chocolate chip cookies, from scratch SINCE, and my future husband was the "guinea pig" when I prepared the tuna puffs on my own.
I would never say that home ec made me a better cook, but again, my fellow chefs and I had a lot of laughs and probably did glean some information from that class. Who knows? Maybe the tuna puffs played a role in my nabbing that "guinea pig" of many years ago. Nah, they weren't THAT good. But going on 42 years of eating my cooking and he hasn't kicked me to the curb yet!
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