“Mudpie” Cookies – Is there a doctor in the house?

In Jean Pare’s cookbook, these Boiled Chocolate Cookies are called “…the most used recipe of young first-time cooks.”

Their first lab was quesadillas, since the breakfast burritos were clearly going to be too difficult for this group. I couldn’t use the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, then, as it’s substantially more difficult. I needed something super easy. Something healthy? No. Nothing was working. Allergies, Celiac disease, not allowed marshmallows. Running out of time, here!

Mudpies. We’d made them before, and it was simple enough. Okay! Mudpies it is.

Oats + Cocoa = Healthy. It's good enough for Nutella's ads.

We did the recipe preview – how to make the cookies, safety concerns and questions and the next day, we took to the kitchens. Five pots of boiling sugar and fat over three stovetops. Constant pacing and supervision:

Turn your burner down.

Stir gently.

Watch that pot handle…

No fooling around during labs!

Walking!

Are you sure that was bubbling for a full five minutes?

Two back-to-back classes of boiling-chocolate controlled chaos. The cookies were more or less a success. Some were too dry, some were too gooey. One… well, if you’re going to use whatever measuring cup you grab first instead of the right one, at least do the math. No harm done. Whew.

Feeling a little breathless and dizzy, we launch into the final lab of the day – baking our pizzas. No big deal. Add the toppings, bake them and enjoy.

After clearing out the third afternoon class, and starting to deal with the left over mess, there was the sound of broken glass outside my room. With a deep breath, I head out to see what’s wrong.

While the caretaker swept up the glass, the storm raging inside my body broke free and down I went, head swimming, heart raging away at 250 bpm.

Now, I’m a little annoyed… I’d had surgery to correct this situation and this was exactly WHY. I didn’t want something like this to happen at work. Around the kids. While cooking. Hearts don’t respond to logic though, do they?

Within an hour, I was under the care of some of the nicest paramedics in town, going for my first ambulance ride. My heart smartened up as soon as we hit the “cardioversion bed”, so it may not respond to logic, but it does respond to a tangible threat.

What? How do you get home from work?

I was hoping it was merely a rebound effect from the surgery, but the surgeon’s going back in for another look. I can’t say I’m excited about the news.

Several weeks later, we started textiles and one student asked wistfully – Can we make those chocolate cookies again? I laugh a little and lean in to respond – you do know that I had to be hospitalized after that lab, right? She accepts her disappointment with good grace, and I chuckle. It was a fun recipe… but maybe it’s a little too stressful.

Stay tuned for “Ballroom Dancing with Cookie Sheets”.

Knife Safety, or How to Freak Out the Other Teachers

While the recipes and textiles projects change somewhat, from year to year, the foundation lessons stay pretty much the same. We start with a course overview and room orientation. We review emergency procedures (first aid, fire, earthquake, lockdowns, dealing with rats and the inevitable zombie apocalypse).

Knife Safety Day takes a certain amount of teacher energy (moderate) and patience (overload). The lesson involves identifying the knives we use in class (chef and paring). Knives are placed on student tables for observation. Misused knives are removed immediately. 

KNIFE SAFETY DAY!

We learn how to hand a knife to another person (You don’t. You put it DOWN and the other person picks it up). We learn how to walk with a knife (You hold the point down).

What if you trip? What if someone runs into you and you fall? What if someone with a knife runs into you and you fall and your knives hit each other? What if it’s a lockdown and the bear is in the hallway and he opens the door and you stab him?

Occasionally, another teacher will drop by the room for one reason or another on Knife Safety Day. Typically, they freeze upon entering the room and seeing the knife wielding preteens. Or they enter the room and I stop them – “the children are armed and dangerous!”

One of my favourite well-armed children

Today we scored a trifecta – three different staff members during one class.

The “knife walk” looks rather alarming. Each group has a chef’s knife and they take turns walking in a designated area of the room, before “passing” the knife to the next person. We do this so that every student has a chance to handle the knife before a knife skills cooking class.

I’d noticed that the nervous kids were more likely to fumble and get hurt than the kids who were confident and respectful. So everyone tries. And I use fewer bandages.

I’ll admit, it looks like a high-risk activity. It’s really a calculated-risk activity, and it’s easy to hand offenders a plastic fast food knife if they can’t handle the real thing. No one wants that. So far, they’re willing to follow the rules, but not without some testing.

Tear-free Cookies

Almost two years ago (December 2015) I wrote about a difficult muffin-baking session which led to the goal of "baking cookies without tears!"

Proof that cookies make you happy.

This refrain kept running through my head like a musical ear-worm today as I worked my way through five classes preparing/baking cookies. Now I have a song running through my head and I'll be sharing it with the students tomorrow.

During the last round of Oatmeal-Whatever Cookies, I had a student approach me with a bowl of cookie dough, genuinely perplexed. "How do I get cookies out of this?" she asked. This was new - having students who didn't realize that we took portions of dough and baked them into cookies.

I don't see the cookies.

Now, it seems it's the norm. Many students struggled with the dough to cookie relationship. And they struggled with a lot of other things too:

Measuring. 125 ml of margarine is easy when they come in prepackaged blocks (don't judge me!). However, when you hand the dairy-free group a block of Crisco (I said don't judge me!) and they speed ahead without reading the recipe we so painstakingly reviewed the day before... guess. C'mon, you've been here before. Ten points if you guessed that they randomly whacked off a chunk of fat and just hoped for the best.

Measuring. "How much X did you use?" asks the teacher.
                   "Oh, about..."
                   "No! There is no "about". There is no "winging  it". Baking is chemistry!"

Measuring: Gold stars to anyone who figured out that 175 ml of flour requires one of your 125 ml cup and one of your 50 ml cup. That was TWO students (of 100 or so).

Measuring: No home ec teacher will be surprised to learn that some fast-moving groups poured themselves a generous 250 ml of chocolate chips, even though the recipe calls for 125 ml.

I know... a little extra, just in case...

One group must have discovered the blog, because they ADDED WATER. (See Teaching Home Ec Through Interpretive Dance, also December 2015). I'm so careful not to mention mistakes other groups have made. I would say - "be extra careful with your measuring, several groups have struggled with measuring." "Watch the dry ingredients. Be sure you have the correct amount. This has been difficult for the other groups." I have learned not to drop hints about HOW to mess up the recipe. For some reason, one group added water and they were pretty darned sure that this was the only sensible course of action and could not understand why I might be agitated about it.

Are you surprised to learn that a child wipes her hands once on a clean towel and then throws it in the laundry?

Did you know that a child uses half a bottle of dish soap to wash a few measuring cups and two bowls?

Corrections, inspections and trouble shooting is on-going and constant in our labs. Two classes baked their cookies today. They were varying degrees of "pretty good". It's too early to call, but we may get through without tears.

Year Six...Guinea pigging, can you dig it?

I’ve changed recipes and textiles projects frequently since I took this assignment and EVERY TIME I ask myself why I insist on this torture. Why can’t I just stick to something that works? But no, I always want new recipes, back up recipes, things that work better in my space, with my students. It’s great once we’re settled, but it’s really a painful way to start up the new year.

Today my first group of guinea pigs tested the breakfast burritos. We learned: Easy Breakfast Roll ups are not “easy”. That will be the “challenge” project. They may feel vindicated if I introduce them to the concept of “Pinterest Fails”.

I assured them that the Guinea Pigs class is promised a good mark, since I’m not marking the end result but the design and trouble-shooting process. Happily, that’s embedded in the new curriculum now, so I’m not just making stuff up (I may or may not make stuff up).

Pro Tip - search for "guinea pig chef" not "guinea pig cooking". 

The textiles project is still in flux, though. Every year, my senior classes have made a very specific sewing project, which I love. It’s a great skill builder project that the students really like. I’ve always had tremendous support from another department, and I made my booking back in May. I confirmed with my usual contact person that I wanted to expand my senior project to a school-wide project, but just once every three years.

With three weeks before textiles starts, I’m told – my contact  person is unavailable and I should probably look for a new project. Happily, we’re still working on a solution and I’m hoping the project can continue more or less as usual.

If I have to change projects, then crocheting has just been bumped up on the schedule.

Now I want to make crochet guinea pigs. 

Knife Safety - You're Doing it Wrong

As the new classes are invited to explore the home ec classroom with a scavenger hunt worksheet, I can usually anticipate and head off any problems. They have free rein to explore, under supervision, and there are relatively few monkeyshines.

The chef’s knives are sometimes removed to a more secure location, depending on the class. Sometimes it’s so secure, even the teacher doesn’t know where the knives are! I like to have a couple reliable helpers who know my best hiding spots, so if I forget, or have a teacher on call in class, cooking labs can proceed.

During kitchen orientation with one of the new classes, I asked two students to find the knives, one of the few items whose location is not labeled. I didn’t expect one child to grab up all the chef’s knives like a bouquet of flowers and then bestow them upon the students nearest him.

Within seconds, I had six children (eleven years old) brandishing knives like Samurai swords, blades up to their noses, gearing up to dart through their classmates. 

They were swiftly disarmed, which was something I had always wondered/worried about. Would I be able to disarm a knife-wielding child? Yes, apparently I can, but it helps when you take them by surprise. If I had to actually confront a larger or hostile child with a knife, it might not be so easy.

It might be time for some chain mail.

Rats!

I guess these troubles come to us all, eventually. You work with food, you’re gonna suffer the critters.

The previous Home Ec teacher here had it rough – I don’t know how often she started her day with a classroom festooned with urine trails, but anything more than “once” is too much.

When we moved into the new building, it was only a couple of weeks before the first rat sighting. Traps were placed, steps were taken and things settled down.

Several weeks ago, after a cold snap, a teacher came face to face with a rat in his classroom. I moved all food to the fridge or freezer. Traps were placed and things settled down.

Nope! About a week ago, my room and another showed clear signs of after hour rats. In my room, the rat tried to chew its way out from under the door, apparently running laps around the room when that got boring. I’m not sure how it got out. Did it get out?

Monday, one week later: I enter my room, glancing around for attackers as I enter the room. It smells a bit funky. Hmm. Maybe they cleaned with something different? Ugh. I open a window and the outside door to freshen things up.

Later: Still stinky. Smells like natural gas, something sulphur-y. Maybe they’re bleeding the gas lines nearby? That’s happened before. Email the boss. Check the outside air to decide which is worse. Outside smells pretty good! Open the door a little more.

While most of the room smells okay with the air blowing through, there’s an area that still packs a punch. Thirty kids all need my attention Right Now, This Minute, so it has to wait.

Lunchtime: Others have noticed the odd smell. I close the inside and outside doors and go upstairs for lunch. My head hurts. That’s not unusual, actually. Half an hour later, I’m back and my rowdy 7/8s are waiting to start class. I unlock the door and they tumble in. And immediately pour back out, noses buried in their shirts. Okay – time to get the boss.

The principal, the shop teacher and I fan out to locate the smell. The shop teacher finds it, just a moment before the principal would have… and I remove 30 slightly nauseous and skittish teenagers to another room. You know, at this point, some adult company would be nice. A strong drink would also be nice. "Starbucks Passion Tea"... where are you?

I debrief them. Yes, it was a rat. Yes, it’s dead. Yes, the caretaker is removing it. Yes, the room in being cleaned.

Now… we need to talk about our upcoming cooking lab! I clap my hands brightly, put on my best “teacher” voice and say – let’s talk about COOKIES! They groan. All of them. Food and rats do NOT belong in the same 40 minute block. I agree. But we have cookies to make.

The next two days involved a lot of cleaning and re-organizing, and a little paranoia. There’s never just ONE RAT, and I keep eyeing the suspected entry point(s) for beady little eyes bent on vengeance. 

p.s. a few days later, they did bleed the gas lines nearby. It was horrible. The fire department came for a visit.

Teaching Home Ec through Interpretive Dance

People make a lot of assumptions about other people's jobs, simply based on the job title and our own limited knowledge. Tell people that you're a "teacher" and you get some standard replies:

1. What do you teach? (Answer - children)
2. Oh, I wanted to be a teacher but...
3. Oh, I could never be a teacher because...

And then the assumptions begin.
From the Optometrist - Oh, I guess you do a lot of marking and work at your computer
From the education specialists - Oh, you should really teach this way (without asking if you do or don't)
From the trolls on the news websites (I'm not going further with that)
From the actual public... views on homework, detentions, teaching styles, subject topics and anything based on their own education 25+ years ago.

Teaching is acting. No matter what's going on off-stage, once those students enter the room, you're on-stage and you have to maintain their interest so that they don't start punching each other.

Normal Home Ec teachers demonstrate the recipe a day before a cooking lab and have students take notes. How did I end up teaching my recipes via interpretive dance? (Note to self: Adding music may improve student attention)

Doing the demos didn't help matters. Demo or not, they make the same mistakes, the injury rate is the same, the success rate is the same. I still have to run around showing each and every person how to do what I might have demonstrated, so I don't think the demos work for my students. Or me.

In both the new and old rooms, demos were hard to execute: the demo table is small, the mirror won't stay in position and moving the students and chairs from tables to demo just wasn't working. Some innovative teachers film themselves doing a demo when the room is empty, or from the safety of home. I have a deep-rooted loathing of being on camera, so that wasn't going to work.

I put my recipes on Powerpoint and added lots of photos. It was working. Before students were allowed to bring their cell phones to class. So, there are a lot of earbuds plugged into the ear away from the teacher's view. A lot of hiding phones and ongoing games under the table. And there's still a lot of good, old-fashioned arm wrestling and kicking each other under the table. Adolescents... what are you going to do?

So, the Powerpoints are now punctuated with Interpretive Dance. I wave my arms around. I gesture wildly. I bounce and spin, and demands answers from students who don't have their hands up. At the end of class, I'm tired. By the end of 4 classes, I'm exhausted.

And it's not even working. I swear, I'm going to add squirrels to the Powerpoints and glitter bombs to my performance. (Glitter bombs ARE a thing right? If not, I invented it. Right here, right now.)

Take "snickerdoodles". You combine the margarine, sugar and egg. Then add the remaining dry ingredients. Except the cinnamon and sugar. You put it in a little bowl and leave it alone. Leave it alone. LEAVE IT ALONE.

It's supposed to be sitting there waiting for you, so that you can roll your cookie balls around in it.

But sugar and cinnamon are both dry ingredients so they go with the flour and didn't we just use up all the sugar in the big bowl with the butter and we mixed our cinnamon into our sugar and it didn't look right so we threw it away, and now we need more sugar, and WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE FLOUR GOES IN THE COOKIES?

In fact, the only things they heard and remembered were when I said DO NOT DO THESE THINGS.

DO WE ADD WATER?
NO, YOU DO NOT ADD WATER. I SAID NO, NO WATER.

HE MESSED UP AND ADDED OUR CINNAMON ALREADY.

WE LIKE SMALL COOKIES. WE WON'T BURN THEM.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE FLOUR GOES IN THE COOKIES?

WHERE ARE THE DISH THINGIES?

WHERE DO THE WET DISH THINGIES GO?

IT'S HIS FAULT.

OOPS.

All the while my voice fluctuates - loud to carry across the room, medium loud to supervise 28 children trying to measure sugar or salt or one of those white baking things, extra calm for the child having a nervous breakdown and sotto voce for when I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

I love cooking labs. Really. I do! Because after all the chaos and confusion, the kids walk away with a clean kitchen unit and something good to eat, and they did it "themselves".

But I'm still exhausted.
And what on earth would we do with the flour if we didn't put it in the cookies?

(Yeah, I know. They were going to sprinkle it lightly on top to make it pretty. They really don't know that's a thing for icing sugar, not flour. Also I thing I've told them NOT TO DO.)