What we used to call 'domestic science'

'Food tech' teachers, we need to have a chat. It's not that you're doing anything wrong - well, not exactly - but it's more about your expectations. I'm not talking about my children's cooking abilities, here; frankly I'm amazed by the quality and edibility of what they bring home. No, it's your expectations of me. 

I mean, let's take a look at this list, one of many that have been brought home, and which, at best, are presented to me the night before your lessons. Shall we start at the top of this one and work down? OK, then.

We start with 400g of mixed "overseas" vegetables. (Your quotes.) To be honest, I'd have been pretty flummoxed without the quotation marks. Overseas vegetables. Do they have to be imported, is that what you want? Or must they be vegetables that aren't grown in this country? I bought a courgette, a pepper, and an onion. I don't think any of these can meet your criterion but at least they are marginally more exotic than potatoes and carrots, right?

What's next? 200g couscous. OK, I'll grant you that's pretty straightforward. Booths don't have a 200g box, though, and Dan says there aren't any scales in the classroom but I told him just to use 80% of the box. Let's move on. 

300ml hot water. I'm leaving that with you, tbh.

OK, right, here we go again: 3tbsp vinaigrette salad style salad dressing. You know what, I'm going to assume there's some kind of meta-typo in 'salad style salad dressing'. I simply pretended that it said vinaigrette dressing, which takes us to the knotty problem of how I give Dan 3tbsp to bring into school. I just bought a bottle in the end and told him to bring what's left home.

1 vegetable or chicken stock cube. I'm not looking for trouble here: that's fine. 

100g tomatoes. There was a little plastic tub at Booths with 250g of tomatoes, so I bought that. No, it's OK; that really was just me being lazy.

10g fresh herbs. I don't know where to start with this. I do have a basil plant that isn't dead yet, so I pulled off all of the leaves that looked healthy and wrapped them in some clingfilm. Oh, and sprinkled some dried mixed herbs over them first.

10ml olive oil. We'll come back to this, if that's OK.

25g butter. I can do scales, so I didn't have any problem sorting out the 25g of butter but I had to resort to my usual tactic of just wrapping it in clingfilm. This makes me anxious, food tech teachers: how do the proper parents send in the butter. Do I simply need more tupperware?

So, back to the olive oil. 10mls required. I don't know, couldn't there just be a bottle at school? (A big bottle, I grant you.) As it happens, as a result of my half-baked glass collecting habit, I did have a little bottle that could be used for this. I said to Dan that he could take it but he had to remember to bring it home. "I will remember" he replied earnestly. And we looked at each other. And I said "I know that, right now, you honestly mean that" and then we had a hug. I can still remember what it's like to be fourteen.

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-4.2kgs