Typing with the Ladies: A High School Adventure

[Moonbear]

Well, how about that!

I had no idea you could get a B.S. in Home Ec.

Yep, the college I attended still offered a Home Ec. degree, though considerably different from what it was back in the 50s. It was one of those early degrees offered to women to placate the men who thought they didn't belong in college. It's now more of a cross between Nutrition and Food Sciences. Needless to say, it's not a very popular major since most people see the name and think of their junior high school class where they learned how to bake cookies and operate a sewing machine.

 

[Moonbear]

I've never had any of this stuff that I considered edible. My aunt's version was nasty, and my friend's mother's version was only marginally better, but I usually managed to "need" to get home if he wanted me to stay for supper and that stuff was on the menu. How did a "traditional" T-day dish arise from a confluence of crappy-tasting canned onions and Campbell's cream of mushroom soup? That is perverse!

Shhh...when I make it, I leave out those canned fried onion things.

People whose recipes call for cans of Campbell's soup or Lipton Soup mixes are not cooks. They probably have Hamburger Helper in their pantries.

Not probably, they DO. Though, I do like a few of the Lipton Soup recipes. They're just really quick and easy to make, so on those days when I get home dead-tired and just don't want to think about assembling ingredients, or when the cupboard is starting to look bare and I don't have time for shopping and I just want to toss something in the oven while I hit the shower...basically, it's a step above ordering take-out. But, I'm not someone who uses that for every night's dinner, maybe 2 or 3 times a year. Any soup mix is very salty, and I'm not fond of that much salt all the time.

It's really sick to watch people like Alton Brown or Rachael Raye calling for a quart of chicken broth (from a paper carton) in a recipe. How can these idiots not bother to do shows on how to build super soup stocks from turkey carcasses, meat bones, etc? Cooking is in the details, and the best food does not result from a blind result-oriented short-cut attitude.

Alton Brown has done shows on making your own stocks, but I think he adapts his recipes to an audience who doesn't have hours and hours to make stock. I don't blame Rachel Raye at all...her whole point is quick meals to get people to stop making excuses not to cook, so if she started telling them to spend hours simmering a stock, it would entirely defeat the purpose of her show. I use a lot of chicken broth. I'd be buried in chickens to make enough stock to supply enough broth (I'd rather make chicken soup when I have leftover chicken than just stock).

 

[ZapperZ]

Yep, the college I attended still offered a Home Ec. degree, though considerably different from what it was back in the 50s. It was one of those early degrees offered to women to placate the men who thought they didn't belong in college. It's now more of a cross between Nutrition and Food Sciences. Needless to say, it's not a very popular major since most people see the name and think of their junior high school class where they learned how to bake cookies and operate a sewing machine.

Little did they know that if they learn how to bake cookies very well, they could be as filthy rich as Mrs. Fields!

:)

zz.

 

[Math Is Hard]

Yep, the college I attended still offered a Home Ec. degree, though considerably different from what it was back in the 50s. It was one of those early degrees offered to women to placate the men who thought they didn't belong in college. It's now more of a cross between Nutrition and Food Sciences. Needless to say, it's not a very popular major since most people see the name and think of their junior high school class where they learned how to bake cookies and operate a sewing machine.

When I was in high school, I did one quarter of home economics and one quarter of needlework. I know it was to fill some requirement but I can't remember what. I remember the captain of the football team sat next to me in class, and it was funny to watch him doing a delicate little cross-stitch with his beefy paws.

 

[turbo]

Back in HS, a couple of other guys (close friends) and I signed up for a typing course. I wanted to be able to type my own papers when I got to college, but perhaps the most compelling reason was that the teacher was drop-dead gorgeous. There were enough electric typewriters to supply all the girls in the class, so she equipped her three male students with old manual typewriters. After a week or two, she seemed to take some perverse pride in us because we routinely out-scored the females in speed and accuracy, and sometimes swept 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in our tests. Typing helped us satisfy a requirement to take some non-core course outside of our "track" and it seemed a good idea to hang out with a room-full of females a few times a week instead of heading out to the woodworking shop.