The International Cooking Club with Merenojan students had a big goal: How to shop, cook and
eat in the climate changing world? We have made Chinese dumplings, French quiche, creative apple
food, outdoor BBQ, basic bread and self-made Nutella, Italian pizza. We tried to use local and seasonal ingredients while we were cooking foreign food.
We also interviewed Juha Leskelä from K-supermarket at
the very beginning of the club. He explained to us:
It is highly appreciated that Juha was willing to answer our questions during his working hour. In fact, we didn't buy ingredients for our cooking club from K-supermarket, because school has a cooperation with Halpa-Halli. I indeed admire his devotion to support local products in K-supermarket with relatively higher prices.
Below are photo collections from our cooking club. :)
- why food products in K-supermarket are a bit more expensive than Halpa-Halli;
- how to look for cheap but quality food in K-supermarket;
- what has K-supermarket done to support local farmers and why;
- the decision about stoping selling energy drinks to underaged kids.
It is highly appreciated that Juha was willing to answer our questions during his working hour. In fact, we didn't buy ingredients for our cooking club from K-supermarket, because school has a cooperation with Halpa-Halli. I indeed admire his devotion to support local products in K-supermarket with relatively higher prices.
Below are photo collections from our cooking club. :)
 |
| This is dumping! The bottom one is gluten-free dumpling! Yeees, we even made gluten-free ones! |
 |
| We also made steamed buns, which is also called "Kung Fu Panda dumpling"! |
 |
| Gluten-free Quiche! |
 |
| Another Quiche! Many many thanks to our French master cook! |
 |
| What could we do with so many apples in the yard??? |
 |
| Let's show our French friends how to set fire and grill food outside! |
 |
| Hyvä mieli, kaikki. |
 |
| Four seasons pizza: Summer (tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and basil)! |
 |
| Four seasons pizza: Winter (cheese, pineapple with honey)! |
 |
| Four seasons pizza: Autumn (cheese, tuna and pineapple)! |
It seems that everything went well.
However, there are many things which could have been done better, especially
from pedagogical point of view. By written some of them down, I hope it helps
to remind myself to do better in the future. If, with some luck, I might get some
advices from the readers.
This club started from my idea of
exporting "Home Economics" subject to China[1]. I thought we would create such a perfect interdisciplinary learning space in the cooking classroom. It is a space we could explore: literacy, easy maths, nutrition, food chemistry, food biology, geography, society and culture, economics, climate change and everyday choice and so on. I
once explained my beautiful idea to a stranger who sat opposite to me on the
train from Luzern to Zurich. He listened quietly and told me that: nothing can be conceptually decided until
you try it out. Therefore, I decided to try this course in Merenojan Koulu.
In spite of my zero education experience in this subject, school fully trusts and supports my idea by sponsoring the cost of ingredients and allowing us to use Home Economics classroom freely. Home Economic teacher also gives me lots of help. She reminds me to let students clean and tidy up the classroom after cooking because it is the important part of this lesson. I can feel her genuine trust and support from reading her message.
Lesson by lesson, I began to realize how difficult it is to implant the idea of "How to shop, cook and eat in the climate changing world?" while most of time we simply stayed at the level of "cooking eatable food". In 3 hours, we have to: plan the food, prepare shopping list, go shopping, cook, eat, last but not least clean and tidy up. The whole process has always been so hectic that I couldn't divide my time and effort to everyone in the classroom at all. Many times after the lessons, I felt bad because I neglected some student or did/said something rude to some student. Fortunately, our French volunteers joined us in many situations and offered enormous help.
By doing the lessons, I learned the complexity to integrate many subjects into one learning space with limited time and planning. To continue or not? If continues, how to make it better?
[1] Many
courses in Finnish curriculum are not taught in China. If you happened to see
some clubs like cooking club, crafting club or sports club in Chinese schools' curriculum, you would probably be told that they are selective and after-school clubs, and they are not important.
No comments:
Post a Comment