The Teacher´s Meal
The teacher's meal
So, as you know, the slogan for this week is ‘Crisis, what crisis?’ In this workshop, the students had to bring three recipes (starter, main course and dessert) for this week. This could be a meal typical for their country or just a meal that was easy to prepare.
Today we went to see how our Food students prepared a meal for their teachers. We decided to interview a couple of students and the ‘chef’ while they were preparing it to see how things are going in this workshop. A German student chose to do this workshop because he wanted to learn how to cook because he was not very good at it. He was in charge of the starter salad and the spaghetti carbonara. He said working at the food workshop is great, and they get to eat their food during the cooking. The teachers are very supportive. All nationalities are represented, their mutual contact goes smoothly; and everyone is improving their English.
They did their shopping yesterday, and it went very organised. They were divided into four groups, according to their course to prepare.
The atmosphere in the kitchen is very relaxed, no pressure whatsoever. They don’t just cook, but they also do the dishes, go shopping and set the tables.
The ‘head chef’ chose the menu according to the recipes the students brought with them. Some of the recipes were typical of their country, others were just easy and cheap to make. Yesterday it was a typically German meal, today it’s a mix of nationalities.
Today it wasn’t exactly cheap, but it wasn’t extravagant either. So the focus lay more on ‘Crisis?’ than on ‘Crisis?!’
She thought the students are doing perfect, they are very willing, motivated and helpful. Until now, there weren’t any mistakes made, and luckely there weren't any mishaps.
We asked the teachers what they thought of their meal. They said the Mediterranean s
alad was varied and fresh. There was a pleasant atmosphere during the lunch. The students were very helpful and attentive. The second starter (tomato soup with cream) was also very tasty and healthy. The main course, spaghetti carbonara, was plain but tasty. There was a vegetarian present, so they had to leave out the meat, but it turned out okay.
For dessert, they could choose between muffins, fruit salad and vanilla cream. The teachers thought it was a good combination and loved to eat it.
We also asked them to give a grade for the general atmosphere (food, service, decoration and ambiance).Of course, we included several nationalities. We also added the opinion of the students themselves and of course we gave our opinion. You can see the results in the table below. (Watch the scale, it starts at 8 and end at 9.6, with 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest.) It might be interesting to know that there were big differences in marks on the food itself. Overall, the teachers were far more positive than the students themselves, we were in the middle. However, the service was really good, and not only the teachers, but we were also very enthusiastic. They were very kind and very helpful.
After the meal, of course there was cleaning up to do. Too bad we had to leave to start writing, otherwise we would have helped. We wished them a lot of luck, and we left. We were getting ready for the party, while the workshop leader was getting the ingredients for Thursday.
Thursday will be uploaded very quickly after this one!
Heleen and Tim
Your journalists on the spot