Home economics is taught around the world and it has an important place in our world's history. Home economics teaches you the basics of managing your own house: how to wash dishes, cook and clean properly. Although these skills are very important and everybody should be aware of them, there is so much more to home economics. At our school in Finland we have different length optional subjects, one of them is a course about different food cultures around the world. In the first year we start by learning more about our own country's food culture. It gives us something to compare to the other cultures later on. Learning more about our national foods, making them and getting to know the history behind each dish is not just interesting, but teaches us more about Finland’s history. It also opens up our eyes to the change we’ve had during the years. The way people cook and what ingredients they use for the food have changed a lot during the years. The influence from Russia and Sweden have also had a great impact on what we eat and how we make it. 

As everything is continuously becoming global, so is our world’s food cultures. Many of us may have seen chinese and indian restaurants along the streets. You may have eaten Chow mein-noodles or curries, but do you know the history behind them? In our food culture course we learn what parties have influenced the evolution of different food cultures. This includes the history, environment, cooking methods and cooking utensils. Because there are so many different food cultures we obviously can’t get to know everyone of those. Along the many cultures we’ve learned about, we’ve had the possibilities to get to know the biggest food cultures like chinese and american for example. We also get to know food cultures we’re not so familiar with, somalian and moroccan cuisines.

We have 16 people in our course. When we first started at the beginning of eight grade about one and a half year ago, most of us didn’t know each other. We all are from different classes so we weren’t familiar with each other. For the first year we had assigned seats, which were changed every four weeks, so we could get to know each other better. During the course we have got to know each other better and we have an amazing atmosphere at our class. We have also learned group working skills.Nowadays we don’t have assigned seats, but the groups we cook in usually change a bit despite of that. No matter how tired we are or how bad of a day we’ve had, we always enjoy cooking with each other and laughter usually fills the air.

Our class is 90-minutes long and is divided into cooking and eating. At the beginning of the class our teacher introduces the subject of the day. She tells us the basics of each food culture: how they cook, what they cook with, what are the most used ingredients and what has influenced the forming of the culture. After getting to know what we’re cooking, we get to work. We have learned team working skills and how to share tasks as every group of four decides who does what, so everyone has something to do. As we cook we may talk about the country which food we are cooking or our everyday lives. Our teacher also plays music from the country we’re learning about. When the food is done and kitchens cleaned up, we get to eat. Because different cultures eat in different ways, we of course eat the food like it’s supposed to eat. For example in India they eat with bread and a spoon. Compared to the way we are used to eat, eating with bread can be pretty challenging, but it’s fun to try new things. To get deeper to the world's many cultures, we got to do a study on one country and its food culture. We looked for information from books and the internet and wrote an essay about the country’s food culture. We improved our ICT-skills while writing the essay with Google Docs. By talking with each other we also learnt about their subject of study, so we definitely learnt a lot.

At the course we have learnt new things and tasted new foods, getting to know each culture. Some students may already have known certain things and have had the chance to taste some of the foods we’ve done, but everyone has improved on their skills. Like our teacher often says, it has been nice to see how everyone has improved as an individual. We know facts that others may not know, and we get to use this knowledge in the future as well. It’s important to know your country’s culinaristic roots, but it’s also important to be educated about the world that surrounds us. That’s what we did at the erasmus+ project week as well. We got to know each other and each other's cultures, told about how we live our everyday lives and what our food cultures are like. Knowing your own culture, it’s easy to compare it to others and see the differences between them. Learning to respect each other cultures is important and many people will be glad to tell you about their own culture. What a better way to learn than from each other?

Written by Meri Lepola 9C 04/2020