Bachelor survival — that was the unofficial name of Mrs. Phillips’ home economics course I took when I was a high school senior many years ago. I can’t honestly recall the exact name of the course, but the bachelor survival name is what many of us called it.
The moniker mostly fit since, as the name implies, a bunch of senior guys opted for the elective because, I admit, it was a part of our “senior slide.” It was an attractive, easy credit as school inched nearer to graduation.
A course like bachelor survival all but guaranteed that we’d have nothing but kicks and no homework. Easy.
Well, kind of. While we weren’t sweating over elongated mathematic equations, we did learn a lot of practical life skills. Things we didn’t even know would come in handy. We learned how to sew a little, using a Frostline kit to make a down vest. We touched upon budgeting and personal finance, as well as home management.
Among other units, we learned about meal planning, nutrition and, of course, meal preparation.
This meant we were tasked in our small teams to budget for, plan, shop, prepare and serve a fair number of meals. Since I was already established in my after-school produce job, much of this course actually applied.
While the class wasn’t as cerebral as my college-prep language courses, the food unit of the bachelor survival course was challenging, interesting and satisfying. The best part of all was that, indeed, we enjoyed eating the meals we planned.
Years later as a produce specialist, one part of my job was visiting college and high school nutrition and “food arts” classes — not unlike what I had experienced years later.
It was sort of like the ’70s TV series, “Welcome Back, Kotter,” right?
As a guest speaker, you might imagine that, especially at the high school level, I found the coed groups were just as antsy and just as excited as we were as the school approached graduation. Perhaps more so.
I typically supplied a few large boxes of mostly specialty produce for such talks, gleaned from the produce warehouse the same morning (as I figured everyone already knew how to identify common things such as apples or oranges).
As part of my plan, I’d call out to all the women in the class and ask how many of them would like the guy to fix dinner.
Every girl’s hand shot straight up. The guys in class suddenly became quiet, even a bit shocked. You could just read their mind: “Fix my date dinner? We thought that girls, you know, preferred muscles, stylish clothes, sporty cars, looks, boyish charms, perhaps a guy holding down a job.” I echoed their thoughts out loud.
Maybe so, I emphasized, but fix her dinner and that will impress her more than anything. And I continued — I have just the formula here to help you bozos out.
That’s when I showed them how to fix something simple like, say, stir-fry.
I showed them how to identify and break off ribs of bok choy; how to ask for a portion of napa cabbage; how to add ingredients such as mushrooms, green onions, snap peas, fresh ginger, broccoli florets, zucchini, peppers; how to add the protein (or not); and how to quickly cut, clean, season and fix the dish in practically no time. I let the students sample everything as they gathered around for the impromptu feast.
It was awesome, as the kids say these days, and consider that this was all before any chef celebrity influencers like Alton Brown, Rachel Ray, among others. It was just one old produce guy speaking to the next generation, and they loved it.
The most important bachelor lesson of all imparted? Be a gentleman — and make sure you clean up after yourself.
Armand Lobato’s more than 50 years of experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions. He has written a weekly retail column for two decades.
