To think that Jamie Oliver is a Goady goady mc judgy pants personified!

[LEMisdisappointed]

judgey much?

It reads like a clip from the daily mail - actually, it probably is!

Now there are people, i have a friend who can make an amazing meal out of apparently nothing (she is italian though!) in ten minutes flat - although she has lots of those ingredients that are expensive to buy in the first place but go a long way,i would never know what to do with them!

I am such a boring cook, i have a small repertoire (sp) of meals that i cook - over and over again, the ingredients in my cupboard are basic because i can't afford capers and porcinni mushrooms etc. I rarely fall back on ready meals and feed my family healthily. But its boring really and i can understand why some people use ready meals - time, money - So yeah, making your own pizza will be cheaper than dominos or tesco fineset but it is not going to be cheaper than icelands £1 pizza is it? Not from scratch, not from the start - yes if you divide the amount of pizzas your flour, cheese, tomato sauce and anything else you want to put on it by 20 it might be cheaper but those ingredients have to be bought in the first place.

See, I would welcome cheap and easy ways to make my meals more exciting and thankfully we are not on the breadline this month, but im not going to watch that smug little bastard telling me how i can just knock out some pucker tucker out of a packet of anchovies and dust from the cupboard!

I have always thought him a smug twat - this confirms it!

mignonette reread what you said and what I said.

'I know it's completely out of fashion to take responsibility for your own life,'

Wow. It wouldn't matter what else you said in any post, I could never get past that awful comment!

I am a Carer, which does mean that in term time I can shop around more and make from scratch. It is a blessing. My Mum was a SAHM and used to go to one shop for one thing, another for another: time is such a valuable commodity. And a wider social network- I recall the bank losing all our money (in the seventies) and whilst it was sorted we lived on spuds from the garden and eggs from my Uncle. Jam made from rosehips from the garden.

So I am blessed to have grown up able to do that but many people didn't have parents who can cook (actually Mum can't, Dad however is fantastic), but criticising people who never learned themselves for not passing it down to THEIR kids seems a bit silly.

NL- I get that but it implies a static picture: someone with very little cash this week might simply have a late pay packet, or with a big TV bought it second hand or before they lost their job. It just perpetuates silly stereotypes.

Whilst the ones who really DO need his help can't afford his books anyhow.
And possibly can't even read (not uncommon on the estate I was raised on).

FromParis yes they do- but lots of places don't have a Tesco, or any supermarket within walking distance.

Which I assume is the point.

If I had to walk to Tesco here (our nearest supermarket) I'd be looking at a 6 mile return journey along a road so dangerous there are actually gravestones alongside it to honour people who died in accidents, dragging 4 kids 3 of whom have special needs.

Now I have a car and internet but if I didn't I bet i'd end up relying on the Spar. Which is not even a decent Spar.

"So Poppy, you are talking idealistica 'let's go to Tuscany and eat lovely simple food' nonsense spouted by so many people who see one side of life even if they live there as expats or immigrants. Your experience is always going to be clouded."

Erm... I'm a native, not an expat or immigrant so if anyone is lacking local knowledge is you not me.

I also think there's no need to insult people; calling Faster "stupid" doesn't warm me to your arguments quite frankly.

You made a ridiculous accusation of racism Faster . As I said, I can't argue anymore w/ stupid. Let it stand.

Only just spotted this thread. Was tweeting about this last night. Oliver is a classist ignorant fuckwit.
Heres his take on young people.

www.psychologies.co.uk/work/are-the-youth-of-today-too-lazy-to-work.html

Ive also seen a FAB blog post about his latest bigotry.

Peachy in the interest of fairness, here's my comment in context:

I know it's completely out of fashion to take responsibility for your own life, but that's what we're discussing here; you have 8GPB to spend - do you buy chips from the corner shop or cook a nutritious dinner for your children?

As someone said upthread, why is it wrong to ask people to question their choices? Or more importantly the choices they're making on behalf of their children, who don't have a choice themselves?

Poppy Then you clearly have no idea about the changing demographics of your own country if you are unaware of the very clear change in how the young eat (and the fact that again, working Mothers have been implicated in it).

And having to continually explain something to somebody who has made ridiculous accusations of racism? Well I do wonder...

As to whether you warm to my argument or not.....Read up on your country's impending social/culinary crisis....What happened here, happened in France and is starting to impact in Italy, Greece.....Can't argue with the uninformed either.

Heres the brilliant blog post i mentioned above.

www.northsouthfood.com/dear-jamie-oliver/

mignonette read what I said, not what you are thinking I said. it was not you I called racist.

My only problem with that blog darkesteyes is that the picture is far too flattering.

Although it does look like he has no upper teeth and his lower ones could do with a brush, so it's not all bad

"As to whether you warm to my argument or not.....Read up on your country's impending social/culinary crisis....What happened here, happened in France and is starting to impact in Italy, Greece.....Can't argue with the uninformed either."

There's a culinary crisis in my country because under 30's started eating cereal for breakfast? Fuck me!

As for "uninformed", it's rich coming from someone who clearly has never read a page of the FT and doesn't even have a clue about terms widely used in economics.

But anyway, I don't want to engage in this type of debate, so we'll just agree to disagree mignon

On a separate note, I think the UK has amazing raw ingredients and it's a shame they too are becoming so expensive. I had never tried rhubarb before moving here and it blew my mind.

How can bananas be cheaper?

very good blog and very good point about the DLA. The criteria is that you struggle to cook a meal. You cannot chop food when you have arthritis or quadriplegia or Parkinsons or are very elderly or have any other of a myriad conditions. So you turn to cheap ready meals. And Jamie Oliver sneers at you. Perhaps he'd like to come over and either cook or care for the disabled relative?

"The balance sheets of many Italians are negative. In 2012, the purchasing power of families dropped by 4.8 per cent and the savings ratio is now of only 8.2 per cent. This happened because of the economic crisis, which is considerably affecting consumption. Canned and frozen foods are more popular, whereas people buy less fruit and vegetables. This is what the Cia (Italian Farmer Confederation) reported after seeing the data published on 9th April by Istat.

While the available income is lower, Italians have to pay higher taxes, meaning that more than half of the families (53%) struggle to pay compulsory expenditures ranging from petrol to services on top of mortgage and rent.

But the most dramatic effect of the situation regards food, with drastic changes in grocery shopping. 28% of Italians (6.5 million) shops exclusively in discount stores and 34% (7.4 million) buys lower quality food because it is cheaper.

In addition to this, canned and frozen food are getting more popular as well as junk food (+7% in a year), at the expense of the fresh produce typical of the Mediterranean diet: in fact, in 2012, 41.4% of families admitted to reducing the consumption of fruit and vegetables and 38.5% reduced that of meat and fish"

Sorry for C+Ping but am currently sweating down onions (!) and time pressed.

Access to food variety in Italy and effects of fast food/bakery upon BMI plus negative effects upon BMI of household income. Interestingly it appears that it is middle income families who have rising BMI's because of fast food being promoted as a 'luxury'. This tallies w/ the local owner of our language school who says that ten years ago her mainland Euro students were often desperate to visit fastfood chains whereas these days they are common in their countries and so do not see them as a priority experience.

really? does Jamie Oliver sneer at people physically unable to cook?

link? or are you just making it up?

A lot of supermarket apples come from New Zealand. Pretty much as far away as Britain as you can possibly get!

Poppy

I made it quite clear that what is an economic term is now being used perjoratively as well. That is the beauty and horror of language- it gets distorted and played with to good and bad effect.

Clearly it is the silly season because you willfully appear to be ignoring those posts of mine.

But we'll have to disagree because my onions are burning

That doesn't explain why if you choose to buy British produce you are often charged a premium. Completely counter productive.

Te

The central control of price and distribution of goods which amounts essentially to an informal 'cartel' has an effect. I was appalled to read of the effects of the large Multinationals in the USA and their lobbying power upon smaller privately owned banana plantations.

Any law that benefits their trading in a fair, equitable market is lobbied out of existence by powerful corporations such as Del Monte. That is why I try to be careful about where and whose bananas I buy, a luxury I know is not available to those on lower incomes who have to buy less expensive bananas.

mignonette Any law that benefits their trading in a fair, equitable market is lobbied out of existence by powerful corporations such as Del Monte

so why can I buy smaller producer fair trade bananas?

What is also interesting is the way that apple breeding has been impacted by the increasing demand for them in China and Japan. The aesthetics of an apple comes into play hence varieties such as Pink Lady gain in popularity worldwide because of not just looks but reliability in ripening and uniformity. A great article on this is authored by Gina Mallet and is called "As Asian As Apple Crumble" from 'Last Chance To Eat: The fate of taste in a fast world' 2004.

I found it in the anthology 'Best Food Writing' edited by Holly Hughes.

'does Jamie Oliver sneer at people physically unable to cook?'

His diatrebe tars everyone with the same brush without understanding that many of the poor are also elderly and/or disabled and struggle with cooking for physical reasons. He doesnt explore why people arent cooking and seems to blame buying plasma screen TV's and deliberate laziness. Now its possible it's the article and perhaps he sits at home hand-wringing over the plight of those genuinely unable to cook and the food deserts created by giant out of town supermarkets that the poor/disabled and elderly cant get too but I dont reckon so.
But if thats the case then I will apologise to Mr Oliver personally.

You can buy them but they have a constant struggle to exist against the powerful vested interests of multinationals. Fairtrade is an umbrella set up to, in part protect small growers so they can benefit from a fair price, not having to use unsafe chemicals etc, actual intimidation in some cases, sell their goods with some sense of security and develop new markets. It is kind of the 'Good witch' trading organisation to the 'bad witch' of global markets (their negative effects). There is plenty of information on this out there.

By the way, I have seen Jamie Oliver's programs on TV and while some of it looks nice I have never been tempted to make anything.

I have a friend who is very into "Country Living" and is quite happy to spend 80 pounds on wool to knit a jumper that she will never wear, keeps some fashionable breed of chicken which never lays eggs and grows all sorts of exotic veg on her allotment that she never bothers to eat. She will happily spend loads of money on ingredients to prepare a Jamie Oliver meal to impress her friends with at the weekend.

However I haven't read his new book so perhaps it is full of cheap, easy recipes that don't have hard-to-find, expensive ingredients and my kids will actually eat. Perhaps it won't cost 25 pounds to buy? Perhaps that's the point? Otherwise what is the point in him doing it?