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!

I am waiting for the J.O. book of 'benefit recipes' using the amount of money a family on benefits/NMW would realistically have. Not the amount they receive but what is left after bills to feed the family. No 'store cupboard' ingredients. Portion sizes need to be realistic to feed hungry adults/teens/kids and nutritious. They would need to be prepared without expensive blenders/mixers etc in an ordinary household kitchen,
FWIW I think he has his ideas right but they need thinking through and proper alternatives to cheap processed food presented. Its easy to criticise when you can afford/have the ability to cook decent food.

Lets see him put up or shut up...he could campaign to produce a free recipe book to be handed out in health centres/doctors surgeries/libraries. Lets see if it is about his principles or bank balance!

Sorry that should be -

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/27/jamie-oliver-poverty-ready-meals-tv

I have hated JO ever since I read an interview in which he said how important it was to 'ladies' to be able to get pregnant without lots of procedures eg IVF.
Bellend.
Patronising smug bellend.
I don't care what he can cook in 30 minutes, he can shove it up his arse.

"I have hated JO ever since I read an interview in which he said how important it was to 'ladies' to be able to get pregnant without lots of procedures eg IVF. "

How odd, considering his first child was born after a lot of intervention from a fertility specialist. They never hid that either, in fact I think his wife wrote about it on her book.

It might be a good idea if, as other people have said, we allowed people to chip in to buy staples in bulk, plus meat and possibly fish - though it doesn't freeze that well - and fresh vegetables, and give them somewhere to store it for at least a year.

Then they could take it away and cook it, possibly with some kind of group deal on their fuel bills.

I'm sure people would want to do that. I know I would.

But that's a bit more long term and difficult than what Jamie and Channel Four wants to do.

Plus, no one would be able to judge them, because they'd be doing the sensible thing, damn them.

Jamie Oliver is all about the money. The whole kids school meals thing was just for TV. School meals are still exactly the same crap they were before. They just chop the turkey twizzlers up now and sell them as wraps.

He knew from the beginning that it would go no where and now he's totally abandoned the project and turned to just slagging off the working classes instead. It's all their fault but oh look here's my book that you can buy to make meals on a budget even though I have never ever had to live my life on any kind of budget. Tosser.

And I agree, Delia did it so much better and didn't wrap it up in a smug faux altruistic package.

sorry, cant be arsed to RTFT; but has anyone mentioned the WEATHER? if you live in Sicily and can feed a family of 4 on 1 sardine, some capers and a bag of pasta for 87p then great. but if you live in Sunderland, have 4 kids, and it rains all year round, then a great big fuck off 32" TV has huge benefits for the family....

Well, I like him. I use his books all the time. Lots of the ministry of food ones have become weekly staples in our house. Lidl & Aldi are in every small town in Ireland now. They obviously haven't permeated the u.k. In the same way. His comments were crass and ill advised. He makes a lot of money. But behind the garble his point is you can feed your family cheaply with a few ingredients with thought and planning. Have you all really forgotten the horsemeat scandal when talking about feeding your children 1 pound frozen meals?

Article in New Statesman.
"Dear Jamie Poverty isnt pictureesque in the Mediterannean either"

www.newstatesman.com/food-and-drink/2013/08/dear-jamie-oliver-poverty-isnt-picturesque-mediterranean-either?utm_content=buffera33de&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

I stopped reading that a few paragraphs in. It's fucking grotesque. He ought to be ashamed of himself. Ignorant twat.

No doubt he'll have his gusset-moisteners on Thursday.

Limited Good job i wasnt drinking anything when id read yr comment Id have spat it out eveywhere and have a wet keyboard

My DM comes from Naples The poverty there is soul destroying He talks ABSOLUTE SHITE. You are so right he SHOULD be ashamed.

Darkesteyes thanks for posting that article. I would never have seen it otherwise.

I don't think JO is all about the money at all. I think he is passionate about it and really does care about the state of nutrition resented in schools etc. There are some professional cynics around who cry moneywhore but, it seems to me, that he believes that he can really change things. Things that do need changing.

His comments may be ill advised but I do agree with him. There are people being raised with terrible diets when they could be raised on a better one.

gah resented = presented

I'm not poor now but I have been. We have always cooked DH is better than I am. When we were poor and the DC were younger, food and tv (we had a b&w portable until 2 years ago) were our light relief/entertainment and comfort.

We are educated. We made use of the free museums and parks, any markets, grew tomatoes in pots and herbs in the window which we asked for as Christmas presents... But it is very tiring when both you work, commute and rely on flaky public transport.

We have sophisticated palates so we enjoy a traditional british shepherds pie as much as a Polish sausage stew an Indian daal or a plate of cookoo and okra. Culturally specific comfort foods. But not everybody would find that a comforting or comfortable thought and I don't begrudge anybody their bit of comfort.

And i know that some days when you are feeling depressed because things aren't working out how you'd hoped despite working hard... And you're facing another plate of something sloppy on a plate you do look at the Iceland advert promising a lamb steak grillette, wedges and peas or a Greggs sausage roll and donut to feed 4 for a couple of quid, in the same way that others might anticipate a meal out at a gastro pub. It's a change, you haven't had to make it yourself and it's a treat.

I know there are people worse off around the globe who get by on a few grams of rice/maize and some herbs cooked in dodgy water but I don't believe that means people in the UK should live the same way( and it feels like that's where we're heading with all this undeserving poor versus hardworking families rhetoric and sadly JO appears to have fallen in with this).
He needs the outraged middle classes ( upper) and pensioners who remember their mum getting by in the war ( from episodes of dads army) to watch his show, then lobby their Mps for the fast food tax.

The people who need support to afford/ know where to source and how to cook nutritious and varied diets, are not going to be watching his programme or cooking his food. It's those who will be serving his fettuccine con gizzardi pollo at dinner parties using their conran dinner service and washing it down with a good Pinot Grigio that will enjoy what he has to offer this debate the most.

Dotty, then why has he completely, and very quietly, washed his hands of the whole school dinners project while schools are still serving crap?

The schools send out shiny leaflets about 'five a day' and parents feel safe because lovely Jamie Oliver sorted everything out but the schools are still buying in exactly the same ready made slop as before. He is a fraud.

Well I do things like make my own pizza bases which are very cheap and quick but it took me a few times to get the hang of knocking back the dough and not ending up with a sticky mess. I have money to waste on bags of flour though but I can't see someone on the poverty line being able to afford to make those mistakes until they get into a home cooking routine. If you are looking at learning to cook Jamie's poncy meals are not going to be your starting point.

I don't mind JO but I've made some of his recipes and not been that thrilled.

He does come across as smug and hectoring.

Tbh I am bored of cookery programmes and endless celebrity chefs.

I agree about Delia. I have her original book and my mum also had the series so i have always referred to it plus the Good Housekeeping Cook book and recipes in GH and Prima aren't bad. also bbc good food.

Jamies are a real faff and uses to many pots and pans and standing over things. I like to do other things - mumsnet etc while the dinner takes care of itself.

I must admit i did succumb to some breaded frozen haddock yesterday which was cheaper than buying some cod and coating it myself but i did make some home made potato wedges in the oven but my DS (15) will only eat oven chips not those (oh well).

I'm not too poor now, but I have been. And the thing with poor people is that they might be working a lot of jobs. I had 3 jobs. Tiring enough during the week, but at the weekend I would work 8am-8pm in one job, then 10pm til 5am. (Energy of youth I think!) i didn't have time to faff about with home cooked meals. I just didnt. Pasta and sauce was my staple. Also I used to be a shite cook. A friend lent me a Jamie Oliver book and it didnt help me at all, I didn't know where to start and there were so many ingredients! Give me delia any day.

It infuriates me that, like everyone else, Jamie is focusing on the poor, which really means he wants to benefit bash the lazy, feckless, unhealthy poor. Take a look in the mirror Jamie, what reason do you have for being fat?! Grr

Please all of you, read this blog by A Girl Called Jack. Inspirational and powerful stuff.

Jamie = Smug idiot.

With the price of fresh meat and veg rising all the time i can see why people think its cheaper to get ready meals.

We also have a generation who are now in their teens and early twenties who were brought up on ready meals, fast food etc because both parents had to work to live and survive and fast food, freezer food was easier and quicker to do.