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!

[alemci]

i bought one of his books (30 min meals) and sold it on ebay. so much faffing about and mess. I like things you can bung in the oven and forget about.

i tend to cook from scratch but do use things like a jar of white sauce to go over lasagne etc.

you can make casseroles which are cheap and shepherds pie etc. mind you potatoes have become very expensive of late

[LoopThePoop]

I couldn't even bring myself to read the link!
I actually hate his recipes.

I read cookery books like novels. I love food, love looking at cookery books. I do have a well stocked larder and use stuff up.
Cheap meat can be transformed.

I was given one of his books. I tried two recipes. They were both vile. The book is in the charity shop.
There is a such thing as too many ingredients. Being a good chef isn't about adding loads of random shit. Someone should tell him that.

Smug faced tosser with the most annoying mouth in the world.

[Thaumatrope]

All this talk of there being no suitable shops near you: what do you do when you go to other places, not near you; or do you just not ever visit anywhere? Don't you pass through other areas?

I just find it impossible to believe that veg shops are inaccessible in London

[Tailtwister]

I'm not in London Thaumatrope, but do live in a largish city. The outskirts are where the poorer areas are and yes, they do really have access to just corner shops. A lot of people don't travel around, even locally as they can't afford it.

[SacreBlue]

I don't even have a tv but I don't buy artisan bread or make it myself. I do cook though, a lot, and really enjoy it, and don't spend even half as much as I would on ready meals (even M&S dine in thingies need a bit of additional veg I find).

Does that stop me having a supply of pot noodles in case the boy can't wait til dinner or stop me from ordering the odd takeaway? Nope. I do feel a bit ragey sorry for someone who only has ready meals or very poor quality food because frankly there is no need when you can easily knock up something from very little and very cheap (national potato day on the 23rd there and FACT you can live on 14lbs of potatoes and 1 pint of milk a day - whether you would want to.......)

[Fillyjonk75]

I liked his work on school meals but they are still out of reach for a lot of people. £2.25 is a lot on a meal for one person, especially when it's not that great.

[limitedperiodonly]

I almost choked to death when a mange tout slathered in melted butter went down the wrong way.

[littlemisswise]

I shop online and have it delivered, Thauma. I can because DH earns quite a good wage and I can afford to feed my family without too much worry. If we a family on a low income without a car we would be a bit buggered tbh. We could spend a fiver and catch the bus to the next town, stock up at Iceland and have it delivered, or we could shop at Tesco or the Co-Op.

[Fillyjonk75]

London is quite well served for a variety of food options, in most areas anyway. In other cities and the burbs, not so.

[wordfactory]

*MrsDV that's simply not true.

Every week JO is offered armfuls of differnet projects. Many would make far more money than things like this. Many would ensure he sin't lambasted like this.

Yet he gravitates towards these sorts of projects because he feels he should use his status to try to make a difference.

Maybe he's misguided....I dunno....but to say he does this to make money is nit the full story.

[squoosh]

Here's an interesting table that demonstrates just how cheap crap food is compared to healthy food. Granted it's American but can be applied to the UK also to a large degree.

www.mymoneyblog.com/what-does-200-calories-cost-the-economics-of-obesity.html

[Mindmaps]

Thaumatrope - travel costs money - many of the poorest live on vast bleak estates with expensive 'convenience' stores as the only shop for miles. Or there are the rural poor - one bus a week at a stupid time of the day £10 return to the nearest town and how much can YOU carry with a couple of toddlers and or baby etc?

TV's ??? when you have NO money for museums,cinema, days out etc they are a lifesaver. And yes I know there are lots of 'free' activities but they are usually quite parent intensive and TV can actually be educational and at the end of the day its CHEAP entertainment and even the 'poor' deserve some bloody time off don't they ?

But do agree that kids should be taught to budget and cook healthy and cheap meals at school - One of mine had to make a chocolate bar from their own recipe - cost me £8 ? How many families have that to spare on a pointless exercise when learning to cook spag bol or something similar would be so much better.

There needs to be a ground roots cooking and budgeting project - run by real people living real lives with jobs, kids and BIG TV's

This is a subject that MN should be involved in

[LEMisdisappointed]

WEll. i got the first question in on his webchat! I challenged him to feed a family of four with £30 for a week, but with NO "storecupboard" ingredients to fall back on!

[Thaumatrope]

littlemisswise, I suppose I am just bothered by the notion that because something isn't right there in the area you live in, it is therefore not accessible ever without a massive outlay.

Let's say you don't live somewhere with an Asian shop, and you want some of those cheap ingredients that cost three times more for smaller bottles of worse quality in Tesco. Why would you not just wait until you were going into town for another reason, and save on travel costs?

[Absy]

He's seriously out of touch, particularly the comment about Sicilian being able to buy mussells etc. and make an amazing meal.

Not that I buy mussells, but frmo what I've seen they tend to be expensive and not something you can easily pick up in a supermarket. Likewise saying that people should shop in markets (not always convenient) rather than supermarkets so they can buy smaller portions. Why not ask his sponsor, Sainsburies, to start selling fruit and vegetables in a way that you can buy portions (e.g. having loose tomatoes, rather than having to buy a minimum of six), rather than blaming the most vulnerable in society?

[Thaumatrope]

Mindmaps, I do take the point about convenience stores on estates.
But I grew up very rural poor, single parent family, and it is do-able to eat well: you organise. We had one veg shop with the wrinkliest seconds, and one delivery a week. You find ways to use them. And for other ingredients: we made a point of picking them up when in the big town (70 miles away, so a rare trip) or we got people to get things for us. (Mahoosive £1 bottles of soy sauce spring to mind.)
We didn't grow veg, but others did (and I do now).
You don't plan on expensive bus trips to pick up a couple of nice veg and a bottle of balsamic.

[Bakingnovice]

He really hates poor people doesn't he?

For what it's worth I volunteer with lots of poor people, many holding down full time jobs and considered by society to be MC. A lot of these people are struggling to put food on the table, many adults missing meals so the kids don't go without. I know one family who wait outside the '99p bakery' at closing to grab the half price bread. Dear fat rich Jamie, this is not the time to start criticising poorer families about the content of their daily diets. Is he so ignorant tat he hasn't witnessed the massive growth of food banks in many places? Is he so misinformed that he thinks his artisan breads, fresh crab and homemade sweet chilli dip (served on £200 wooden chopping boards) are affordable to all?

I am so so sick of his judging. Go back to your country farm, into your bespoke garden kitchen and think up some new cheap fast recipes which will actually take three times as long as you suggest, and cost five times as much.

Look around you and you will see many working class and middle class families really struggling to serve any food at all. So lets not start judging what little they do have.

[Mindmaps]

Thaumatrope - many of the poorest people do not 'go to town' for a different reason - if you don't work you tend not to do this casual travelling you are talking off just due to cost. Do not base your assumptions on your own life the same way Jamie has, its the basic mistake so many daily Mail types and to be honest 'do gooders' make !

Also a lot of Asian shops tend to be out of townish( in Asian areas mostly) anyway as do a lot of markets these days - fine if you have car - slightly more awkward if its 2 buses away.

[Fillyjonk75]

But someone in your house could cook, Thauma. Loads of people can't these days. It doesn't mean they are morally inferior, they just can't cook. Part of being in dire poverty for a lot of people is being information-poor as well as financially badly off, with little prospect of easily changing it.

[mrsjay]

just find it impossible to believe that veg shops are inaccessible in London

urm we dont all live in bloody London jeez


apologies to any Londoners who do realise we are not all in the city of london

[Mindmaps]

Thaumatrope I know lots of people who lead extraordinary lives on budgets - they tend to be very intelligent, organised and mostly educated, probably like your mum? These are not the people we are talking about and/or the people who need some real help that is accessible and doable.

[FasterStronger]

there is no way JO's PR people will have advised this course of action. a friend does this type of work.

whether he is right or wrong, he has good intentions.

[AppleYumYum]

Yes claudedebussy exactly, he puts himself out there so of course people have to tear him down. No one wants to hear the hard stuff.

I think you are being a bit harsh, yes he has done well for himself, but he does actually care and his heart is in the right place. He could just be a smug rich chef who releases books, appears on Saturday kitchen cooking some crap and does nothing more. Like him or not, he has done more to tackle the poor standard of meals at schools etc than anyone else and has shown people cooking from scratch doesn't have to be scary and an exact science, handfulls and pinches instead of carefully measured, slap dash rather than a work of art etc.