Save with Jamie Oliver £6.60 per kilo for fresh pasta V £1.30 dried

[Mynameismina]

Just checked on sainsburys website. Seriously is he suggesting that buying fresh pasta is the budget option?

My mum is Italian and ive never known her to use fresh pasta as long as ive been alive and im 40

His wine has been around for a while. I hide it behind other bottles whilst pretending to be deliberating. I do the same with his books.

at speed.

MrsKoala that is a great idea.

I think MN should call him out on it. We should start a campaign. Is there something called twitter we could use? [clueless face] . Come on Jamie. Show us what you've got. 7 days, 3 meals a day. Nice, easy, quick ones which you can do after a long shift. Some batch cooking fine. But nothing which would require a freezer (a lot of people can't afford those). Ones which feed you amply if you are hungry, after doing a manual job/walking everywhere. And are nutritious. I DARE YOU! Are you chef enough to take the challenge? Or any other chefs out there? Gordon? Delia? Using only supermarkets of course, as we don't all have those great little local butchers like you do. Oh and shop for it yourself and carry it a mile home. All on camera. Hey fuckit. Why just chefs? Politicians, i dare you too. All of you. DO IT!

I like how they display his book in sainsburys - they have a price sticker over the 'with' so it looks like the book is called save Jamie

I wondered if he was short on cash or something...

Anais I get everywhere.

Yes MrsKoala that is brilliant, how do we get this challenge out there? I think Delia would do it in fact.

Is that a typo?
Shouldn't it be Jamie Oliver whine?

You can buy two large chickens for £10 in morrisons but they aren't organic

Good idea mrs koala!
Didn't they try this though?
Not long ago?
And none of the chefs could do it.
They all went over budget.

There was something similar on the Great British Menu Budget Challenge a couple of months ago, but the chefs only lived with their hosts for three days I think. But it was a much better insight for them than Jamie seems to have. Richard Corrigan just didn't get it though and blew more than his family's alloted budget on a side of salmon I think. Angela Hartnell did very well indeed and just seemed to really understand the issues, James Martin did okay too. But none of them have to live with the sheer grind of it for months at a time, and only James had to deal with very limited cooking facilities (just a hob iirc).

For the challenge:

Is there a fridge?

I tried to make his "leftover beef" noodle soup yesterday, but I think that leftover beef is like leftover wine - it jumps straight into your mouth as you are passing and there's not enough left to make a meal out of.

I think Delia should put herself up for the challenge. She has a lot more common sense than most of the other chefs put together.

Then she could become our 'National Treasure' again!

(Talking of National Treasures', I bet Mary Berry would be up for it, too.)

sparkle I think even 3 days can give you a pretty good insight. It would be a bit much to ask them to slog it for a month, wouldn't it? As for whether one should use a local farmers market. A challenge like the one you said would make it clear what the family has access too. Where I live currently, I can't get to any ethnic shop or farmers market. But at my last place, I live just next to the high street, and we have two ethnic shops, a butcher, two greengrocers. There is also a fruit market once a week during university term time. There is also two supermarkets on the two ends of the high street. It's a much less affluent area than where I live now. So I can understand some people do have access to this type of thing on foot. I used to get all my veg from the ethnic shop and greengrocers.

Oh and I'm counting only the indian and chinese shop. There are many polish shops too but I've never set foot in them.

Top Chef Swap needs commissioning. What a brilliant idea !

The value pastas are cut using different machinery so they lack the 'roughened edges' that reduce sticking. Expensive Pasta is 'Bronze Cut'.

I buy good dried pasta when it is on offer- De Cecco and Barilla but have perfectly good results from huge 3 Kg bags of bog standard Fusilli. I really love the more unusual shapes though such as Fusili Con Boco, Strozzapreti (lovely and chewy), Mafalde (long frill edged strips) and Ondule.

This is a useful guide.

The real revelation in pasta and sauce making in my house is adding a couple of spoons of the boiling water to the sauce. It makes it so much smoother and silkier.

JO is a tool. His recipes online and in magazines are so full of product placement that they lack all credibility. It is ugly.

The thing is, I think he is tackling some tough issues and I agree with a lot of what he says in principle. But none of that overrides the fact that every day, he becomes more and more of a giant arse.

His twattishness is now his over-riding feature, and it obliterates any good messages he's trying to put out there.

It's unfortunate.

Vesta If JO was using Speed he wouldn't be so fat .

I think Save with Jamie is useful if you are fairly well off but just need to save a bit. Definitely not if you are living hand to mouth.

skinny

he is a knob - fact!

Jamie is cooking on a budget. If you're a millionaire !

Jamie Oliver is a dishonest fat-lipped prick

I got given some of his budget recipe cards the other day (ex FIL reads the Sun!) and one of them said that you need left over roast lamb. Lamb is beyond the pocket of anyone even vaguely on a budget atm, it costs a fortune, never mind enough for 2 meals!

I think his heart is in the right place but he simply has no clue as to what being on a tight budget really means.

I know a story about his parents pub. They were advertising 'fresh wild mushrooms' as part of their dead trendy hip menu. Unfortunately, the mushrooms came from a supermaket packet.