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?

that you need left over roast lamb

Left over lamb - wtf is that

Don't have that show here but I cant stand the bloke anyway. There are much better cooking shows that are realistic. Who can afford to put pomegranate seeds into a salad - c'mon Jamie! One pomegranate costs more than all the salad ingredients put together!

Am shocked at the price jump of Lamb especially as the Farmer sees very little of that increase. Not so many years ago a half leg of lamb was £3,85. Now it is stratospheric and one teenage boy will eat the whole thing. JO has NO idea how much a physically active, sporty teenage boy needs to eat.

I have in the past bought a whole butchered lamb with friends and shared it out. That works out at much better value but still way beyond the budget of many of us. I would never recommend lamb to people on low budgets because it is so inconsiderate of the realities of being money challenged.

And it is the kind of meat that teenage boys raid compulsively from the fridge!

lollylaugh you obviously haven't seen his left over salmon episode. I would readily admit I have no idea how to live on a tight budget. Even I don't have left over salmon! (We don't eat lamb so I wouldn't know about that one). I think he is giving money saving tips for city banker wives.

I don't think his heart is anywhere but in his own pocket....

onelittletoddler

Bwahahaaa leftover salmon!!! What planet is he on [shocked]

(Norwegian Salmon here costs about double the price of lamb)

What is with the Uncle Ben's - surely that can't be the most economical way of buying rice? Waves that orange packet around every episode.

I reckon 'budget food' for him means getting someone else to sponsor you promote their stuff while you cook on the telly.

Actually I think the problem is that people with very little money are not the audience. Its for people who spend £40+ every week on takeaways and throw half their food away uneaten. People who live like that are not poor.

On the plus side, he has got me making beef pot roast which I had never done before and I made a delicious 'Indonesian' dinner from the leftovers which my kids loved. That worked out quite well at £12 for the meat which fed 4 of us handsomely for 2 days and enough left over for my packed lunch.

I don't know I've had some good ideas from his show. The product placement is obvious and we are warned at the start of the show, I don't see what the problem is. I keep to a fairly strict budget and a lot of the meals fit quite well into it, and giveme a few ideas with regards to leftovers that are a lot more interesting than reheating last nights dinner. It's obviously aimed at the squeezed middle as opposed to those in real dire straits, the ones who are too lazy to cook properly and waste money on takeaways (like dh). I've been very very poor, I couldn't afford to put the telly on if I wanted to eat, so it really wouldn't have bothered me if Jamie was about back then.

His budget show is rubbish,i do really like him and the food he makes but its not really budget food,maybe if you already spend a lot on food and want to cut down a bit then yeah,it might cost less than usual.

I cook a lot from his 30 minute and 15 minute meals books and it always costs a lot,probably at least 10-15 per meal,usually because of all the fresh herbs i have to buy,i should grow them really but i cant be arsed.

I still like Jamie.

deckswabber that's the thing though. I'm not sure his audience is normal people. More like the top 10% of earners? I don't think we are poor with two incomes, but neither of us are higher rate tax payer. I guess I'm the squeezed middle? Buying £6.60/kg of fresh pasta and large slab of whole salmon for leftovers are out of our budget.

But yes, maybe compared to spending £40 on takeaways this is cheap. We never get takeaways so his budget looks far too high to me.

I have an idea for a Jamie Oliver reality TV programme but mine doesn't involve living on benefits in a bedsit.

Mine would be in a big forest with banjo-strumming hillbillies. I might make them cannibals.

ringaringarosy I buy supermarket herbs and split them and then put them in a large rectangular window box. I'm only on my second pot of basil since the beginning of summer, and we use basil a lot. I am growing coriander, basil and parsley all using this method. It saves a lot on herbs. (If you have the space for growing things. Like you say, it's for the squeezed middle).

What about putting him on Celebrity Big Brother? He'd have to work with a budget of 50p per person, unless the group passed the task

I agree OneLittleToddleTerror.

I wouldn't pay that much either. I very rarely get a takeaway and I hardly throw anything away, because I can't afford it. Jamie isn't going to trim much off my food bill.

Mine would be in a big forest with banjo-strumming hillbillies. I might make them cannibals
sick and weird - funny though - plenty of fat steaks on Jamie....

What do you mean by split them?is it a gardening term?(sorry if i am being dim,i am rubbish with anything like that!)

ringaringarosy you take the pot of herb, split the soil/root bit into 2-4 parts, depending on how strong the plant root structure is. Then you pot them into a much large pot with multipurpose compost. Hope this makes sense.

ohhhh ok,i will try that!thanks

just wait for the movie where he sings about being on a budget:

Jamie Oliver Twist!

I suspect Jack from a A Girl Called Jack will be given a TV to coincide with her book launch next year. I think that would be a proper lesson in how to prepare good meals on a properly restricted budget.

Actually I've just had to google A Girl Called Jack to see if she's 'pretty enough' for TV, no way producers would give a TV show to a plain young female chef.

Jack has a weekly Guardian column now and addressed the party conferences.

She is gay too- that has been something people have attacked her over.

If you want cheap, perfectly edible pasta, buy dried.

If you want fresh pasta but are on a budget, make it your fucking self.

But yy to the idea that "budget" to JO means "doesnt cost anything as is paid for through advertising"

I wouldnt want to watch a girl called jack on tv,shes really miserable and doesnt have any screen presence,plus her recipes are ok,but i dont think we need to be shown how to mix some cooked pasta and a tin of mushy peas together.

I love Tesco value spaghetti. I will be gutted if it is later revealed to contain horse.