EAT WELL FOR LESS - thur bbc1 8pm

[Blondeshavemorefun]

Hope this is a new series

Let’s see if each family does the usual of no no no that’s horrible and their usual brand 😂😂😂

Why is Denise in capitals? There's really no need to shout, lol

Don't find the itv version that good. I'm currently watching junior masterchef USA so I'll be going from young kids who can cook very well to adults who can't cook!

It's all making me very hungry.

I think they've got into the habit of convenience foods, she works part time so could cook some days, also all the branded food is so much more expensive, she'd save a lot by buying store brand.

It's a huge lack of knowledge AND confidence here, the gran especially seems nervous and very surprised at how easy it is to cook.

My dd is a 'don't like bits in sauces' pain so I have my own quick tomato pasta sauce I make, takes less than 5 mins, costs less than 40p per portion. I say quick, it is quick to make but tastes better a day after making. Same basic sauce minus Basil also a base for curry, stir fry and chilli sauces.

That yoghurt bit was hilarious, I have that Lidl yoghurt and it's fine.

Tomatoe sauce as a base for stir fries? That's a new one on me.

Where did that e come from? *tomato

It’s wierd. Some names always seem to change auto to capitals - DENISE being one and PETE and LUCY 😂

Haha autocorrect strikes again - yes for spicy or sweet n sour sauce.

We have been bombarded by cookery programmes for the last 20 odd years so not being able to knock up the simplest tomato sauce is staggering.
Grandma not passing down skills as she wasn't taught. Really? There are often recipe suggestions on the back of tins.
No excuse.

I was on a few threads a few months ago, discussing obesity, food expenditure, cooking skills etc

It's more complex than just laziness.

There's a real problem with skills not being handed down and lack of confidence in certain generations due at least in part to the lack of or poor cooking classes in school.

Yes ideally parents mothers know how to cook and pass those skills on but there's a particular generation where both parents working long hours coupled with a major boom in use of convenience foods AND cooking lessons being done away with in school that resulted in significant number of Brits never being taught by ANYONE to cook.

What sort of age are you referring to Graph I haven't seen the programme yet, so don't know how old the GM was, but even if both her and the DM were young parents, I thought the DD was school age, so the GM has to be late 40s at the very youngest.

I'm 45 and had cooking lessons at school, as did my brothers who are mid/late 30s. We also ate mainly cooked from scratch food at home, as well as some findus crispy pancakes etc, but most food was home cooked, because convenience was simply too expensive for a large family. Most family/friends were similar.

I think the 'surprise' at how simple cooking can be is massively exagerated in these programmes. No-one, without SNs etc is without the time or skills to make to an omelette etc, they just aren't. All the people in this show have had fully equipped kitchens and plenty of money to buy huge amounts of food, so it's not a money or resources issue like it would be with low income people in bedsits etc.

Another reason I've heard a few times re. women who'd now be in their late 50s or their 60s was mothers wanting their daughters to work and not be housewives, so not teaching them cooking, sewing etc. I would say the gran in this was in that age bracket although that wasn't a reason she mentioned for not learning to cook. There was also a lot of positivity about convenience food and improved home appliances through from the 60s to the 80s. It's easy to see people thinking they wouldn't need to cook much. You probably also remember that it was in the second half of the 90s that the foodie, cooking from scratch, trend took off.

I suspect they probably do exaggerate a bit for programmes like this.
Also the way all the people take to cooking like ducks to water. But it's nice having that positivity rather than older style shows where presenters were critical of people.

I left home with no real cooking skills but I bought a kids cookbook and learnt.

It's even easier now with youtube videos.

I really do wonder how much of the programme is true. All these people who don't know how to cook, don't have a clue what they spend on food etc.

The mum last night said she didn't realise ready prepared food such as already peeled and cut veg or ready meals were more expensive than cooking from scratch or buying veg and peeling and chopping it yourself. Really? Unless she walks around supermarkets with her eyes closed I find that hard to believe.

Had to laugh when she said she doesn't have time to peel and cut carrots and then Greg said "But you have time to shop 3 times a week". Exactly.

I know her mum also had no idea about cooking but do none of these people have other family or friends that can help them? I have helped a couple of young neighbours with ideas for meals and where to buy food.

I also don't get (unless you are rich) how you don't have at least some idea of how much you spend on food. There was another programme on last night (on itv I think) and they asked them how much they spend on takeaways. The wife guessed around £3,000 and the husband around £4,000 but the real amount was £15,000!

I've heard quite a few people say (including on here) that being financially comfortable means not having to check how much everything is in the supermarket and they are glad they don't have to do that any more. If people who aren't actually that well off (but feel better off than they used to because they've crossed threshholds like being a homeowner rather than a renter, or have both partners working) see things that way too, it's easy to see how these situations happen.

The cost of each product is pretty low so, in the same way as people often don't think about £2-3 here and there on bits and pieces and see how it all adds up, they aren't thinking about cost while buying the way they would if they were looking at mid-range clothing.

It's obvious via lots of TV shows that there are quite a lot of people out there who see cooking from scratch as a fancy middle class sort of thing to do, and from that it figures why they might think it was expensive. Or they feel it needs a particular talent. (I do know a couple of people who swear they simply don't have the knack and have tried plenty and resigned themselves to not being able to cook, and instead just heat things up. But most people probably can.)

Well even if you don't feel you have to check the price of items in a supermarket surely common sense tells you washed, peeled and cut carrots are going to be dearer than unwashed, whole carrots?

I don't know how much frozen roast potatoes are but, again, surely you would realise buying a bag of potatoes and roasting them yourself will be a lot cheaper. Also a lot nicer. Do none of these people have any taste buds?

I hate buying pre prepped veg, but as I live alone, it's actually not always more expensive as the sizes make it more economical. I still don't buy it but I'm not bleating about being short of money.

I've heard quite a few people say (including on here) that being financially comfortable means not having to check how much everything is in the supermarket and they are glad they don't have to do that any more

I must be on the cusp of being financially comfortable, because I can buy things without looking at the price in Aldi and Lidl, but not M&S or Waitrose.

Cooking is an essential life skill - and last night's programme demonstrates perfectly what happens when someone doesn't learn it - they have to rely on more expensive, pre-prepared and convenience food.

I learned to cook as a child, both at home and at school, and I think we need to go back to teaching cooking in schools, so that children all learn the basics - knife skills, basic recipes and cooking skills etc. I know that there are plenty of programmes, books and online tutorials, but following any of these will be much easier if you know the basics and understand the vocabulary - how do you dice an onion, what does it mean when a recipe says saute, how do you know when something is properly cooked.

If someone knows the basic skills, they are, in my opinion, more likely to have the confidence to try to follow a recipe/programme/online tutorial - and this confidence is key. If you don't know what you are doing, or are not confident that you will produce an edible end result, you are less likely to have a go, because you won't want to risk wasting ingredients (and money) and ending up with no dinner for the family!

They had a pretty expensive looking cooker for someone who doesn’t cook and needs money for an extension.

Still I liked this one, the kids were really great again and the faint praise from the oldest was clearly a huge deal.

I also liked that not all the recipes worked out.

I did covet that cooker, @jay55!

I am going to make the chicken biryani next week, so I will report back if it is any good.

The chicken biryani rice looked really mushy. I think the flavours would of been nice , but the rice could of done with less cooking

The gran said her mum cooked but also worked full time (which many more women were doing at this point - this would be my mums generation roughly) and so just got on with it herself, for speed, without teaching the gran how to cook. Gran I think early 50's? Probably had cooking lessons at school but didn't do proper cooking after leaving school. The quality of cookery lessons varies/varied greatly around the country too.

I'm 46 and went to 3 secondary schools (army brat) the cookery lessons at my first school were very good, from scratch and included nutritional education, the 2nd and 3rd schools not so much. Packet mixes and jars included in 'ingredients' and nutritional side ignored completely.

The mum was I think 30's and certainly a lot of people I know in their 30's, what had been cookery lessons if not dropped from the curriculum altogether, changed to food tech etc where they learned more about food marketing than real cooking and the little cooking they did were things like 'home made pizza' made using ready made bases, tomato purée and ready grated cheese 🙄 or 'design a ready meal' type tasks.

Certainly by the time my dd - 17 - reached that stage of school it was designing posters for new products, 'inventing' ready prepped sandwiches that would sell well the most cooking she ever did was assembling a wrap!!

Luckily I come from a background where both my grans cooked from scratch, baked weekly and taught their kids to cook. One gran it was her job, she was a catering assistant in a large factory. Mum cooked from scratch and when we were little baked weekly (this petered out as we got older and she worked longer hours, also she had more on her plate at home) and taught all of us, from quite a young age. And I've taught dd in the same way.

It shocks me too when I read on here mners saying their 13/14/15 year olds don't even have ONE basic family meal they can cook independently. But several threads mean I have some understanding of why that is (don't necessarily always agree).

As for not knowing how much they're spending, I wonder how many of you questioning this really know how much you spend? I recently needed to check my expenditure (I'm on a tight budget anyway but needed to change some habits due to household changes and it was getting tricky) so sat down with ALL my receipts/online bank statement to check on and I was spending more than I thought - not a lot as I don't have it - but I was 'forgetting' bits n pieces in my head.

I think a lot of people if you ask them 'what do you spend on food/groceries per week?' Will answer based on their 'big shop' and forget

Top up shops
Takeaways
Food and drink bought while out and about
Food and drink bought through socialising

Which can easily add up.

Mydogisbest - I think people do know it's more expensive, but I think they probably don't know HOW much more expensive until it's set before them as a comparison. Then it's a shock because they haven't given it much thought.

"There was also a lot of positivity about convenience food and improved home appliances through from the 60s to the 80s" yep, this too. I well remember more and more convenience items creeping into use at home as mum worked longer hours and our household had less cohesive mealtimes. Plus just how unhealthy certain convenience foods are wasn't yet really acknowledged. Certainly the manufacturers weren't shouting it from the rooftops!

Fluffcloudland - it's motivation too, if like me you enjoy food (too much! )you'll probably find convenience foods pretty bland and boring and prefer freshly cooked foods. So will be motivated to cook and try new recipes and flavours. But some people (shocking I know! ) don't really enjoy food in the same way, they see food as a necessity they have to deal with. As fuel but nothing more. They're not personally motivated to improve what they eat.

I know 2 people in real life who genuinely can't cook despite huge efforts on their own and others behalf. One it just always somehow comes out wrong and tastes weird. The other (and her brothers a chef!! They were both raised by a cooking mum) is frankly dangerous! Numerous fires and things blowing up and umpteen instances of food poisoning etc - it's utterly bewildering!

And as I said earlier on thread I agree confidence is key. Some might say well practice builds confidence but SDTG notes people will be nervous of being able to produce food that's eaten and therefore food (and money!) isn't wasted. I won't try a new recipe by making enough for both dd and I, I'll make enough for one and let her try some before I eat it, I'll eat it even if I'm not that keen (but make a mental note not to make again) so it's not wasted, and if we do both like it, next time make for both of us. But honestly with my current budgetary constraints I am having to be less adventurous/experimental as I can't afford to risk a wasted meal.

In addition (and not really relevant to this thread) but the ingredients aren't the only cost people have to consider - there's also fuel. That's where sometimes for some people convenience foods can occasionally work out cheaper - at least short term.

I’m early sixties and had basic cookery lessons at school and my Mum taught me to cook a few things at home too. I have 3 sons in their 30’s who all learnt to cook at school, they then cooked for themselves at University and they now cook in their own homes. I find it hard to believe that so many people on these programmes can’t cook anything at all. As someone else said, how hard is it to make an omelette, scrambled eggs or a jacket potato, even if in the microwave. I made fairy cakes with my boys when they were little and all of their Birthday cakes. I then taught them basic dishes, like chilli, spaghetti and shepherds pie, good old versatile mince 😊