Jamie Oliver; Ministry of Food

elisamoose

Fourcandles wrote: »

Well at the risk of being flamed I left home at 15 unable to cook. My mum only had Whisky in the evenings and I would usually just hide in my room till the next morning, sometimes if she'd passed out I go and get what I could from the cupboard, usually dry cereal or a jam sandwich as I didn't want to hang around in case she woke. Dad worked as a long distance lorry driver so he was only around at weekends.

I couldn't afford to live on take aways, thankfully I had my dinner at work most days and got by on fishfingers sandwiches, and ready made lasagne type stuff in the evenings and weekends.

It was only when I was pregnant (my husband doesn't cook and neither does his mum), that I took the time to eat even remotley healthily. I honestly think it was the first time I'd had had veg in years.

Everyone says learning to cook is easy, but it's not. Or at least it wasn't for me. Can you imagine how humiliating it is having to ask the greengrocer which part of the spring onions you can eat?

Following a recipe isn't the same as understanding a recipe, not does it mean you can cook. Many recipes are overcomplicated and to be honest frightening to someone who has never even made tea before.

I really feel that just having someone spend a little bit of time now and then would have made my life so much easier. Well done Jamie Oliver. Too many of us missed out on valuable life skills and have suffered for it.

I work as a mentor in an inner city school.We have just had funding from the local Primary Care Trust dieticians to train as 'Healthy School Cooking Club Leaders'.We also got set up cash to buy basic kit.My school , a primary, does not have a kitchen or cookery room so I am improvising with a meeting room. I am teaching small groups basic healthy eating and cooking skills .The kids love it ! Many of them do not eat well at home and rely on school dinners for the main meal of the day.
I hope I am that ' someone spending a little time now and then' with the kids I wirk with!

Blairweech

Just wanted to give everyone a recommendation about a book that is quite fitting - It's by Tom Norrington-Davies, called Cupboard Love. It's basically home cooked junk food/takeaway - he has a chapter about curries, one about pizza/kebabs, one 'on toast' etc, most of which use standard storecupboard ingredients.

mollymunchkin

I'm pleased to say that all is not lost as I found out tonight that my 3 year old DS has a 'cooking corner' at school where they learn to cook. This week they are learning how to bake cakes :j He loves to get in the kitchen to help out and I'm going to definitely encourage him more.

pigpen

at our nursery the school got a grant from somewhere or other and now do twice weekly cooking sessions with the children.. and encourage the parents to go in and help/learn

dawkins

I think the fact that JO is trying to help some people learn how to cook is great. Not being able to cook is, as many have said, just ONE part of an inability to feed your family or yourself home-cooked food but surely it's unrealistic to expect him to fix all of these people's other problems, in terms of budget, motivation, self-esteem, social situation and so on. What's wrong with him trying to help in his area of expertise? Let's face it - he doesn't need the money, so I find it hard to believe he does things like this purely for ego or publicity reasons. There's a great British tradition of knocking people who try to do something or change things - especially if they are posh or successful - which can be great for pricking the bubbles of the pompous, but I personally think he's just trying to put something back. End of rant.

jet77

Fourcandles wrote: »

Everyone says learning to cook is easy, but it's not. Or at least it wasn't for me. Can you imagine how humiliating it is having to ask the greengrocer which part of the spring onions you can eat?

What part of the spring onions can you eat? I still don't know and what would you use it in? salad?

My Mum didn't make any HM food and I wanted to make a stew once and had to go and ask the butcher what to do with the meat. I can't remember what he told me now (just remember the humiliation ) but I remember that the stew didn't turn out as stew and was disgusting :rotfl:I learnt how to cook by asking friends Mums and coming on here but as you can tell from the lack of knowledge about spring onions I'm no expert yet.

PasturesNew

I never did cookery at school and never bothered to cook "just for me". I've started now and when you first start cooking (especially for one person, with no freezer) the main problems are:
- recipes all use different forms of measurement.
- you need lots of unexpected equipment
- a lot of ingredients are used in many recipes, a bit of this/bit of that; these can be quite hard to track down and expensive on that first shopping trip. I've been looking for oregano for 4 weeks now, I'll find it eventually but I'll have to go out of my way to do so.
- no matter how many of these basic ingredients you get together, the next recipe will always require 1-2 new/different ones minimum.
- no matter what new items you buy, you'll always need a new piece of equipment. I made my first cake the other week, I had no mixing bowl so started it in a measuring jug, had to tip that out into a big plastic food storage box to finish it off (had no idea how much volume the recipe would require), then I had no cake tin. Today I bought a mixing bowl.

When you start cooking you've no idea if you will like what you cook, so it seems a waste often to buy all those pricey ingredients and equipment in case you never need to use it again.

Then the instructions aren't clear if you've never seen it before. However, being able to find videos of people making stuff online is a real bonus. You can see what they do/what it looks like!

For my first loaf of bread I even had to buy my first bag of sugar in 8 years and some salt - the only salt I'd ever bought before had been years ago for clearing ice from the path.

Bargain_Rzl

Jet77 - you can basically eat all of a spring onion, except the root. Some pre-packed spring onions come ready trimmed, but otherwise, just chop a little bit off both ends - to get rid of what's left of the tough root at the white end, and the ragged/straggly bits at the green end - and the rest is all edible :-)

bandraoi

PasturesNew wrote: »

I never did cookery at school and never bothered to cook "just for me". I've started now and when you first start cooking (especially for one person, with no freezer) the main problems are:
- recipes all use different forms of measurement.
- you need lots of unexpected equipment
- a lot of ingredients are used in many recipes, a bit of this/bit of that; these can be quite hard to track down and expensive on that first shopping trip. I've been looking for oregano for 4 weeks now, I'll find it eventually but I'll have to go out of my way to do so.
- no matter how many of these basic ingredients you get together, the next recipe will always require 1-2 new/different ones minimum.
- no matter what new items you buy, you'll always need a new piece of equipment. I made my first cake the other week, I had no mixing bowl so started it in a measuring jug, had to tip that out into a big plastic food storage box to finish it off (had no idea how much volume the recipe would require), then I had no cake tin. Today I bought a mixing bowl.

When you start cooking you've no idea if you will like what you cook, so it seems a waste often to buy all those pricey ingredients and equipment in case you never need to use it again.

Then the instructions aren't clear if you've never seen it before. However, being able to find videos of people making stuff online is a real bonus. You can see what they do/what it looks like!

For my first loaf of bread I even had to buy my first bag of sugar in 8 years and some salt - the only salt I'd ever bought before had been years ago for clearing ice from the path.

Can I recommend Mary Berry's cook book. It has a list of all the basic cooking equipment you'll need for her recipes at the start and at the beginning of each section there's a description (with pictures) of things related to that section - meat, pasta, cakes etc. That includes pictured illustrations of the basic cooking techniques.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mary-Berrys-Complete-Cookbook-Berry/dp/0751364401/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223449438&sr=8-1

Oregano you'll get in the herbs and spices section of every supermarket and often in corner shops as it's quite common. I would often interchange it with basil or mixed herbs.

Beccatje

fourcandles well done you! ANd thank you so much for sharing your story.

mumoftwo great!!.. I love buttenutsquash soup! I'll bet DD was very proud.

My kids love to come into the kitchen and help me cook. Especially the youngest one. I'm going to make a bigger effort to let them help as a lot of the times I just don't want them under my feet when I'm rushed.

Personally, I think it's great that Jamie Oliver does this. Because wether or not you agree with him and maybe the method that he's using, he's got people talking about it all over the place! The food/cooking problem is getting loads of attention and that's what you need to get people to change. He can't help people with all of their problems but he's at least doing something. And he's sticking his neck out along with it.