Jamie Oliver; Ministry of Food

Natty68

After watching the programme too, I am amazed that there are people out there that can't cook.

I was in secondary school till '84 and thankfully our cookery lessons were very practical, I can't even remember the theory side of it.

My mum was sadly one of the people that couldn't cook, when I was a lass I was brought up on fried food and fish and chips - she had a fish and chip shop for a while. Then she went onto running a truckers type cafe, hence the fried food. But I was very lucky as I had spent a lot of time with my great grandma in the kitchen. I remember every day we went walking down to the village to the various shops - the bakers for the bread, the grocers for veg and the butchers for the meat. The only concession she was that milk was delivered by the milkman. Also they grew a lot of their own food too, my grandpa had an allottment for ages as well as a pig on it. I have fond memories of sitting outside in the summer sun with a bowl of peas podding them and drinking homemade lemon barleywater. Nan could make a lovely meal out of anything, okay not healthy food by todays standards but proper traditional food. And I picked up on this from an early age, and she taught me how to do various things.

Sadly I will admit I couldn't boil an egg or poach an egg up until about 5 years ago (I'm 40) but I could make a great steak pie, trifle from scratch, or make custard using egg yolks and not a packet mix.. etc... Daft eh!!

If I had children I would definately be teaching them how to cook from an early age, but my friends children just aren't interested in cooking. Why learn when mum is quite happy to do it for them..

Welshwoofs

Now i've got my rant about JO off my chest, I've come back for another pass at the topic.

I don't think, with cases like 'Natasha' that cooking can't be looked at in isolation because her wider problem is household budgeting, parenting skills and assessing priorities. There's absolutely no point in teaching someone how to cook a meatball if they blow the money for the mince on a load of jewelry or servicing the debt on an enormous telly.

My mum was a single Mum when I was growing up in the 70s/80s and she worked all the hours to keep us going but she also cooked proper meals every day, mostly from the veg she grew in her tiny front garden and stuff she foraged. We didn't have a TV and, in fact, didn't have a bathroom! It was an old cottage with an outside toilet and we bathed in a tin tub in front of the fire. She couldn't afford to buy take-aways and packaged meals so I'm at a loss to know how a single mum on benefits can afford to do that these days

redcherry_girl

I don't know how many other people have commented on this but I noticed a few mentioned they were surprised that people didn't know how to cook because they should've been taught in school.

I'm 23, started secondary school in 1996 and finished in 2001. During Food Technology lessons (as they were then known, we only had them from year 7-9) not much would actually occur. I don't remember being taught how to cook anything nutritionally sound. We made things like flapjacks, scones or apple crumble. Generally sweet things. Or junk food like pizza. It was seen, by the whole class, as an opportunity to muck around and not do any work.

I can completely understand why these young mums (my age or younger) don't know how to cook. If their mum didn't teach them, and they didn't learn at school how are they meant to know? I learnt how to cook not by my mum teaching me (she refused to as she was worried I'd make a mess of the kitchen) but by me watching her cook nearly every evening.

I think the modern lifestyle is to blame a lot of the time. The parent(s) of the household work full time, the kids are left to entertain themselves and at the end of the day there's not enough time or energy to cook. I can completely understand why it happens. I don't understand why parents of these kids don't realise that they need to think LONG term and solve the problem creatively. Sorry to lecture, but I find it really sad that people seem to have forgotten how to make food work for itself. Whatever happened to cooking a few nights a week and having left overs the other nights?

redcherry_girl

sammyjig

I agree with other posters that Natasha needed more help than just cooking. I noticed that her excuse for not cooking any more was that she couldn't afford the bus to the supermarket and to buy the food. Wouldn't it have been better for Jamie to have helped her by meal planning and doing a shopping list and then pricing it all up (including bus fares). She would then see that it would be cheaper than her takeaways every day.
I don't always think it's about the cooking but the meal planning/shopping etc. These people have obviosly never done it before so teaching them to cook meatballs is not really going to help in the long term.
However, I do think JO is trying to help. Not sure he will succeed though

hamish222

I really enjoyed the programme. Until earlier this year I never cooked with the exception of an occasional spag bol. I eat out , bought takeaway or dined out on m&s finest. My roast potatoes / mashed / veg etc were all out of m&s. I always said I cant cook why bother when marks will do the peeling for me. I would never have bought a chicken would buy a ready stuffed joint that just needed going in oven. I started reading this site and watched a few different programmes about food wastage etc ( in past I would have thrown away as much as I used ) Had a light bulb moment and now cook all the time, I bake and love it. I understand what people are saying about starting with an really basic food but I think problem is that programme and book that is being launched needs to be appealing to a wide group of people. The young mum shown has financial dfficulties as have many others within uk but there is also a large section who dont cook due to lazyness factors more than anything else and like me have attitude why bother to cut up a cauliflour and make a white sauce when you can buy one ready made. Although I think Jamie does care and wants to make a difference he also wants to sell his book and recipes in it need to appeal to the target who might buy it. I dont think the young mum shown would ever shell out 20 quid for Jamies book regardless of what was in it. But it appeals to me as I want to learn new things like Fish Pie but I know how to make a baked spud etc and wouldn't buy it if it was too basic as I want to eat nice home cooked food, and fortunatly I can afford to buy ingrediants. I will watch the programme with interest and hopefully some of the people find a love of cooking and their diet changes for the better.

trying-very-trying

Hamish, if you can't wait for the book, here's his fish pie-http://www.jamiesministryoffood.com/content/c4/recipes/fish-pie
You'll find all of the recipes on that site that he's using in the programme.

Edit; p.s the books only £10 on amazon, so I'm sure it'll be around that in the shops in a couple of weeks.

pinknfluffy

I guess it's a bit of an old fashioned view now, but i think it is good for a family to sit at the table and have one meal a day together, when my children were younger it was just me and them as their dad left and when i picked them up from school i would ask them what they had done that day and they would say nothing, when we sat down at the table for dinner they would start to chat and tell me what went on in their lives. They are grown up now and i miss those times together. They are 6 years apart so it was nice to touch base with each other.

We were skint and dinner at least twice a week was jacket spuds, beans and cheese.

got-it-spend-it

I think a lot of it comes down to confidence, and that came out on last night's programme. I always say to my husband that if you can read, you can cook! It's straight forward to follow a recipe, but the secret to being a good home cook is being able to substitute what you have in the cupboard for what the recipe says! I guess this is the next step on from what Jamie is doing at the moment.

I am 25 and remember Food Tech lessons being more about designing packaging etc than about learning to cook. I am lucky enough to have a Mum and a Nana who both cook from scratch and spent hours letting me watch and help! I absolutely love cooking and would love to help other people learn to cook and enjoy it, and in doing so learn to use food up and so spend less.

Pitlanepiglet

I'm amazed by the number of people who cook very little and "can't" cook and regard people who can cook as odd!

I took cake into work today for one of the girls' birthdays, you'd have thought I'd achieved something quite fantastic by some of the responses, it was a coffee traybake with butter icing, I didn't even bother to cut it in half to put icing in the middle. It was my Nan's old "weight of 4 eggs" recipe and I'm not sure I can think of much that is easier than a sponge cake with butter icing!

These are educated people, who in many cases have young children. I really was gobsmacked by the responses to a sponge cake!

savingpennies

The cynic in me says, he has a book to sell and that this makes good television but he did seem to be genuinely shocked at some of the things he came across e.g. the kids eating takeaway on the floor and not being able to get into one house because of all the beer bottles/cans and fag ends on the floor.
I was also genuinely shocked and began to understand why Gordon Brown keeps going on about childhood poverty (and I'm no fan of his). What this programme showed was just how difficult it is to get people out of the poverty trap and the Guardian article that a previous poster had a link to was also shocking - a century on, the establishment of a welfare state, compulsory education until 16 and still no progress on poverty :eek:

Maybe Jamie has gone about it in the wrong way. He seemed to start ok - simple pancake, three ingredients, but I agree meatballs is not the easiest. I'd have gone for variations with mince: bolognaise, chilli, cottage pie. the fish I think was chosen because it's easy to cook - quick fry in a pan but not the cheapest.
Maybe Delia with her cheats cooking would have been better - more things to do with a tin of Campbells condensed.
I'll watch with interest and some degree of shame - that people in what is the 6th richest country in the world live like this.