Last night, before I settled down to watch the vice-presidential debate, I watched the first of a new series of programmes with Jamie Oliver. I don’t know if it’s become less trendy to like Jamie Oliver, but I actually like him more and more. His life could be easy – very easy. But he’s chosen to rant (his own expression) and thus to make enemies, because lots of people hate ranting. (I do a bit of ranting myself, so know what he’s talking about). He rants about food obviously. But his concern is a country where people have forgotten how to cook. They don’t know what real food tastes like and they certainly don’t know how to shop for it, prepare it, even eat it!
He visited a couple of single mums on welfare. One of them had her children eating out of Styrofoam boxes on the kitchen floor – who needs a dining table, when there are no real meals? – her 4-year old daughter had never 
tasted a home cooked meal in her life. Jamie took a look in her fridge. The vegetable drawers were filled to the brim with – chocolate bars! And there was not a trace of any vegetables, any fruit, any kind of real food in the house.
That’s what he’s determined to change. He wants all of us who can cook to take it upon us to teach other people to cook. He’s even put it into a system. Read about it on his Ministry of Food homepage.
I want to teach some people to cook. I want to take part in this. I’m often surprised at what people have – and maybe even more at what they have not – in their fridges and kitchen cupboards. And at what’s considered “a meal”. When Dane tells me what some of the other children have in their lunch boxes, I’m genuinely shocked. It’s cheese dippers, white sandwich bread with square slices of “ham”, so-called yoghurt (15-25% sugar), rarely fruit and certainly no veg.
I know it’s quite unlikely that any of my readers 1) can’t cook 2) want to learn 3) live near here. But – if that were the case, please drop me a line and we’ll set up a date for a cookery class with a nice meal at the tail end.
If you live far away or just can’t be bothered to have me as a teacher, but still want to improve your cooking skills, I can only once more recommend the excellent Videojug, where you can learn to cook a wide variety of lovely meals. Bring you laptop into the kitchen – and cook!
Btw. what kind of food do you think Sarah Palin cooks for her family?
Two things:
1. I absolutely admire you for having time and energy to always blog well written and worth reading comments on what ever is going on in this rather sick world of ours.
2. Talking about the children’s lunch boxes you forgot the chocolate bars, crisps and juices – not to mention the weekly cake sale at schools…
I’m absolutely appalled and my children are appalled with having the meanest mum on Earth… but they do see sense :-))
Thank you so much for you kind comment. You probably can’t guess how warming it feels.
I guess we’re lucky, because at Dane’s school chocolate, candy and crisps are not allowed in the lunch box. And no cake sale.
Dane also thinks that I’m a mean mum, when I won’t give him cheese dippers, soft bread or juice in his lunch box. He accepts it, though. And he does love both rye bread and my own bread.
But what’s really troubling is that some of the other children tease him with the food that he actually loves. I think that those children, but particularly their parents, should be ashamed of themselves!!