(no subject)
Feb. 24th, 2005 08:12 pmThe next chapter of [The City] has been written, but I think it's a very boring chapter. I may go write the following one (or two) too, and then edit them together and see the overall effect.
Jamie's school dinners started yesterday. I really enjoyed the show, as I did with his old show where he trained his chefs for "15".
For those who don't know, Jamie Oliver's a top chef who has become some sort of a celebrity chef. His style is rugged, very "throw everything together and voila" but it really works (I tried). In this show he went to take over the kitchens at a state school and has to cook for hundreds of kids with a very tight budget - 37p per person per meal. That's how much state schools get from the government to feed the kids.
It's a phenomenol challenge, to jump into something like that and trying to make it work on day one. With that sort of budget, the school has no choice but to feed them the shit everyone knows as school food. And if it has one single bit of veg in it, the kids refuse to eat it. What Jamie tries to do in the show is to cook them all healthy food that they'll like, with that sort of a budget.
At one point, what he said really struck me. He complained to a friend after seeing the food the kids were fed with. Processed, reconstituted crap with no nutritional value at all. He said something to the effect of, we've got this government trying to get people to be healthy, we spend all this money on the NHS trying to help people with heart disease, obesity... but look at the sort of shit they feed to our kids. This is where all the problems start! They give you 37p per kid for lunch, what are you supposed to do?
And I thought, fuck, that's so true.
Can't wait for next week's show.
Jamie's school dinners started yesterday. I really enjoyed the show, as I did with his old show where he trained his chefs for "15".
For those who don't know, Jamie Oliver's a top chef who has become some sort of a celebrity chef. His style is rugged, very "throw everything together and voila" but it really works (I tried). In this show he went to take over the kitchens at a state school and has to cook for hundreds of kids with a very tight budget - 37p per person per meal. That's how much state schools get from the government to feed the kids.
It's a phenomenol challenge, to jump into something like that and trying to make it work on day one. With that sort of budget, the school has no choice but to feed them the shit everyone knows as school food. And if it has one single bit of veg in it, the kids refuse to eat it. What Jamie tries to do in the show is to cook them all healthy food that they'll like, with that sort of a budget.
At one point, what he said really struck me. He complained to a friend after seeing the food the kids were fed with. Processed, reconstituted crap with no nutritional value at all. He said something to the effect of, we've got this government trying to get people to be healthy, we spend all this money on the NHS trying to help people with heart disease, obesity... but look at the sort of shit they feed to our kids. This is where all the problems start! They give you 37p per kid for lunch, what are you supposed to do?
And I thought, fuck, that's so true.
Can't wait for next week's show.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-24 09:31 pm (UTC)At one point I thought he'd throw his hat and say he gives up. Still, he swore less than he did on the programme for "15" *snicker*
£1.30 is very good! My school (private boarding, charged nearly £5000 a term in 2000) served meals that cost less than £1, as far as I can remember... (I used to chat with the cooks quite a bit ^^)