The Yak Shack Forum

I don't know if you have seen the program "Jamies Dinners" - or school dinners or something, and indeed I missed them all except the last one.

The story is as follows - British Schools are given a budge of 37 pence to make a lunch for a child. 37 pence? I spend more than that on a piece of fruit sometimes!

What they get for their 37 pence dinner is a few chips or smiley potato faces and reconsituted meat - like Chicken nuggets or a very dicy looking reconsituted pork product. It's not healthy and it's not good.

Anyway BritChef Jamie Oliver has got on the case and is petitioning for 15 pence more per child and an hours extra labour a day for dinner ladies. He has created a whole batch of recipes which disguise 5 or 6 different vegetables in them (the children are reluctant to give up their fatty foods of course).

You can view the website and sign the petition here -

http://www.feedmebetter.com/

If you are not English please don't hesitate to sign simply because it doesn't directly affect you - many developed world schools are the same and if the model can be proven to work here it can be proven to work anywhere. So far Jamie's got it working in hundreds of schools across a London Borough so it can work!!!

Cheers to you Roz.                              dave

This is really cool! Thanks for posting this :)

It's starting tonight in Oz - definitely on my must see list!

http://www.entertainment.news.com.au/story/0,10221,12841386-10229,00.html (http://www.entertainment.news.com.au/story/0,10221,12841386-10229,00.html)

I particularly like how they describe Jamie's reaction to the kids' lack of knowledge of celery:

'At this point, Oliver might have been forgiven for running screaming down the corridor of the London school he has his sights on changing. But he is made of sterner stuff, our Jamie. He does not run screaming down the corridor until late in the episode.'

 ;D

Ooh - was that last night? Did you watch?

American presidents will be driving him crazy by the 3rd episode (I think it was the 3rd)  ::)

I just watched it then... shocking! :P

'Burgers' that looked like they had been dipped in oil and run over by a car, greasy limp chips, no sign of any fruit or veg anywhere... and all Jamie's healthy food being rejected :P

1 pound a meal... is it too much to ask? :-\

Isn't Norah hilarious? (the head cook at the school) you will learn to love her over the series :)

I can't remember which episode it was but maybe you saw it last night, he did a lovely tomato bread with a pesto filling... can you imagine something like that just going into the bin  ???

It was just then - get with Aussie time Roz ;)

The tomato and pesto bread was tonight - I was horrified when it and all that other lovely food went in the bin :'( I felt particularly high and mighty as I was eating a very healthy dinner (fresh and made from scratch as our Naked Chef likes it!) while I was watching it ;)

I love Norah already - she's great! I particularly liked the bit where she chased Jamie down the school corridors ;D

Ooh - I'll proably end up watching this again with you I reckon as I still have it on video :)

If you do make it over to London, let's go to his restaurant for lunch :) it's not hideously expensive at lunchtimes anyway - especially compared to the airfare! And you can consider it a midnight snack ;)

Oooh - definitely! It will be a great experience and hopefully the man himself will be there 8)

I don't think I have heard that much swearing on TV for a while (although it was totally understandable), bless him ;D

I am so glad I'm home school. I never ate at school when I went I would always carry mine :P

You should see what the kids parents give them to take to school

 ::)

Was it just crips and chocolate, and possibly ketchup sandwiches?

 :-X Ewwwww

Its a 4 part series, right? I'm really looking forward to the rest of it!

I felt ill just LOOKING at the food :P For the UK Shackers, was it like that when you were going to school?

It was like that when I went to school and that was two years ago I dont think American Public Schools have changed that much. At my school Sloppy Joes looked like...well something a pet might spit up :-X

A bit of cross cultural education - what are Sloppy joes? Here, they are slang for a type of pullover and I doubt that US schools have stooped to serving up bits of old clothes... for the time being ;)

Cafeteria style food in schools isn't really done here in Australia, definitely not as popular as it is in the US and UK. I went to a boarding school, and while I wasn't a boarding student, I saw the types of food they got - most was pretty heathy - sandwiches, rolls, salad, fruit etc. But it was a pretty well off school, so I don't know if this generalises to other schools. Also recently, I have heard from my little sissters who are still at school that the canteen is going through a health kick and getting rid of a lot of the junk they sold when I was there and introducing alot more fresh stuff and fruit etc - so that is good news :)

Sloppy Joes is a sandwhich thats made up of a burger style bun and meat and a great tasting *if cooked right or made* sause

Like a burger, but without the other fillings, you mean?

yeah

Yes 4 parts.

I took packed lunches  ;D but it didn't look too bad, but as a child I was a REALLY faddy eater and picked and chose too much to have school dinners  :-\ Mark just lapped them up though  ;D

The stuff they were serving up on the show though... I disagreed with Jamie - it didn't look like stuff I would feed any pet, not unless I wanted to give it the animal version of a heart attack! :-X

True but we didn't go to State School  :-\

*sticks nose in air and sniffs at the plebes of the English school system* :P

School dinners are an ongoing problem at my house ...
when I ask my son 'what did you have at dinner', 9 times out of ten it's something like a sausage roll, because he won't have jacket potatoes (he's tried them several times and just doesn't like them).
He's another picky eater I'm afraid, but he will try new things in spite of this so I can only assume that what they serve him must be that unappealing for him not to bother choosing it.
However, the school he attends have been keeping a close watch on Jamie's programs and want to try and improve what they serve to the children, so they've taken the matter into their own hands over what they get supplied to serve the kids at lunchtime and started a scheme whereby they source the ingredients etc locally in an attempt to offer a more healthy diet! :)
This has only started this week as the kids just went back after the Easter break .. Monday's food sounded not too bad and yesterday's sounded lovely ... but today's *offering* was back to the cruddy stuff they used to serve before and I wasn't impressed.
I know it will take time and a considerable amount of effort for them to get it right, but I'm fed up of my lad always coming home and saying ... 'I didn't eat very much' because the choice was so poor. He would LOVE them to serve a roast beef or roast chicken dinner every day! LOL ::)
He used to take packed lunches at one time, but I thought it would be better if he ate hot meal at dinnertime instead ... I often wonder if I did the right thing?
I think what annoys me most of all is that they've instituted this during the last year he'll be at this school, so I'll have all this to go through again in September when he starts at secondary (senior) school. Oh the joy! ::)

~*~

My experience of school dinners is different again, as I went home at dinner and got fed because we lived so close to the schools I attended.
As I got older I then started having school dinners (so I could stay in school and be with friends) and for the most part they weren't too bad ... soggy overcooked cabbage was always on offer and the smell of it is the thing I remember the most.
But you have to remember ... we didn't have things like chicken nuggets, beefburgers or any of the other 'fast foods' when I was a kid (well ... there was fish and chips of course!) and that's probably why our school meals weren't as bad as they appear to be now.

I haven't seen any of this particular set of  Jamie's programs and I can well imagine the colourful language he's used during the filming of them. :P
He's a good 'un!! ;)

I just saw the episode where Jamie went to try primary school kids... a bit more encouraging! Its worrying though that peer rpessure affects alot of them. Some of the kids obviously liked the food but when they saw their friends spitting it out, they did the same! I was shocked when I saw a girl say that a bunch of asparagus was an onion! :o And a little kid spitting out a fresh strawberry :o It was fantastic when I saw the primary school kids eating his proper meal.

The best part was Jamie taking the piss out of Bill Clinton and his entourage and ignoring Bill's request to meet him and choosing to go home to his wife instead ;D

When I saw those kids protesting against his food and I just wanted to go up and smack them :P

I am definitely a Jamie fan 8)

To be fair, they had booked a table for about 12 and 30 people turned up. Then they didn't want anything from the "pre-approved" menu because they had all gone on some hideous South Beach diet.

Jamie was 20 minutes late for his wife, and as you know - it's always good to keep the Missus happy!

I think it was brilliant that he did that - he wasn't being pushed around by Bill because he is a has been, and he's hardly popular in America either!  ::)

Yeah, I know - unbelievable! I don't care who you are - its downright rude to turn up to a restaurant without calling ahead to say you have underbooked and then demanding a different menu to what has been set! I know many stars can and do get away with these demands, but I am glad Jamie doesn't take any crap from these types!

Diets - pah! If you are on a diet, you don't go to a normal restaurant, you get your resident chef to cater to your every needs and whims :P ::)

Spot on.

I still can't get over that child who stood in a field with a strawberry freshly picked in his hand and said "I don't know if I dare"

As though his friends were egging him on to eat a worm or a beetle  ::)

Shocking!

Was that the same kid (Liam, I think) that wouldn't eat chicken?

I practically drool every time I see Jamie making the food for those school kids and then I see them throwing it out or eating turkey twizzlers and all this other garbage and I feel sick :P

I didn't know that Wormtail (Timothy Spall) narrated this series! :o

I want Jamie to come and make me MY dinners! Man that stuff looked good! I wonder if it would have looked as good when I was younger though?

When I have kids, I'm gonna make sure they eat well and appreciate the good stuff - that way they won't complain when they are offered nice food at School.

And send them to private schools, as Jamie advised ;)

It depends what you are brought up on... when I was young, I never even saw a chicken nugget or turkey whatsit in my house. No junk food at all! I think I would have quite liked the food Jamie brought out fro those kids :D

I hadn't even heard of a Turkey Twizzler until this series came along... and what the heck is that lump of fat that they keep saying is pork?

lol I had heard of Chicken nuggets but that's because of all the American fast food chains we have

Are these meals paid for my the parents :-\ When I went to school you could bring a lunch or pay for a meal. We didn't have mauch money then so I always had packed lunch (well balance may I add). Todays kids don't seem to eat anything that isn't scrispy coated :-\ Did anyone see that programe where they tired the kids with 40s style food and half of them didn't even want to try it, and it was something perfectly normal ::)