The end of cheap food: tonight 8pm

I didn't see it. Does anyone know if its going to be repeated? I should've set it to record, but forgot

Yep, we watched it too. Just as we were eating our chicken [from Sunday lunch remains] with salad and sweet potatoes. We were also amazed that people have to be told these things. Is it pure laziness?

Sorry DDL, I didn't see the programme, but I do know there are people out there with no idea how to start making any kind of soup. It's just a mystery to them. And don't know that you can cook pasta at home. I know, I know ! But it's true.

Haven't seen the program, but I can guess! I remember my flat mate at uni hadn't a clue! She would happily eat breast meat from a roast chicken - then want the throw the rest away! Spent most of the year teaching her to cook.

I had to teach TOH how to boil an egg...

But having said that he would automatically strip a cooked chicken so as not to waste the meat - never thought to boil the carcase up to make soup though....

I'd class him as not too wasteful.

I remember when I was a kid shopping was done every Friday - so Thursday night supper was 'back of the fridge stew' - anything and everything went in. I still do that now for TOH and myself - the kids are too picky and won't eat it though

Sell By dates are a bit cause of the wasted food problem, along with our "big once a week shop" habit, and 'family bags' of perishables and BOGOFS (20 oranges for a quid might be good value, but will you eat them all?). And not using lists and planning our menus.
People buy tons of food at the supermarket on a Saturday, don't always check the dates (which are largely advisory not mandatory), shove it all in the fridge where half of it goes off before it gets eaten.
I've never had money to waste, so I plan my meals, buy just what I really need, and don't buy stuff that I know I won't eat.

Guilty as charged with the BOGOF's! I aways come home with two of everything!

I was watching this (while I waited for my leftover mashed spuds to cool so I could put them over the meat mix from the freezer for tomorrow night's cottage pie - did a big batch of meat a few weeks ago so no room in freezer for the spud on top!!).

It was interesting, but preaching to the converted in me. And probably the same for most grapes I reckon.

When I was in college, I lived away from home for the middle 2 years which was interesting. I was lucky living in a proper student village (over here at the time it was mainly 8 students sharing a 4 bed house kinda scene but the Village was finished as we moved in!!). Of the 5 girls, there was a good mix of abilities inthe kitchen - 1 girl lived on curry sauce and waffles, 3 of them would do reasonable dinners but with a certain amount of processed food (pepper sauce was a regular packet!!) and my cupboard in the kitchen was full of jars of spices, herbs and things like cornflour for sauces from scratch (I KNEW I was leaving home, couldn't wait to go, so spent the previous summer adding something to Mum's trolley every week that would last and packets of sauces would definitely have been noticed!!).

But in the chat over coffee breaks at work, or among friends, I get the impression that convenience food is the main staple for a lot of people nowadays and no one knows how to use leftovers. I can't make fishcakes, but always use mash leftovers for fried spuds at the weekend or as pie toppings.

I am intending though to make greater use of the local greengrocer (one local one is about half the price of the supermarket, unfortunately the one that's near the butcher is about the same as the supermarket so it means a lot of trekking at the weekend) and of the local butchers - I am getting better at that but it is a work in progress.

But a draft menu (with at least 2 days based on storecupboard/freezer dinners, hence allowing changes to be made) and a list made out before the weekly shop is a must for us. And I tend to have a very well stocked storecupboard so the weeks that are really mad and I don't get to do any proper shop, I can usually manage until about Thursday before needing a takeaway!!

(I am also guilty on BOGOF's, but only on things I actually use (mainly the non-perishables), although some weeks we do buy too much fruit, but we try to waste as little as possible).

I definitely blame supermarket shopping for the amount of waste. When I was a kid my Mam shopped most days. You just bought what you wanted for that day's meals. No-one had fridges. Meat and cheese would have gone off.

I make soups and stews with just about anything - except Nanny Ogg's favourite recipe - 'Left-over Sandwiches Soup'!

I work for T---o and the amount of people with big families that come through the checkout with ready meals is unbelievable not just one or two but enough for the family for a week, if I bought anything like that for my 12 year old daughter she would want 2 or 3 for one meal they are so small. She isnt overwight and has a very healthy diet as we eat a lot of vegetarian food including pasta, rice etc she likes her veg but not much fruit, drinks lots of water but doesnt like fizzy drinks. I use veggie mince or quorn chunks to make meals with instead of meat which is low in fat. Oven chips maybe once a week, takeaways hardly ever.
Not a lot of waste in our house only when OH cooks every weekend and dishes up far too much unless I tell him before he starts, he should have got the message by now.

several years ago our local butcher sold lamb bones,these were boiled the meat picked of and used for hot pot along with the stock,or roasted in the oven and picked of,but not now,we gone of lamb.

Having come from Mexico a few years ago for postgraduate studies, food was obviously one of the first cultural shocks for me. I couldn't believe shops had something called "sandwich filler" in the shelves! How lazy do you have to be to have to buy a pre-prepared and packaged stuff to put into what is usually a quick fix/lazy meal? It was bad enough seeing the huge amount of pre-packed sandwiches already for sale! And most students I lived with while in uni relied on ready meals. They'd come loaded with bags from the supermarket (completely ignoring the fact six or ten people (depending on the house) had to share a single fridge-freezer and had one cupboard each), everything was crammed in the kitchen, and a lot of it ended up in the bin. (And the fridge was filthy and new forms of life developing all over the place).

And don't get me started on the price of ready meals, you can make your own spaghetti for half the price! (and choose exactly what goes in it!). My FIL keeps ranting about ready made soups, saying how difficult is it to chop and boil vegetables? He was trying to explain the niece about rationing during the war, and she just couldn't understand how come once there was a time where sweets were scarce!

mapcr77 - you mentioned making a spaghetti sauce for half the price of a ready made one - brilliant example. My daughter is 13 and at grammar school. Her first cooking lesson consisted of them making a basic tomato sauce, then using that tomato sauce as the base for countless other recipes. Over the following couple of weeks, they were encouraged to come up with their own recipes using that tomato sauce. My son is a school year younger than her, and at a different school and his first cooking lesson was making pizza - or rather assembling a pizza using a ready made pizza base, a tube of tomato paste, cheese and either ham or mushrooms. How is that teaching them to cook? When I was at school, our cooking lessons taught us not only how to make sauces and pastry from scratch, but how to create a balanced meal. Yes, parents should make the effort to teach their kids to cook, but if the schools are teaching them that assembling a pile of ready made ingrediants is cooking, then that's what they'll do.

Ah, but was it 'cookery' or was it 'design technology' - makes you laugh eh? Hell, I feel old sometimes!

Twas Home Economics when I was at school