As somebody who lives equidistance between a Whole Foods and a Club Monaco, I sometimes have to make some pretty serious choices about where to allocate my funds. Along with shelter, food and clothing are among the basic necessities we urban humanoids must regularly budget for. Quite frankly, I prefer cardigans to carbohydrates but, after a while, the echo in my refrigerator really does start to annoy me.
But actually, being able to budget for healthy, nutritious, quality food is a challenge even for the most seasoned of shopping cart jockeys. Who has all the answers? Well, unfortunately, nobody. However, Jamie Oliver comes pretty darn close. The (occasionally naked) chef from the UK recently visited the Chatelaine Kitchen and is the fifth culinary master to be included in their on-going “Chef Series.” Jamie enlightened a few of us lucky TO foodies on how to eat better on a budget and, inadvertently, how to be incredibly charming and handsome and everything right with the world.
His goals include how to teach families, both Canadian and abroad, how to create incredibly delicious and nutritious family meals for amounts like $2.00 a portion. Let’s be real, most of us spend more than that at the green mermaid everyday and spend exponentially more eating out regularly. Is it laziness? Well… yeah. Oops. But it’s also generally a lack of grocery shopping and cooking know-how. As Jamie said, “One of the best luxuries on the planet is to know how to cook.” It seems in this regard, most of us are better at luxury shopping (Burberry over blueberry) than the luxury of knowing how to make ourselves and our families a decent dinner.
To give us common folk the tools to combat this, Jamie has recently released his latest book, Save With Jamie, which is also a telly show on Food Network Canada by the same name. (It premiered on October 6th; check your local listings… do people still have those? I digress…) His passion for food is about as infectious as the zombie virus, and you can really feel it as he surprise visits families showing them how to make delicious, healthy meals out of the foods they normally throw away. Besides that, he also teaches them (and us) how to buy in bulk and how to store and save perishables to help saves on bills, bills, bills. It’s pretty eye opening, and only mildly depressing how much we waste as Westerners. There’s definitely something to be learned here.
To make the message even more palatable and relevant to Canucks, Jamie has partnered with homegrown grocer Sobeys to help them launch a campaign, titled Sobeys Better Food For All, which aims to make it easier for customers to enjoy fresh and tasty food by making their shopping experience include more healthy and wholesome products while allowing and encouraging them to make more sustainable choices, and, naturally, save time.
Save With Jamie is available now.