Food Revolution Cooks up Huntington

/in /by

Jamie Oliver’s show was on again last night. Jamie’s Food Revolution (ABC Friday nights) has been a nice show to watch amidst all the crazy, drama filled shows that are currently available on regular TV.

This last show was a bit more “heavy” than the other shows up to this point.

For those of you who missed it (Don’t worry- go to ABC.com and watch last nights show or any other shows that you missed.) Jamie is still working on changing the food in the local schools. But on this show his goal of motivating the entire town of Huntington to cook and eat healthier foods.

One way that Jamie hopes will help the town is to set up a cooking “School” where people can come and learn to cook a meal or even get some budgeting help to plan and prepare meals from scratch.

Jamie and the local radio station host get a bet going that Jamie can’t get 1,000 people in the town to come out and learn to cook one dish with him. So Jamie gets really creative in order to drum up awareness for his Food Revolution.

These creative measures include:

1. Organizing a Flash Mob at the local college, who start to sing and dance and cook with Jamie.

2. Closing down the street in front of Jamie’s shop and having a huge cook-a -thon cooking class with 50 or so folks.

3. Getting that same local radio station host on his side via education on disease and even death.

This third part is by far the most informational for us, the viewer at home, and the radio guy as well. They start out at a local funeral home, checking out the huge caskets that are needed to hold people who are obese. Now we had a bit of a sneak peek on this earlier on Oprah back in March, but it was interesting to see the entire visit. Sadly, it was noted that these super-sized caskets are more in demand than ever before. We should all think of this the next time we order a super-sized meal, right?

Next Jamie brings together the radio guy with some of the families and students who are supportive of the Food Revolution to talk about how obesity has affected their lives.

While many touching stories were told, we enjoyed watching the transformation of the radio guy from someone who thought Jamie should “mind his own business” to someone who could now understand what the Food Revolution was all about.

The bottom line: Jamie wins the bet, gets his 1,000 people to cook with him and along the way has found a local influential supporter of the Food Revolution.

We wondered if we all do that on some level. I mean we all know we should avoid the fried stuff, and eat more veggies as a rule, but so many times we have ignored this advice and instead turned to something a bit cheaper or more convent, or that just tastes Yummy! Eeks! Here staring us in the face, is the outcome of 30 or so years of eating without thinking twice.

We enjoy eating out just as much as the next person, but since watching the Food Revolution on TV and reading Jamie Oliver’s book The Food Revolution, we have made much more of an effort to eat our meals at home. We really are enjoying eating in where we are in more control of the quality of the ingredients, how they are cooked, and what is added to them. (Shameless plug for Trader Joe’s, as this store makes it EASY to eat great at home).

So have you been watching The Food Revolution on Friday nights? What do you think?

OK Confession: after watching last night’s show, and watching 1,000 people cook the same stir-fry meal, we HAD to search for the recipe on line:

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/beef-recipes/beef-and-vegetable-stir-fry

We are going to make this for dinner SOON!