River Cottage Treatment Show 2

Date Published:

07/09/2007

This week Hugh is faced with a group of self-confessed ready meal addicts.

Carol's a home economics teacher who hasn't cooked a meal for 10 years. Paul's an internet geek who can't boil an egg, Liam's addicted to microwave burgers, Angela won't touch raw meat, and Sheree feeds her kids straight from the microwave.

Hugh takes them fishing, bonding with the animals on the farm and cooking home made versions of their microwave favourites with his own organic goodies. But when the time comes for the group to help him round up a couple of lambs, and accompany them to slaughter, they find themselves seriously rethinking their relationship with meat.

Will they discover their "inner cooks", and rise to the challenge? Or rebel against The River Cottage Treatment, and run home to their microwaves?

Sheree

Sheree is a mother of two, one 2 year old girl and a 12 year old boy. She is a full time mum and freely admits she's too lazy to cook properly.

The family buy food as and when they need it, and have a big fortnightly shop at a supermarket where the family stocks up on around 20 ready meals to last them the two weeks. Even her two year old has a ready meal everyday.

Sheree cooks a roast dinner once a week, with frozen chops and ready made Yorkshire puddings. Although Sheree will cut up and roast her own potatoes ‘because that’s easy’ the rest of the veg admittedly comes pre sliced and ready to boil in a bag.

Sheree is a squeamish lady and she doesn’t handle raw meat at all, as she hates the texture and the smell. If she had to touch it she would use a fork rather than her hands.

She likes to keep herself separate from her food and doesn’t like to think too much about where her food comes from. It comes from Asda in her mind; if she thought about it all coming from an animal it would put her off.

Angela

Angela lives alone and only eats freezer meals. She can’t cook, has never cooked a meal from scratch and hates the idea of touching raw meat.

Angela only ever eats processed ready meals. She doesn’t mind what she eats whether it is a lasagne, a pasta bake or a frozen pizza, as long as it is quick and easy to cook.

Angela openly laughs at the fact that she can’t cook; she wants to learn how to eat properly but hates the thought of touching raw meat, and actually trying to cook.

She blames her lifestyle on her current house renovations and lack of time. She has a dog who she walks twice a day, and she goes for long walks up on the moors at the weekends. When she gets back she just wants to eat quickly and seems happy to just settle with whatever frozen dish she pulls out of the freezer.

She has a ‘lovely’ oven, but all her pots and pans are boxed up, due to living in chaos due to the building work. Her eating habits are permanently bad and always revolve around the freezer.

Carol

Carol used to be a home economics teacher and enjoyed cooking all her meals from scratch, but for the past ten years she has lived on a diet of ready meals and processed food.

Carol’s fridge and freezer is full of "pre-packaged meals". She shops in an upmarket supermarket every week and can spend up to £100 each time. She buys huge quantities of seafood along with her ready meals.

These include crab, crevettes, Cornish escalops, half a lobster, green mussels, potato dauphinois, parma ham, bottle of veuve clicquot, cauliflower cheese, linguine, fresh melon, cannelloni, lasagne, hollandaise sauce (fresh pot), chicken kiev and creme brulee.

Carol likes her rich food. 10 years ago she worked as a holiday rep in Gibraltar, lived in the Raffles hotel and was cooked for on a daily basis for 3 ½ years. She became so used to eating 5 star food that when she returned to England she carried on the habit.

She now can’t seem to change her diet and has completely changed her lifestyle from over 10 years ago when she stopped cooking proper meals.

Liam

Liam thinks that ‘we are so lucky in the west to be able to be so removed from where our food comes from’ (no eyes, legs or bones and nothing leafy) which works well with his diet – he lives on bran flakes, microwaved burgers, ready meals and bottles of vitamin supplements and cod liver oil.

Liam has very particular ideas about how he likes his food and it must be as far removed from the original source as possible. He doesn’t like food he can recognise. He has thought about organic food, but it’s just too expensive, although he does buy free range eggs.

He has tried to make spaghetti Bolognese and roast beef before, but the timings were all off and it was just too stressful and confusing. He likes tuna and salmon when he goes out for a meal (well done) and enjoys Italian and Chinese food and eats out once a week (mainly pasta.)

Paul

Paul works in I.T. and has a love / hate relationship with food. He loves good food, but day to day he eats because he has to and the idea of actually cooking something is a nightmare – it’s such a mission, it’s all so complicated, and he just doesn’t understand how anyone can enjoy it.

Sarah, his girlfriend, is a vegetarian and is working hard towards her PHD, whilst also trying to sort out Paul. She has him eating healthily for a few days (when she can drag him away from the computer) and then works late and gets back to find him eating oven pizza at the computer.

Paul isn't sure what 'organic' actually means and doesn’t really think about where his meat comes from. Sarah would like him to at least buy ethical meat and has a habit of mooing over his shoulder when he eats steak.

When thinks about how he would handle seeing a dead animal, he thinks back to when he once saw his scout leader skin a rabbit. He found that it was quite interesting, so Paul doesn’t think he would be squeamish about jointing and preparing meat.