Tasty and cost effective meals for all the family. (The Dinner Lady - Jeanette Orrey)

Member Name: mossy51

Product:	The Dinner Lady - Jeanette Orrey
Date:	30/01/09 (294 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Recipes are suitable for all the family as well as being meals that will appeal to children.

Disadvantages: Jeanette does often talk about buying organic (nice if you can).

This is a great recipe book written by a Dinner Lady no less which is packed full of easy to make and tasty family meals. Recipes are written out clearly and are easy to follow. Jeanette Orrey gives you the ingredient quantities to make the meals for serving 4 or 96 people!!! Yes I did write 96 it isn't a typo.

Jeanette Orrey is a school dinner lady passionate about changing peoples eating habits for the better and has been doing her thing in the school kitchens long before the wonderful Jamie Oliver joined the revolution.

When she first started working in school kitchens the food was basically good, if a little boring. But over the years, bureaucracy and economics took over, and the food they were allowed to serve in school began to suffer. What the government deemed 'best value' unfortunately meant the cheapest, packet mixes, pre-cut and pre-packed vegetables and frozen 'free-flow' meat (probably from several different animals, and even more countries) became the norm. Thus began the era of the processed dinner and the demoralisation and de-skilling of dinner ladies.

Fortunately in 1999 the government passed legislation which became active in April 2000 allowing secondary schools three options for running their catering services. They could either continue with the local authority system, get an external company to provide the whole service or run every aspect of the process themselves. When the choice was extended to primary schools, with the help of the headmaster Jeanette's ladies in the kitchen decided to 'go it alone'. Hence why this recipe book is also written for other dinner ladies and people catering for larger numbers than the average family home!!

After making such a difference within her school Jeanette now desires to help provide a cook book that will teach us and our children at home. We all want to give our children the best start in life, and obviously food plays a key role in their development, both of the body and the brain.

Children, more than any other age group, 'are what they eat'. With todays increasing time pressures for parents and children alike, preparing a good home cooked meal might seem daunting, especially when there are so many ready meals available. But cooking at home is so satisfying, and can be so much fun. Involving the children, too is important - they're never too young to help or to learn - and by eating together as a family, you are laying the foundation for a lifetime of health, pleasure and sociability.

Jeanette Orrey's work and this cook book are a simple and non-pushy message of common sense. Good, nutritious food is easy to obtain (once you know how) and easy to cook. The recipes here may be to some a little plain (although at least they aren't all full of ingredients you have to specially go out and buy and then never use again!!), but they are tasty and not at all difficult to make at home. And most importantly for those of us with fussy-eaters at times, these recipes have all been tried and tested - and approved - by that most notoriously difficult group of all - the children themselves.

Contents:

Foreword by Jamie Oliver

Section 1 - Just a dinner lady

This section of the book is full of topics such as starting to cook, cooking for others. She also talks about the school system, sourcing local ingredients, changes in the curriculum, children in the kitchen etc. This section is informative and interesting. The book is full of pictures that the children have drawn and have been incorporated into it which I think is charming.

Section 2 - School Dinner Recipes

Now don't be put off by this title. When you see a heading like that it might give you a flash back to some awful school dinners you had to endure or maybe more pleasant memories such as pink custard....yum!!

However this section is full of great recipes which are suitable and appealing to all the family. I have found that the recipes make healthy and good value meals and many of them have become main stay recipes in our home which I make again and again. Like many cook books you will find some familiar adaptations of recipes you know for example chilli con carne. I love the recipe for chilli con carne in 'The Dinner Lady' much more than any others I've used, this one also uses baked beans (tesco's value is what we usually use) instead of kidney beans which goes down very well in our house.

Main course:
Chicken and Turkey
Pork, Beef and Lamb
Fish
Eggs and Cheese
Vegetables and Salads

Sweet Things:
Puddings and Tarts
Cakes, Biscuits and Scones

My favourite pudding recipes have to be the Primary Choice Sponge (the school children named it) which is a sponge cake topped with the most delicious golden syrup, chocolatey icing mmmm, I've also made this without the drinking chocolate and it is absolutely scrummy. The carrot cake is also a delicious moist yet light carrot cake which tastes absolutely wonderful when topped with Nigella Lawsons cream icing.

There is also a small section at the back of the book containing information about resources, further reading, home freezing, portion control and index.

This is a simple cook book full of easy to make, friendly to the pocket tasty recipes for all the family.

Summary: A great cook book full of recipes that may well end up being family favourites!!