"oliver" news and stories

I've been working on this story for months, because I wasn't sure which songs I should include and which songs I should leave off the list. And then I finally decided what the rules would be: only songs that are about food or drink or have them in the title. In other words, just because a song mentions food or drink doesn't mean it's about food or drink, so I'm leaving those off the list. Here we go:

1. "Black Coffee" (Julie London): OK, I'll admit it, this is a truly personal choice. I'm a big fan of standards, and also a big fan of film noir. And this song has noir written all over it. Julie London (you might remember her as the head nurse from the TV show Emergency) sings it so seductively and in a sultry manner you just want to run out and buy some coffee and take up smoking (several people have covered this song, including Sarah Vaughan and k.d. lang, but London's version is the best). Really cool song.

Irritated by Jamie Oliver's sometimes preachy stance against junk foods and desire to keep kids eating healthy, some Yorkshire mothers are getting revenge - by "smuggling pies, burgers and fizzy drinks to their kids, as well as their children's friends, at a school." The foods are handed off through the fence at the school boundary.

A better, more logical way to get "revenge" would be to feed the children healthy foods, proving that neither mother needs Jamie's apparently unwanted help and advice to keep their kids fit and healthy. But the mothers seem to feel that trying to make their kids, who are about 11 years old, fatter, is the best course of action.

Hopefully the kids will figure out that this isn't necessarily in their best interest, since the mothers don't seem to be taking that into consideration.

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Jamie Oliver is really passionate about making sure that kids get healthy food. Really passionate. He has even, in recent weeks, been known to call parents who feed their kids junk foods a few less-than-complimentary names. As a result of his very bluntly voiced opinions, his popularity is on something of a yo-yo, as people are alternately pleased and offended by his level of concern. One of his shows, Jamie's School Dinners, is about to go into its second season in the UK and its first in Australia, though there doesn't seem to be a scheduled air date in the US in the very near future. The show was, and still is, intended to reveal how inadequate school-prepared meals are, in terms to quality and nutrition.

With the popularity of Super Size Me, Fast Food Nation and Chew On This, the show appeals to anyone who is interested in health, nutrition and what kids are eating. It's probably only a matter of time before the show makes it into the US, too. If you haven't seen it yet, and want to get a feel for the program's content, take a look at the video clip after the jump, which features Jamie showing some kids what exactly goes into those salty little bits of breaded and fried processed meat: chicken nuggets.

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Getting a book translated into a new language, whether it is the second or tenth, and published in other countries is a very big deal to most authors because it means that their writing is good enough to cross cultural boundaries and appeal to people in other parts of the world. When that book is a cookbook, you would naturally assume that the same thing applies and that the people in the other country are interested in making those recipes.

Jamie Oliver's cookbook, Jamie's Italy, is due for publication in Italy this year, but some feel that the release of an Italian book written by a non-Italian is doomed to failure. Critics say "Italians don't really learn from books: they learn from their mothers, their grandmothers and their aunties" and "[Italians] think their food is the greatest and they are not going to accept an English guy trying show them how to cook Italian food."

But the market is changing and while the older generations do not necessarily want or need to add cookbooks to their library to increase their repertoire, younger ones do. Jamie Oliver is only 31 and there are thousands of younger people, in Italy and other countries, who are interested in getting a new take on food - even if it is "their" food to begin with. Supporters - and the Italian publishers who bought the distribution rights to the book - clearly think that Oliver's enthusiasm and recipes will carry over well in the new market.

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