Potatoes can cook pretty quickly if you just cut them into very small pieces. But still, fuel prices are going through the roof, and anyone on a low wage and a family to support is going to struggle to pay them, no matter how hard they try to cut their energy use. The government really needs to step in. (Fat chance with this Tory lot though.)
Maybe I’m being thick, but isn’t one of the great things about potatoes that you can cook them in several different ways?
I can imagine the Tory press right now: “hungry entitled millennials refuse to eat raw potatoes”
Do I smell some bullshit being stirred up by a multi-millionaire businessman who is trying to make the poor look ungrateful and stupid, *again.*
Perhaps this guy should spend a bit of time in a food bank rather than making such wild and damaging claims about the people who use them.
Wow thank god England in 2022 has people afraid to eat hot meals… I’m so glad we took control back of our country. Just imagine how bad it **could** have been had we focused on inequality instead of brexit!
Oh well, all those jokes about the great potatoe famine coming back to bite us on the arse
I doubt that’s the real reason they don’t want them tbh but then what do I know?
Compared to what, rice? Pasta? There aren’t very many carb-rich staples you could go with that don’t involve boiling, with the exception of bread. You also have to consider that potatoes are by far the most nutritious thing you could eat as a staple. It’s not just about getting food in your belly, it’s about nutrition, and potatoes are the king.
I can definitely see an uptake in people using BBQs and chimineas or just empty barrels or bonfires and the like for cooking at this rate. I bet a sack of coal or charcoal is cheaper than paying gas or electric now?
Dear Levelling-up minister gove…
please explain.
A key detail for anyone interested in actually eating potatoes: cook them en-masse.
An oven (or a big ol’ pot) full of taters cooks just as well and at the same time as one or two would do – vastly cutting the energy input per tater. They can even be refrozen and made ready to ‘warm up’ to eat.
It worth noting, as some may not know, but a prepayment meter with SSE has a standing charge of: pence per day 53.43
So every 10 days, no matter how much electric you use, it’ll cost you £5.30 or £20 a month before any usage on top.
A UC claimant gets £324.84 a month to pay for food, gas, electric etc.
It isn’t hard to begin to put together a situation where someone can’t afford to top up their meter by much more than £5 and seeing that £5 dwindle rapidly before they become desperate for another £5 just to watch that get eaten by standing charges.
It leaves little room for cooking costs, less for heating costs, less for hot water.
And those on low incomes that have to pay out for commuting and childcare etc are going to end up paying out a much bigger percentage of their income, if that outgoing exceeds that income, cooking food they can’t afford becomes even more unaffordable.
I monitor my house’s electricity usage. I got a standard electric oven and very inefficient ceramic hob. For me to cook a dinner which involves boiling potatoes for 20 mins, chicken breast in the oven for 30 mins, and maybe boil frozen veg uses something like 1.5kWh of electricity total. That’s about 30p at current electricity prices.
The Iceland CEO is a tory donor/support…it’s insidious!
Fucking hell. If Taters are too expensive to cook then the country is truly fucked. One could techincally do Rice every day and it’s the kettle produced version but that would be a miserable way to eat and if rice becomes too expensive to cook er……. erm…
I’ll have them, got a brazier and a haunted looking garden with plenty to burn
Soemthing something blitz mentality.
All our dead grandparents who voted Tory all their lives had it harder.
something something levelling up.
Surely the money people would save by eating stuff like potatoes and other cheap veg would easily offset the cost of the energy?
Madness and all the dude does is give us 5p of some petrol the man is a joke
It would take tens of thousands of potato batteries to produce the energy to cook a potato. Not sure how many potatoes they would be able to cook though. Perhaps we should try this?
Alternatively, I wonder if you cut up potatoes and leave them to dry, would they sustain a fire? Cook potatoes over a potato fire.
Stick a spoon in your potato when it’s in the oven. Just remember to use a tea towel to remove the spoon when your potato is cooked.
The spoon should be metal, the metal is a better conductor and will heat up the inside of the potato and cook it much faster.
So, not poor enough to eat them raw yet? I’m sure that message will be mantra’d by Bojo soon. 😁
That’s frightening. We’re changing history way too fast.
[removed]
Part of this is knowledge, you can make jacket potatoes by just cleaning the potato , pricking the skin and putting it in the microwave it’s important to prick the skin so that it doesn’t explode. It’s not quite the same an an oven baked potato but it’s still filling and delicious with some marge or beans. Most things that are best donated to food banks are things like pasta, sauces , instant mash and tinned food e.g. beans , meatballs, crackers, paste, Nutella, peanut butter, biscuits and tinned fruits they don’t use up much energy , they last without having to be refrigerated and can be made with low energy cost. Some people may only have a microwave and a kettle as the cooker might be gas and they can’t afford gas. I have been on the poverty line myself.
24 comments
Potatoes can cook pretty quickly if you just cut them into very small pieces. But still, fuel prices are going through the roof, and anyone on a low wage and a family to support is going to struggle to pay them, no matter how hard they try to cut their energy use. The government really needs to step in. (Fat chance with this Tory lot though.)
Maybe I’m being thick, but isn’t one of the great things about potatoes that you can cook them in several different ways?
I can imagine the Tory press right now: “hungry entitled millennials refuse to eat raw potatoes”
Do I smell some bullshit being stirred up by a multi-millionaire businessman who is trying to make the poor look ungrateful and stupid, *again.*
Perhaps this guy should spend a bit of time in a food bank rather than making such wild and damaging claims about the people who use them.
Wow thank god England in 2022 has people afraid to eat hot meals… I’m so glad we took control back of our country. Just imagine how bad it **could** have been had we focused on inequality instead of brexit!
Oh well, all those jokes about the great potatoe famine coming back to bite us on the arse
I doubt that’s the real reason they don’t want them tbh but then what do I know?
Compared to what, rice? Pasta? There aren’t very many carb-rich staples you could go with that don’t involve boiling, with the exception of bread. You also have to consider that potatoes are by far the most nutritious thing you could eat as a staple. It’s not just about getting food in your belly, it’s about nutrition, and potatoes are the king.
I can definitely see an uptake in people using BBQs and chimineas or just empty barrels or bonfires and the like for cooking at this rate. I bet a sack of coal or charcoal is cheaper than paying gas or electric now?
Dear Levelling-up minister gove…
please explain.
A key detail for anyone interested in actually eating potatoes: cook them en-masse.
An oven (or a big ol’ pot) full of taters cooks just as well and at the same time as one or two would do – vastly cutting the energy input per tater. They can even be refrozen and made ready to ‘warm up’ to eat.
It worth noting, as some may not know, but a prepayment meter with SSE has a standing charge of: pence per day 53.43
So every 10 days, no matter how much electric you use, it’ll cost you £5.30 or £20 a month before any usage on top.
A UC claimant gets £324.84 a month to pay for food, gas, electric etc.
It isn’t hard to begin to put together a situation where someone can’t afford to top up their meter by much more than £5 and seeing that £5 dwindle rapidly before they become desperate for another £5 just to watch that get eaten by standing charges.
It leaves little room for cooking costs, less for heating costs, less for hot water.
And those on low incomes that have to pay out for commuting and childcare etc are going to end up paying out a much bigger percentage of their income, if that outgoing exceeds that income, cooking food they can’t afford becomes even more unaffordable.
I monitor my house’s electricity usage. I got a standard electric oven and very inefficient ceramic hob. For me to cook a dinner which involves boiling potatoes for 20 mins, chicken breast in the oven for 30 mins, and maybe boil frozen veg uses something like 1.5kWh of electricity total. That’s about 30p at current electricity prices.
The Iceland CEO is a tory donor/support…it’s insidious!
Fucking hell. If Taters are too expensive to cook then the country is truly fucked. One could techincally do Rice every day and it’s the kettle produced version but that would be a miserable way to eat and if rice becomes too expensive to cook er……. erm…
I’ll have them, got a brazier and a haunted looking garden with plenty to burn
Soemthing something blitz mentality.
All our dead grandparents who voted Tory all their lives had it harder.
something something levelling up.
Surely the money people would save by eating stuff like potatoes and other cheap veg would easily offset the cost of the energy?
Madness and all the dude does is give us 5p of some petrol the man is a joke
It would take tens of thousands of potato batteries to produce the energy to cook a potato. Not sure how many potatoes they would be able to cook though. Perhaps we should try this?
Alternatively, I wonder if you cut up potatoes and leave them to dry, would they sustain a fire? Cook potatoes over a potato fire.
Stick a spoon in your potato when it’s in the oven. Just remember to use a tea towel to remove the spoon when your potato is cooked.
The spoon should be metal, the metal is a better conductor and will heat up the inside of the potato and cook it much faster.
So, not poor enough to eat them raw yet? I’m sure that message will be mantra’d by Bojo soon. 😁
That’s frightening. We’re changing history way too fast.
[removed]
Part of this is knowledge, you can make jacket potatoes by just cleaning the potato , pricking the skin and putting it in the microwave it’s important to prick the skin so that it doesn’t explode. It’s not quite the same an an oven baked potato but it’s still filling and delicious with some marge or beans. Most things that are best donated to food banks are things like pasta, sauces , instant mash and tinned food e.g. beans , meatballs, crackers, paste, Nutella, peanut butter, biscuits and tinned fruits they don’t use up much energy , they last without having to be refrigerated and can be made with low energy cost. Some people may only have a microwave and a kettle as the cooker might be gas and they can’t afford gas. I have been on the poverty line myself.