Jamie Oliver Atari

Steve, god bless him, put me onto a wonderful website this morning which I’ve just spent the best part of an hour reading intensively, and could quite happily sit here reading for a further two days!

One of the many things I’ve picked up is that Jamie Oliver has released a new Nintendo computer game and interactive cookbook. On first reading of the article I thought cynically to myself that Jamie really is joining the Beckham league of products, but on delving deeper into it, it would appear that for those who are time poor, and happy to use this kind of thing, the computerised cook book caters for you perfectly.

There are various games, like a cooking against the clock game, which you can play, but obviously my interest would be the interactive cook book aspect. It is marketed at “casual gamers and women”!

The main benefit, for me, is the fact that you can “filter the recipes by time and ingredients” – so if I want a steak for dinner, and I have 15 minutes cooking time to spare, I can get the immediate response of suggestions of what I could cook, not to mention the instant shopping list which I can also get as a result of my search.

If I’ve been intelligent enough to have had the forethought to think of consulting my computerized cook book the day before, and hence have done the required shopping prior to getting home to cook, I’m on a winner!

Unfortunately, as Jamie is a Pom, the other bonus about his shopping list is presumably unusable by me, an Australian – the games logic has organized the shopping list by food aisles in their supermarkets, like Sainsburys. So no wastage of either time or energy there. I’m a great one for having to double back when shopping and following my list, so this would help me immeasureably.

Hmmmm. I love the concept of this, and yes, it does have limited appeal, and is not for everyone, but I’d love to have a go with it anyway. It’s available from Jamie’s website for £30.