I’ve written before about how certain idiots in this country – many of them supposed medical experts – have ruined everything we eat by forcing manufacturers to either remove or reduce the salt content. This is in spite of research which shows salt isn’t as bad for you as the Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash) radical sect would have us believe.
Now, the same people have formed a new group – Action on Sugar – with the avowed intention of screwing up sweet stuff for us, too. This is based almost entirely on the fact that some people (and their parents) are too bloody stupid to be allowed out unsupervised, and who subsequently suffer from obesity and other health problems as result of drinking 6 litres of Coca Cola a day, and who eat nothing but chocolate and biscuits.
This newly-named bunch of activist idiots goes on to name a range of products and the amount of sugar contained in them. It’s worth reproducing it here to help us do a reality check:
Starbucks caramel frappuccino with whipped cream with skimmed milk (tall): 273kcal; 11 teaspoons of sugar
Coca Cola Original (330ml): 139kcal; 9 teaspoons of sugar
Heinz Tomato Ketchup (15ml): 18kcal; 1 teaspoon of sugar
Out of that list, I would only ever eat or drink Coke (perhaps a small bottle or two on hot summer days), Ragu (once in a blue moon, though I’d choose Dolmio given the choice because it tastes better), and Heinz Ketchup (a tablespoon a couple of times a week). So, not every day, and not to excess. That’s because I’m not a prat who needs nannying. However, if I was one of those people who ate everything on that list every day, to excess, and who also fed it to my children, then I’d deserve to have them taken away from me and put into care.
The BBC story quotes a doctor (also a member of Action on Sugar):
Dr Aseem Malhotra, a cardiologist and science director of Action on Sugar, said: “Added sugar has no nutritional value whatsoever and causes no feeling of satiety.
I may be missing something here, but I think Dr Malhotra is deliberately trying to mislead. You see, herbs and spices have no nutritional value either, but they are essential in making food taste nice. Dr Malhotra might also want to take a close look at the food his or her countrymen have been eating for centuries. Salt has been in use since before recorded history; oil has been used for almost as long; and likewise with sugar. Is he/she suggesting they stop?
The bottom line is that not one of those listed processed foods will do anyone any harm at all as long as they don’t stuff themselves with it all day, every day. The problem isn’t that foods contain sugar. The problem is that some people are complete morons.
And that doesn’t appear to be a bar to entering the medical profession.
Well, that’s what the Daily Mail appears to be saying, anyway. I saw their headline yesterday and couldn’t believe that even the Mail could be so stupid. Basically, after all the crap they’ve been publishing about fast food and pre-cooked meals being bad for you (the Mail has a food section which goes to town over this several times a week, comparing the poor health implications of each product), they are now warning people off fresh meat – and not for any health-based reason, but because in Britain we are apparently riding the razor’s edge, with food shortages.forever only a hair’s breadth away.
Of course, blame is laid at the feet of MPs, though it is done in such a way that the reader doesn’t have a bloody clue what was actually said and has to rely on The Mail’s interpretation. The story meanders through the comments made by various farmers’ associations and unions, apparently in response to The Mail’s headline, and proceeds as though somewhere, someone had actually spoken the exact words of that headline. And yet nothing in the bulk of the report confirms that this is what was said, and reading between the lines you can detect some cack-handed political machinations, suitably mangled by The Mail’s hacks in their typical amateurish way.
Can you even begin to imagine how or why any politician would want to make such ill-informed comments about an industry which is already suffering due to the economy and the recent weather?
…Sir Malcolm Bruce, the Lib Dem chairman of the Commons committee, said: ‘With the UK never more than a few days away from a significant food shortage, UK consumers should also be encouraged over time to reduce how often they eat meat…
Actually, that has always been the case, and it isn’t – as The Mail’s creative cut seems to imply – a new development. Britain is a small island with a high population density vying with what cultivable land it possesses, and it relies heavily on imports. It has to, and has had to for a very long time now. In the Glorious Imperial Age (that the UKIP would see us return to in its dreams), we just took what we wanted and shot anyone who argued. When that approach was no longer viable – and we’re talking more than a century ago now – we had to start buying it in. And that’s where we stand right now here in the 21st Century.
We couldn’t just “pull up the drawbridge”, as many of those who are leaning towards the UKIP from the LibCons would have us believe.
The farmers are right to be worried. If some idiot politician stops people from buying a certain food – even a few of them – then farmers will have to stop producing so much of it. That will then send prices sky-high (and meat isn’t cheap even now), which will cut demand still further. Farmers will turn over even more land (if they can – the land used to raise meat often can’t be used for crops) to things like Oil Seed Rape, and the nation will get ever more unhealthy on poor quality ready meals, most of which are imported, or use imported meat products.
A cynic might see a purpose in any government involvement in such stupid advice. Oil Seed Rape has a high value – and making more money would fuel economical growth in the (very) short term. Of course, it is also used in the production of bio-diesel, and any country which produces a lot of it might win whatever “green” badges are up for grabs at any given moment.
But any economic benefit would undoubtedly be short-lived. High prices can only be commanded when there is a demand, and the bottom could fall out of the Rape market overnight. All it takes is another European country to start getting decent crops (by foolishly getting rid of the ones people actually need) and we’ll be having pointless “buy British Rapeseed Oil” campaigns before you could sneeze. Mind you, that’d suit UKIP down to the ground.
However, longer term the loss of a meat industry (and all the other things that are “unhealthy”, like eggs) would cause massive and irreversible damage to the economy.
Part of me says it’s a great idea, but when I saw it on TV just now the other part of me said bloody hell, that looks lethal.
What it is is a worktop mounted tap which produces instant boiling water. We’re not just talking about hot water – this is the full 100°C stuff. Real boiling water.
The one in the video has no sink under it, so I’m trying not to think of what would happen if you accidentally turned it on and hot water was blasted onto the surface and splashed down your front and legs. Or if a child – fascinated by the noise – climbed up to turn it on.
The Quooker website calls it “ultra-safe”, but I can’t see any signs (or data on the site) which indicate any kind of fail-safe mechanism being fitted. I could be wrong, but it is just a tap which provides boiling water under pressure.
I wonder what they’ll think of next. Above door heater curtains like you get in big stores using actual flames?
I’ve written before about how I hate waiting in any restaurant or fast food joint at the best of times. So, another establishment has been added to my mental list of places I will never go in again.
A few weeks ago I had a late lesson and I was hungry, so I decided to nip into a chip shop and get some chips. The place I chose was The Tandoori Star in Sneinton because of its “fish and chips” sign outside.
As I walked in I realised it wasn’t a traditional chippie and fully expected to get those frozen fries that a lot of these newer cheap-and-cheerful curry and pizza places often do. I also wasn’t surprised by the apparent indifference with which the one person serving (out of about six in the shop) dealt with me and charged me £1 in advance – only to tell me the chips would be “about 4-5 minutes”.
If I’d have known that before, I would have changed my mind there and then. I was in a hurry… but 4-5 minutes would still give me more than 15 minutes to drive a quarter of a mile to my next pupil, so I said “OK”.
It took “4-5 minutes” for the guy serving to even go and fetch a bag of chips from the freezer, and at least another two for him to put four handfuls into the fryer. Then it took a good six minutes to cook them, a further four for him to scoop them out and put them in the warming compartment. It was like watching paint dry.
During all this time he was assembling kebabs for the small handful of people who came in. But the last straw came when the little kid who’d been shouting and talking with all the staff turned out to be a customer and the serving guy said to him “do you want vinegar on these?”
I’d been standing there for nearly 20 minutes at this point. I just turned round and walked out.
So, my advice to anyone in the area is do not use the Tandoori Star in Sneinton. Life’s too short to even consider putting up with such crap service..
About 10 years ago, sandwich shops started multiplying like… a lot of multiplying things! They were everywhere, taking over any empty retail outlet that came on the market.
Many of these places are real fly-by-night affairs. They’ll be there one day, and gone the next. The problem is similar to that which affects many would-be instructors, where imagined success doesn’t quite match up with the realities of running a business. In the case of the cob shops, it seems that any middle-aged woman who knows how to make a ham sandwich suddenly gets the idea she can make a living out of it. At one stage a few years ago, these places were opening up next door to each other.
Most of them take little interest in their outward appearance, and simply begin trading with the shop in the same state as it was when they took out the lease. At best, they might give the decrepit façade a coat of paint, and nail up a homemade sign, but that’s about it. Inside, they will usually have bought in some second-hand counters and chillers, and maybe a couple of plastic patio tables and chairs.
Location is simply a function of availability and price – a run-down, almost derelict shop, in a row of buildings earmarked for demolition sometime in the not-too-distant future, and with absolutely no parking anywhere near (unless you’re a van driver, in which case there are plenty of suitable yellow lines for that purpose). They have colloquial working-class names like “Barb’s Baps” or “Stuff Yer Face Cafe”, and are run by people who seem just a little crazy.
Occasionally, someone will spend a little more on the shop and give it a name like “Chilly’s Deli’”, with bright professional frontage, though it will still have limited parking and be situated in an area completely out of keeping with its bright and fresh appearance.
However they did it, they were all built around a small grill unit – sometimes just a domestic hob cooker – and served coffee made with granules in polystyrene cups. Skimmed milk, obviously. And tonnes of commercial-grade bacon and eggs, and commercial-grade sandwich fillings from the cash & carry. In other words, no different to what you could get from one of those roadside caravans.
When it comes to running a business, any food which doesn’t have a Michelin star to its name is not high margin. Shop rent – even if the building is falling down – is not cheap, especially if it’s close to the city centre. To succeed, you need to shift a lot of stuff, so you’d think that having a good business model would be important, closely followed by a well-run operation. You’re in competition with thousands of others and you need to build a good reputation. The instant you start providing poor service then you’re on the road to ruin.
When I choose to go into any of these places I expect two things as the bare minimum:
decent food
reasonably quickly
So, absolutely the last thing I want when I fancy a simple bacon and egg roll before one of my early morning lessons is to be ignored. And this is where you encounter the first problem. Being run by one – perhaps two – people means that the person who takes the order also cooks it. Things get a whole lot worse when you then realise they’re also in the middle of fulfilling some idiotic telephone order for 30 bacon butties, 22 teas, and 8 coffees for the building site down the road, and 12 custom baguettes for the local firm that’s got a Team Meeting and is providing “outside catering” for its staff. People coming in off the street are treated as an annoyance rather than an important source of revenue.
The owners of these shops forget very quickly why they went into the business in the first place. Selling bacon and egg rolls requires a completely different business model to outside catering. If you want to do both, you must have the staff to handle both. The subsequent telephone orders – which they encourage at the outset with “telephone orders welcome” signs – are way outside the bounds of the business model required to shift breakfast baps in a manner which ensures your continuing profitability.
The typical owner of the newly opened sandwich shop will just about wet themselves when that first telephone order for 50 bacon butties comes through. But they fail to appreciate that the building site it came from won’t be there in 3 months time, whereas I will be. Except… I won’t! Because if I go in just once and they can’t serve me quickly, I will never go in again. Ever. So that’s my money they’ll never see – and I’m sure others must similarly avoid these places if they get poor service.
The same applies to providing sandwiches for local firms. The hapless butty shop owner doesn’t twig that they’re being taken for a ride. The only reason the skinflint local firm is coming to them is that they’re cheap (I know: I’ve authorised outside catering for countless meetings in my time). The local firm is forcing the sandwich shop into bankruptcy in order to cut its own costs, and that’s because the sandwich shop owners haven’t got a clue!
But then there’s the quality of the food. To start with, it would seem that me, my parents, and that bloke who runs that great burger bar just outside Lechlade-on-Thames are the only people on the planet capable of cooking an egg properly!
Quite simply, the white should be solid and most of the yolk runny. Any runny white and it isn’t cooked.
None of this sunny side up crap you get at restaurants, either. If you’re frying it in a pan then the egg should be splashed gently during cooking with a little oil (or you can put a cover over it). If you’re using a hotplate with very little oil then the egg should be flipped part way through cooking (the Americans call it “over easy”). Whichever method, the heat needs to get at the egg during cooking from both sides.
An example: recently I visited a place I’d been impressed with before. It calls itself a “delicatessen”, and the interior is filled with exotic beers, wines, chutneys, cheeses, and so on, all on solid dark wooden shelves. I’ve never seen anyone buy anything other than sandwiches, although the serving counter for this is tiny compared with the space taken up by everything else. On this occasion there were four women all frantically buttering and filling baguettes and flinging the finished wrapped product into large carrying hampers (at least four stood stacked on the floor). I also noticed carefully crafted wicker baskets of finger sandwiches and fruit piled on top of the cheese in the deli cooling cabinet. It was obvious that this was outside catering orders they were working on.
Anyway, the owner took my order for a sausage, bacon, and egg baguette (I had a baguette last time) as if I was an unwelcome distraction, which I suppose I was from her perspective. She then persuaded me to have a roll instead of a baguette (I’m fairly certain that “it’ll be better on a roll” translates as “we need the baguettes for our telephone order”). The bacon and sausage came out of a glass fronted heating box, and both appeared bone-dry. I had to wait for the egg – and I could have cooked 10 properly in the time it took for this one. When it eventually arrived I carried the roll away in a bag, got in the car, and drove for 10 minutes to a place where I could stop and eat it.
Bear in mind the “cooked” egg had had a further 10 minutes to cook in its own heat. I would have expected the yolk to be almost completely solid by now.
I bit into it and was immediately covered in raw egg – not just the yolk, but gooey clear/white gunk as well. And the bacon and sausage were like cardboard. I will not be going back. Ever.
In my list of expectations I didn’t mention hygiene (or perceived hygiene). I suppose that on the one hand, a certain level of basic food hygiene has to be assumed, whereas that is traded off against the general appearance of the place you go into. After all, if it looks like they keep chickens and other livestock on the premises, you shouldn’t be too surprised if it turns out that they do! But I draw the line at smoking.
It will take a lot to get me into any place where I see the staff smoking – at any time – and where they are smoking matters even more. Just outside the back door is a no-no, for example.
Another example: One place on Woodborough Road where I’ve been ignored at before is run by two middle-aged women. Almost every time I go past they’re outside smoking. To make matters worse, one of them is usually leaning with both elbows on a council waste bin – the ones where the top is for stubbing out cigarettes – and her apron is dragging against the letterbox openings where the locals throw their half-eaten kebabs and dog poop! I doubt that when she goes back inside to cook she washes her arms up to her armpits or changes her apron. And yet on the walls they’ll be proudly displaying their Food Hygiene Certificates.
And another example: I was walking through Ruddington just the other day and the two middle-aged female proprietors were sitting at the table outside (these places are never big enough for more than one or two tables at best) chain-smoking. The door was wide open, so no prizes for guessing where the smoke was going. They were dressed in their food clothes and hats, and they were using a saucer – undoubtedly one they normally use to serve tea and coffee to those who ate inside – as an ashtray. Another place I’ll never go in. Ever.
The service and quality issues are exacerbated by the type of person who frequents certain of these places. The ones which attract people who drive lorries and vans are to be avoided, though this is obviously a very personal view. They’re usually smokers themselves, and regard standing in the doorway to stay out of the rain as being sufficiently “outside” to allow them to smoke, and the owners don’t give a damn about it. They’re also likely to be placing an order for several people, so you’re guaranteed a long wait.
The large chains aren’t much better, though. I’ve mentioned McDonalds before, but I’ll mention them again. If ever you go in and order something that isn’t ready and which has to be prepared – their breakfast wraps are a prime example – watch carefully to make sure you aren’t being shafted by poor service. They often ask me to take a seat and they’ll bring my order over when it’s ready – but I always decline. Here’s why.
The drive-thru is given absolute priority over those waiting inside [2023 Update: this is no longer true. Now, absolute priority is given to Uber Eats and Just Eat couriers inside]. It isn’t a stated or written rule – not that I’m aware of, anyway – but the manager or manageress will enforce it rigidly to avoid cars backing up outside. They will even send junior people waiting for your order away from the stacking shelf so they can snatch the next wraps or McMuffins that come down. Trust me, they do this, and you have to stand by and make sure they don’t get away with it. I’ve demanded my money back on more than one occasion when I’ve seen them do it, and I make it clear when I’m watching that I know what they’re up to.
I’ve seen cars drive into the car park while I’m waiting for my order, go through the drive-thru, and drive off with food… and I’m still waiting.
If you don’t make a fuss, a 3 minute wait can turn into a 10 minute one, and I find that unacceptable in a place which allegedly sells fast food. Basford McDonalds on the ring road is easily the worst for this. It’s bad enough they never have enough breakfast food prepared to start with, but they’re not going to screw me even further if I’ve decided I’m hungry enough to tolerate the initial wait!
Someone found the blog on the search term “basaar from pakistan to use in curries do it go old”. I mention Kashmiri Basaar in my curry recipe.
All spices deteriorate with age. At best, they lose their aromatic qualities. At worst, they go mouldy (I discovered that with some whole cumin seeds recently – admittedly, they were about 2 years old and stuck at the back of a cupboard).
Spice blends are no exception. If you make your own blends, they are best after a few weeks, and good for a few months. But they do gradually go downhill. Commercial blends are just the same, and unless you use a lot of the stuff it isn’t a good idea to buy the really big bags.
I would imagine that a blend brought over directly from Pakistan (or any other country) would not have the same quality control associated with its preparation, and this could easily lead to a poorer shelf-life than commercial blends.
It also reminds me of something that happened to me some years ago.
I was working in Pakistan one time and I brought back a huge bag of pistachios. I used to take them to the squash club to share out. Their freshness noticeably deteriorated over several weeks – one of the drawbacks to buying stuff in bulk. When you were eating them, they had a sort of dust covering the nut.
It was a hot summer in the UK, and I’d transferred these pistachios to smaller bags. I’d noticed a lot of small moths in the house, but I put it down to the weather. But one time at the squash club, I put a pistachio in my mouth and felt something cold on my lip. I spat it out and noticed a fair-sized caterpillar!
I had a thought, and when I got home I looked at the bags of nuts. They were crawling with caterpillars and moths – a few escapees were what I’d been seeing around the house. It turned out the “dust” covering the nuts was moth eggs.
There’s no harm using a spice mix you’ve brought over from Pakistan, but if it doesn’t taste right then bin it and buy some more.
I’ve been enjoying the occasional SPAM sandwich lately, and anyone who has done the same knows how tricky it can be getting the stuff out of the tin (a “tin” is what we in the UK call the “can”) without mangling it as you shove a knife inside to prise it out.
Here’s a simple method – but be careful, because it will come out so easily you’ll drop it on the floor if you’re not.
Run the can under warm tap water for about 30-60 seconds. This melts the fat next to the metal. Don’t overheat it (you don’t need to use boiling water, just hand hot is all it takes), and be sure to warm the bottom end as well.
Carefully puncture the base using a can opener or other sharp tool (this might not be required, but it helps – just a single hole is enough) to release the suction at that end, then remove the lid in the normal way. The SPAM will now slide out easily if you invert it over a plate.
No more shredded fingers or mangled SPAM. And it works for corned beef (the British kind) and other solid tinned meats which are often held in by suction and hard fat (Armour Treet, for example). Remember that the trick is to melt the fat, then allow air in to release suction at the bottom end.
And to all the plagiarists out there, especially those in Korea (캔에서 스팸 쉽게 꺼내는 방법)… you’re welcome. And thanks for not mentioning where you got the idea for your recent posts and YouTube videos.
I was looking for some suitable storage jars for my spices – they needed to be airtight, of course, otherwise there’s no point using them, and the contents will go off.
Now, I don’t know why I didn’t just go for Kilner Jars in the first place (well, I tried, but there were no obvious stockists locally), so I started looking around. And I found that ASDA do hinged-lid jars of various sizes . There was a gushing review of the things from some dizzy woman on a foodie website somewhere, so I went into the store and bought a few.
They’re bloody useless! I sensed something was wrong when I noticed that as the locking mechanism moves past its highest point, the tension is released slightly. You can see the rubber seal actually leaving the glass as it does so. So it meant that my Paprika could be sprinkled out even when the lid was tight shut – which obviously means it is exposed to air, and that’s deadly for Paprika.
Another test with water revealed that the jars – all of them – cannot hold liquid, and it pours out through the seal at a fairly fast rate. A total waste of money.
So instead I bought some proper Kilner Jars with hinged lids. These are the real McCoy and – ironically – cost less that the bloody ASDA things (well, from the Jam Jar Shop, at least).
manufacturers to either remove or reduce the salt content. This is in spite of research which shows salt isn’t as bad for you as the Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash) radical sect would have us believe.
Basically, after all the crap they’ve been publishing about fast food and pre-cooked meals being bad for you (the Mail has a food section which goes to town over this several times a week, comparing the poor health implications of each product), they are now warning people off fresh meat – and not for any health-based reason, but because in Britain we are apparently riding the razor’s edge, with food shortages.forever only a hair’s breadth away.
I’ve been enjoying the occasional SPAM sandwich lately, and anyone who has done the same knows how tricky it can be getting the stuff out of the tin (a “tin” is what we in the UK call the “can”) without mangling it as you shove a knife inside to prise it out.
Now, I don’t know why I didn’t just go for Kilner Jars in the first place (well, I tried, but there were no obvious stockists locally), so I started looking around. And I found that