Posts filed under 'food'
Thinking about taking a trip, exploring the open road, taking the family out? Go to Roadology to discover some great places to visit throughout Britain. You can plan a route of your own or even look at other popular routes in the country and the interactive map will suggest exciting and interesting things to do along the way. You can even create or listen to amazing playlists to suit your road trip and journey time to keep you entertained on your journey.
For the chance to win £2000, go to Roadology and simply upload a picture of your favourite place in Great Britain along with the town, city, village or postcode where it was taken. Last day for entry is 24th April. Good Luck!
April 14th, 2011
Christmas should be a relaxing and enjoyable time of year but often you can get caught up in all the rush and preparation and end up missing the good bits. To make sure you don’t miss out on the important things this Christmas, plan ahead and take some of this advice from online motor insurer ,swiftcover.com:
Buy your presents online, then you can relax in the comfort of your own home and your gifts will be delivered directly to your door.
Christmas always comes with a bit of over indulgence but you can miss out on some of the festivities by spending a lot of time in the kitchen. This year why not order your food and treats online? Try www.formanandfield.com.
You can buy your tree online and get it delivered to your door rather than worrying about how you will fit it into your car. Look at www.buyatree.com and www.pinesandneedles.com to find the perfect tree.
To make Christmas cards a little easier and fun, you could buy them from www.moonpig.com, they will create personalised cards and even post them for you so you don’t have to think about queuing at the post office. Or you could try www.elfyourself.com where you can create dancing elf versions of yourself or others, which you can then email to your friends and family.
December 3rd, 2009
Today The BBC website are reporting that energy firms E.On and Scottish and Southern Energy are to raise gas and electricity prices by up to 29%. At a time when people are tightening their belts, any tips on reducing our costs are very welcome.
I found this fantastic article on The Times website 50 tips on thrift from the WI. Times Money spoke to members from the Women’s Institute to find out what their best tips were on ‘old-fashioned home economics’.
Some of their tips include - planning your shopping before you go, don’t buy buy-one-get-one-free items unless you use the extra, buy cheap - don’t shun the value ranges, use a three tier steamer instead of individual saucepans as this saves on electricity and also shop in the last hour of the day to get reduced items.
We can also cut costs outside of the home when motoring, and apparently that is exactly what more and more of us are planning to do. The Observer is reporting that the demand in the UK for hybrid cars is at an all time high with long waiting lists. Japan are experiencing declining car ownership due to the high oil prices. But they are being rather more pro-active then us Brits. A Japanese start up company and looking at ways in which they can modify existing cars and make them more efficient rather than people having to buy a new hybrid car. You can read the full article here, ‘Cars with a green conscience’.
August 21st, 2008
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read an article in The Telegraph reporting that ‘Toddlers who turn their noses up at spicy food from overseas could be branded racists’.
If that is the case then I am very ashamed to say that I was racist up until I was about 18 years old when I became more open to foreign foods. Before then I would be put off by the smell of certain foods and would only ever like very mild tastes. Now it is a different story.
The revelation has come from The National Children’s Bureau which received £12 million a year from mainly Government funded organisations. Play leaders and nursery teachers have been issued with documents advising them to ‘be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care’. This could include something simple like a toddler saying ‘yuk’ when being served an unfamiliar food.
Presumably each nursery teacher or play leader that hears a comment like this would need to document this in order to report back to their local council. What the council will do with this information is anyone’s guess. Children’s eating habits are largely down to their home environment and the food that they have been given at home. If a child hasn’t had certain foreign foods before then they are likely to turn their nose up at it as it will be unfamiliar. It’s what children do. It is good to introduce children to new foods and tastes but surely it is more important that the child has a good balanced diet and parents don’t feel pressurised into introducing new foods all the time.
Personally I would rather that teachers were left to concentrate on more important aspects of a child’s development like their reading, writing and arithmetic and not be bogged down in yet more unnecessary form filling.
July 16th, 2008
The BBC have reported this week that the average food bill has now increased by £15 a month for a family of four. Coming from a family of four I can completely agree with these statistics.
According to the report, a basket full of staple items costs 15% more now then it did 12 months ago, staple items would include bread, milk and tea bags. The increase in costs has not be put down to the rising food prices internationally. The price of wheat as an example has risen sharply in 2008 which has pushed up the price of wheat based products like bread. Corn prices have surged due to bad weather and flooding in the US and now farmers are having to pay more to feed their livestock which is compounding on the price of meat and dairy products.
A report by ASDA shows that although people are receiving reasonable pay rises they actually have less money each week to spend due to the increasing cost of bills. It is also evident that people are feeling the pinch as less people are paying their credit cards off in full each month. One of the problems with this is that people will be charged interest if they do not pay for purchases in full in the credit-free period. Paying part of the bill is not good enough.
A case study detailed in The Guardian found that someone had left 62p on their credit card by mistake, having paid off over £5,000 of the cost of some flights, but because there was this remaining balance he was charged £61.40 interest. Unbelievable. So make sure that you don’t over spend on your credit card so that you don’t have to worry about escalating interest charges.
One good piece of news today is that Gordon Brown may not go ahead with the 2p a litre increase in fuel duty this autumn. It isn’t confirmed yet but that would be one less thing to worry about, for now!
July 3rd, 2008
Our parents have always told us that eating fruit and vegetables is good for us and now they have the proof.
The Times Online have published an article confirming that eating fruit and vegetables can keep cancer at bay. Scientists at the First International Congress on Nutrition and Cancer in Turkey explained that they can now “demonstrate how the micronutrients in the diet can interfere with the body’s cellular pathways to help to prevent cancer”.
Professor Walter Willett of Harvard University stressed that people needed to have a healthy lifestyle. People need to exercise more, lose weight and increase their intake of fruit and vegetables. Such changes could reduce the risk of cancers of the head and neck as well as gastrointestinal tract.
Fruit and vegetables can also help reduce the risk of sunburn. Tomatoes seem to be the best performers. They are rich in lycopene which offers some protection against “inflammation, premature skin ageing, photo-sensitivity disorders and some skin cancers. A study carried out by Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health which spanned 6 years, studied the diets of more than 47,000 men. Of the 46 fruits and vegetables evaluated, only the tomato products showed a measurable relationship to reduce prostate cancer risk. As you increase the consumption of tomatoes and tomato products the levels of lycopene in the blood increase and the risk for prostate cancer decreases.
Medical News Today confirms that people who eat a Mediterranean-style diet have at least a 25% reduced risk of dying from heart disease and cancer.
June 12th, 2008
The rise of the cheap flight airlines has meant a rise in holiday ’snacking’ - bite-sized breaks in addition to ‘main’ summer holidays. And for many, this snacking takes the form of drinking - whether it be the opportunity to sip sherry in the Jerez region of Spain or sample champagne in the actual Champagne region of France. October however heralds one thing in the drinking world: Oktoberfest, the annual festival of beer which takes place in Munich every year.
Plenty of airlines provide inexpensive flights to Munich, so getting there is easy enough - but rather handily for those that want to enjoy something of an Oktoberfeast as well as an Oktoberfest (their word play, not mine), The Guardian has recently provided a Top Ten list of Munich eateries offering a variety of fayre to pad out the pints (or, should I say, soak up the steins).
My favourite has to be the currywürst - bite-sized slices of sausage smothered in a curry sauce. They may not exactly serve curry like this round Mumbai way, but as they say, when in Rome, do like the Romans…
October 3rd, 2007
I’m somewhat embarrassed by my lack of culinary skills.
I do toast just like Henry Ford and his Model T car - anyway you want it as long as it’s black.
From time to time I do idly browse through one of the very many cook books that my wife has, but my occasional forays into action see me overstretch myself as I embark on some over-ambitious plan to cook something that I have never prepared before, which I don’t have the ingredients for, let alone enough time to actually make the meal within two hours of the intended time it was due to be served.
I have decided that rather than be a show-stopping virtuoso, there may be more merit in being able to cover the basics well, and when I am good and ready, bulding it up from there. On that note then I am on the hunt for my first ten easy dishes I can make. They need to be recipes that take no more than 10 minutes to prepare, I reckon. They also need to be healthy, easy enough to make once - and then repeat afterward from memory without having to stare at the recipe again - and ideally they should involve mostly basics so that I won’t need to go a wild goose chase for some, well, wild goose perhaps at short notice.
Not sure what my first dish will be, but I am hoping it will be something more substantial than the crisps and gravy recipe a friend has recommended. As far as I can tell the ingredients consist of a) crisps (any flavour) and b) gravy powder and the recipe is thus:
- 1. Boil kettle
- 2. Mix water and granules to make thick gravy
- 3. Pour over crisps.
It may be quick and easy to make, but it seems more yukka than pukka to me, and I hope to begin with something a tad more ambitious.
August 21st, 2007
