Budget Peas

When you buy a bag of the cheapest peas in the supermarket, the question has to be asked…why on earth do you need to have a slogan on the packet?

But I must say, I think “…one, two, pea!” could catch on, for all the wrong reasons!

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Zero Caffeine “Coffee”

Occasionally, I have recently experienced pretty painful abdominal cramps and have been exploring what might be causing this. One of the items I have a feeling could be to blame is coffee.

I enjoy coffee, especially a nice flat white, although not as much as I enjoy tea. As I began looking online for items about the sorts of things coffee could cause, I was amazed at just how bad for your digestion this drink can be…and that decaffeinated coffee (which I’m not overly keen on anyway) still has caffeine in it and isn’t necessarily that much better for you.

Anyway, I thought I would see if there were alternatives and came across something called Teeccino which is an American brand which is mostly organic and uses chicory, carob, dates, figs, nuts and natural flavourings to create a slightly sweet alternative to coffee without the nasty potential side effects. I was rather surprised that I really liked it, that it was not dissimilar to coffee in taste…and that with figs in there, it can only have positive digestive impact I suppose!

On telling parents about this, they mentioned something called Camp coffee (again chicory-based but with sugar (!!) and water added) which has been around a while which seems to mainly be a baking ingredient (but you can add water to make a drink). It is interesting that old ideas can come full circle to create a new market which can have health benefits.

Anyone else tried Teeccino? What do you think?

Obsessed with Food?

While watching a cookery show of some description on TV recently I was wondering why on earth we, as people, are so obsessed with watching shows wherein a large part of it is people stuffing their faces and telling us how good it tastes (some of whom have cooked it first)?

Does this seem strange to anyone else?

If I sat you right next to someone and asked you to watch them eat, complete with the sound effects, you would probably think it was disgusting, so why do we have so many TV shows about it? Most of the time you won’t be trying to cook it yourself anyway. It doesn’t really make sense.

Eggcellent

A bit of a strange photo to share but I was amazed to note that the packaging for a Nestle Smarties easter egg contained NO PLASTIC at all. Even the smarties were just loose inside the egg, which made it more fun as it rattled.

I had to share with you because this seems an awesome step forward in the way we package our food I feel. Only the foil wrapped around the egg itself isn’t always recyclable…but then why use packaging in the first place if it isn’t necessary? There is so much waste in this area that it seems hugely important for manufacturers to think more about how they package, and for us as consumers to think more about our responsibility in buying products that consume less resources (or at least more recyclable resources) too.

Well done to Nestle on this one. Here is hoping that more responsible food packaging comes along in future – and maybe on larger easter eggs too!

Fruits of Raro

When I arrived in Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands, I had the pleasure of eating some locally grown bananas. In itself this is nothing spectacular. The bananas were rather small (maybe not even half the size of those you normally see in a supermarket) but they were BY FAR the most flavoursome and fantastic bananas I have ever eaten. It really makes you realise what average standards we put up with on a day-to-day basis. The paw-paw, coconut and pineapple were popular and used in a number of dishes (and cocktails – below is a “spiked nu”) and were also fantastic.

Also, I heard of the locally grown Noni fruit which I was unaware of before this visit. This fruit is apparently the best thing going for dealing with stomach and digestive upsets (in other words, it clears you out) and has high doses of the electrolytes that the body needs. Better than any over the counter remedy apparently.

I had the dubious pleasure of smelling and tasting one of these fruits. I thought it looked a little like a potato and it was probably over-ripe but I can best compare the smell to that of blue cheese and the taste was not much better (slightly sweet and slightly off) with the added effect of acting as a local anaesthetic in that it numbed the tongue. Amazing! You have to love nature!

Christmas Pizza

Merry Christmas, Everyone! The Christmas kiwi is brought to you once more!

On this fine day, I wanted to wish you all a happy time…and I wanted to depart the regular Christmas food over-indulgence craziness (when combined with the excessive spending on gifts most people don’t really need it is all pretty disgusting when you think about it!) to reflect on pizza.

I had a pizza in a restaurant recently which had the following toppings…chorizo, prawns, squid, anchovies, tomatoes, aubergine/eggplant, red onion and of course mozzarella. There was also a little black pepper ground on the top.

The ensemble piece was nice enough but I couldn’t help reflect that less is sometimes more. Prawns, squid and aubergine do not really taste of much at all and I felt they did not really belong on the pizza…the taste was provided by the anchovies, onion, chorizo and tomatoes which could have been there without the others.

When the same three toppings do not provide much in the way of texture to the experience either I thought that the chef really did need to calm down a bit. To continue the Christmas theme, it is a bit like wishing you hadn’t invited certain members of the family round because they inevitably cause a scene and spoil the occasion for everyone else.  🙂

Anyone got any favourite topping combos? How about Christmas pizza toppings that work?

Going Dutch

I am not entirely sure where the phrase “Going Dutch” comes from…perhaps the Dutch were famed at some point in history for sharing the cost of meals…or maybe you had to wear orange while eating?

Anyway, I must tell you that in New Zealand, paying for meals on a shared basis is a breeze. When everyone has finished eating, you don’t ask for the bill, instead you go to the till on your way out and everyone pays for what they had individually (and generally by Debit/Credit Card).

I have never seen this in the UK, where instead you end up with the utterly ridiculous scenario of people passing the bill around the table and putting down enough cash to cover their part of the bill (and of course many don’t have the right money and so need their own bit of change)…it takes ages and is crazy by comparison.

The only downside to the NZ way, however, is that if you are last to pay and have dined with less-than-honest folk, you might get stung with a larger bill than you expected…