Bad Stuff
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
Please, please, please, resist the temptation to buy any sort of instant pancake mixture from the supermarkets for pancake day today. They are a complete waste of time and making proper, fresh mixture is SO EASY!
Eggs, milk, water, plain flour. That is it, ingredients that you probably have at home, to be honest – you dont need to even go out. This recipe makes a huge amount, so you can cut it down if you like.
- In a food processor or large blender, beat 5 or 6 eggs till frothy.
- Add 500 grams of flour and mix well. Add a pinch of salt.
- Add 500 milk gradually while beating till properly mixed in (use a spatula to scrape anything off the side of the blender/processor)
- Add 500 ml cold water and beat until smooth.
- Add a couple of table spoons of sunflower or groundnut oil and beat in.
Okay, ignore the mixture and go and sort out the rest of the evening. You will get better pancakes if the mixture has been allowed to stand for a while – a couple of hours is great, but even 20 minutes is useful.
When you are ready to cook your pancakes, add a couple of table spoons of cold water and give the mix another blast. Cook in a hot, non-stick pan, just wiping the pan with an oily bit of kitchen towel.
Keep making pancakes and serving them fresh to your friends until they start falling over and groaning in agony.
I love my pancakes flambéed with Grand Manier, but stocks of ice cream, maple syrup, lemons, sugar, honey and warm chocolate are also good! Marmalade and Whiskey is another favourite.
Eat well, and enjoy the fact that you have had proper pancakes and not the miserable rubbish you get out of bottles of instant mix!
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Category Bad Stuff, Recipes | Tags: Tags: batter, eggs, flour, homemade, instant mixture, lemon, milk, pancakes, shrove Tuesday, water,
Sunday, December 4th, 2011
Recently, Tesco has rebranded their “Perfectly Ripe” Avocado range and called it the “Ready to Eat” Avocado instead. And just in case you think that this is the same-old-same-old, they have put a nice big “new” label on the rebranded product (isn’t that cheating?)
The joke is, of course, just like its predecessor, the Perfectly Ripe Avocado, this new product is several days off being ripe. I have picked up these small twin packs several times to find that the contents is hard and inedible. The packaging, oblivious to the fact that the contents is far from the smooth creamy experience that accompanies the properly ripe avocado, instructs you to keep it in the fridge to stop it ripening more! I haven’t tried, but I am not keen on the idea of waiting several weeks for my green cricket ball of a fruit to become something that you can shove beneath a prawn or two.
The new packet sat in my nice warm kitchen a couple of days until I thought I should try the first of the twins. Rock Hard. My super sharp chef’s knive managed to cut through the flesh, but the challange was completely beyond the capabilities of my teaspoon. Into the compost with it!
The second avocado I have just tried. It certain felt more or less ripe, but as you can see, the result inside the skin is watery and uneven and has a bitter taste that has taken the combined scrubbing power of several Peroni beers to remove from my pallet.
I have never yet found an avocado in a supermarket labelled as “ripe” that is actually anything of the sort. It is simple misrepresentation for the sake of adding extra cost to the product. Tesco are not the only company that sells such waste of supermarket shelf space, but then since all the major Supermarket Companies basically sell the identical “own brand” products with different labels (most of the time they even have the identical shaped packaging) this is hardly surprising.
The bottom line is, if you want a decent Avocado – get it from a proper grocer and ripen it yourself!
How to ripen Avocados
Avocados when ripe on the tree are actually hard – this is probably how the supermarkets get away with their misleading packaging. However, we want something smooth and creamy. This can only happen after picking. Do not refrigerate your fruit, that will stop it ripening, but place it in a paper bag and keep it somewhere coolish. Keeping it in a bag will help speed up the ripening slightly and reduce exposure to light. Avocados will ripen in 3 days up to a week – it is a bit unpredictable which can make them a pain for dinner parties!
Monday, November 7th, 2011
In the banking world there was a saying that there was no such thing as a new customer. It was based on the principle that up until a few years ago most customers never changed banks, so if you wanted new customers you had to get those who had never had a bank account – children. Once on board, they would stay for life.
For fast food companies the same rule has applied – a customer who loved you as a child would more likely be loyal as an adult. But recently, with more awareness about health and dietary issues in kids, the kids fast food market has taken a bit of a hit. So, Burger King in the US (following on the heals of McDs) are repackaging and relaunching their childrens meals in a bid to get the kids back in and their future customer base assured. (more…)
Friday, July 15th, 2011
Watching television tonight I noticed a commercial for Flora Cuisine that boasted “45% less Saturated Fat than olive oil!! It took a second or two to sink in and then I though, hang on, what makes Olive Oil so good is that it is HIGH in Mono-unsaturated fat and nothing to do with the saturated fat content.
Monounsaturated fat is credited by much scientific research as being effective in lowering the risk of coronary heart disease (assuming you are eating healthily as well and not on a Glasgow diet!) In addition, Olive oil is very high in certain antioxidants, for instance Hydroxytyrosol, which is seen as being behind many of the benefits of olive oil.
However, Flora Cuisine has less than a quarter of the amount of monounsaturated fat than does olive oil, and as far as I can find out does not have Hydroxytyrosol at all – probably because it has no olives in it.
So, it would seem that although accurate, the advertising is rather misleading – well, VERY misleading. My advice? Dont go for cleverly manufactured rubbish with some heavy marketing spin, go for good old, wonderful olive oil instead – it may well be much better for you!
For your information, here is the low down from Fat Secret. You will need to allow for different serving sizes, but the results are obvious.
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Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
Germs are a problem around the home, though not always in the way we think. Some germs are definitely unwelcome and there is no shame in keeping your kitchen surfaces clean and healthy. Simple things like washing your hands before cooking, and again after handling raw meat are just pure common sense. But good soap and nice hot water will do the trick fine.
Despite evidence that we do need exposure, albeit with some care, to nasties as we are growing up to help our body build its own defences, some companies love working on scare tactics to make sure we buy their anti germ products. Once such company is Reckitt Benckiser, producers of Dettol, a product that has been closely linked to the antiseptic market in the UK since 1933. This is a highly respected product, so when their adverts start shouting FACT in front of every sentence and tell you that your work top has more germs than you toilet bowl, there is the assumption that everyone will rush out and buy Dettol.
This scaremongering has continued with their latest, heavily hyped product, the Healthy Touch soap dispenser. Apparently your soap dispenser that you have been using for several generations is a frightening source of germs, so they have invented one that you don’t have to touch to get the disinfectant soap.
In the last week or so, I have noticed they have calmed down their adverts, and are concentrating on how your children are going to catch terrible diseases from that terrible soap dispenser that you force them to use (or maybe even that germ laden bar of soap?) and should buy this no touch system.
Now as I said, there is nothing wrong with cleanliness, especially in the kitchen, but isn’t this new device and the marketing that goes with it just feeding off our paranoia? Paranoia generated by the adverts in the first place. To make it worse, this product is completely pointless.
After all, what is the first thing you do having touched a soap dispenser to get soap?
You wash your hands!
Thursday, March 24th, 2011
Interesting little article in the BBC’s food programme blog about frozen food written by Simon Parkes. I have had and still have a mixed relationship with frozen food. Generally speaking I find it a false economy because the quality of frozen product in this country is so woefully low. We have an allotment and the freezer comes in handy for freezing over production, but because we cannot employ the blast freeze techniques of the manufacturers the result is disappointing and what was a wonderful bean when fresh, is a limp, structureless thing when thawed out.
Some things have improved over the years – most notably the freezers them selves. Apart from freezing a little quicker, they are also cheaper to run because of much improved insulation. Though be warned, they still cost considerably more to run than a refrigerator. And that insulation has brought its own downside – when we changed an ancient small freezer for a new one last year we were horrified how little space there was in the new one for the walls of the box were five times the thickness.
Simon Parkes does make one strange comment. “And secondly, it helps reduce waste (there’s nothing to trim off and throw away and you only take out of the freezer the amount you need)”. I am not sure how he works this out. Somewhere in the manufacturing process the veg had to be trimmed – probably by machine that often cuts off more than is required. That waste was generated anyway – just not at home. Also, most food waste is from cooking more than we eat and cheap food actually encourages that, especially if it is sold in portions size which many frozen products are.
As Simon points out, the French buy more frozen food than we do. However, the comparison is rather odd because in France the quality of frozen food is often much higher than ours – it is not seen as a cheap alternative but of a way of accessing food and storing food that you cannot get in your region so easily. I do likewise when I buy giant prawns from a local Chinese catering shop, or soft shelled crabs. But lets face it, these are hardly a cheap option!
Overall, we would save more money and eat better if we were more organised at home and cooked sensible sized meals. Frezers use a huge amount of electricity and are yet another item that is difficult to dispose of and far from saving waste, encourages it. And in the UK at least, they reinforce the idea that eating is something you just do because you have to rather than a special moment in the day.
So, do we need them? Have a small one for your peas and the odd luxury, and get the rest fresh from a market.
