food, reviews and of course coffee
BBC reports on possible pork contamination:
All pork products made in the Irish Republic since September have been recalled over fears they are contaminated with a toxic substance.
The action was taken after dioxins were found in slaughtered pigs thought to have eaten contaminated feed.
Tests showed some pork products contained up to 200 times more dioxins than the recognised safety limit.
Why am I concerned?
Well I do like Paul Rankin’s Irish Pork Sausages.
Sorry due to a server failure we have been offline since last night, but we’re back…
BBC reports on how the credit crunch and rising food and fuel costs are having an impact the costs for snack firms.
Mars has become the latest snack firm to admit the credit crunch is eating into its business.
The Snickers bar and M&Ms maker said it would be raising the wholesale price of its goods to offset rising raw material, packaging and energy costs.
The news came days after fellow US firm Hershey raised its product prices.
Mars also said it would be cutting the size of some of its goods. In the UK, a number of firms have shrunk snack sizes to stave off price rises.
So we can expect our chocolate bars to get smaller.
BBC reports on an interview with Jamie Oliver where Jamie criticises the way in which people in the UK don’t like eating well, but prefer to drink too much…
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has criticised the UK for its alcohol culture and poor cuisine.
In an interview with Paris Match magazine, Oliver suggested people in the UK cared more about getting drunk than they did about eating well.
There is a significant minority in the UK who do eat well, like good food, go out of their way to purchase organic and local produce. Though I agree with Jamie there is a substantial majority who are quite happy cooking from frozen bags of prepared food. This same majority rarely eat together and are more likely to eat in front of the television then around the table.
So is Jamie Oliver correct in his view, or are me and him wrong?
So there you are, a famous chef, Antony Worrall Thompson, writing in a magazine distributed all over the UK. You are talking about salads and you recommend the weed henbane, to be “great in salads”.
All well and good you might think.
Okay let’s just check the definition of henbane.
A coarse and poisonous plant of the nightshade family, with sticky hair leaves and an unpleasant smell.
Sorry.
Poisonous?
Nightshade (as in deadly nightshare)?
Unpleasant smell?
Methinks that Antony Worrall Thompson may have made a mistake!
From the BBC
In a magazine interview about watercress and other wild foods, Mr Worrall Thompson said the weed henbane was “great in salads”.
Healthy & Organic Living magazine’s website has now issued an urgent warning that “henbane is a very toxic plant and should never be eaten”.
The chef had meant to recommend fat hen, which is a wild herb.
BBC reports on the world’s biggest sandwich.
Mexican caterers have made what they say is the longest sandwich in Latin America, throwing together a 44-metre (48-yard) “torta” in five minutes.
Dozens of people from sandwich outlets in Mexico City came together to produce the monster baguette at the start of a three-day torta fair in the capital.
Each section of the 600kg (1,320lb) sandwich had a different flavour and 30 ingredients went into the mix.
According to a recent survey, we as a nation in the UK throw away 1.3m unopened yogurts every day.
The BBC reports on the survey:
More than a million unopened pots of yogurt and yogurt drinks are thrown away in the UK every day – that’s 484 million a year, according to recent research.
And it’s not just yoghurt!
4.4 million whole apples and 1.2 million sausages are thrown away each day.
What a waste!
What are you throwing away?
Photo source.
BBC reports on the end of cheap food…
Peering just a few months ahead to estimate food prices has been a tough game recently.
BBC reports on a court ruling which says that Pringles are not crisps.
Pringles, the popular snack food in a tube, are not potato crisps, a High Court judge has ruled.
Their packaging, “unnatural shape” and the fact that the potato content is less than 50% helped Mr Justice Warren make his crunch decision.
This is all a tax avoidance issue and nothing really to do with crisps and non-crisps.
Photo source.
Well Time to eat… is one today. It was a year ago that I started this food and coffee blog.
Since then I have made 201 posts.
There have been 5,858 visits.
Here’s to another year.