Food ‘n Drink

Posted by Sarah

If you’re a member of Costco Cash and Carry in the UK then grab your spring wallet of savings and get on down to your local store to pick up a couple of boxes of Torres Vina Sol, a dry white wine currently costing just £17.50 per box of 6 bottles (usual price is around £4+ a bottle from most supermarkets). This wine is a great, light white wine that can easily be drunk with or without food, and no need for any soda water.

Take a look at a Wine Review of it, or just take my word for it

Posted by Sarah

This year I won’t have a proper garden to look after and grow food in. Whilst we have a garden at our new house, there’s no beds, the sun doesn’t really get into the garden and if it did, there’d be a nice Silverbirch tree to hang over the plants too anyway! Plus we’re planning to move from here by October, and I don’t want to have to worry about getting my plants out of yet another garden. So this year I’ll be growing strawberries in pots, I’ll probably get a grow bag and do a couple of tomato plants, I’ve got my herbs in pots already, and I’ll maybe do a few lettuce, radish and spring onion in some large pots as well.

At least this year we have a kitchen windowsill which the sun gets on at around 12pm and once the sun stays higher it should stay on the window for a couple of hours at least, so I may not bother with putting my greenhouse up and just start off any seeds on the windowsill instead. I’ve given my raspberry canes to a friend as I can get more of those from my Dad next year if I’ve got the opportunity to plant them out.

So there won’t be as much going on with the garden here this year, but I’ll let you know how my plant pot garden is going

Posted by Sarah

Recently I wrote about free range chickens, and how, if you can’t afford to go free range, then you need to at least aim to buy the better raised chickens where they have 25% more space and a 25% longer lifespan, and are basically reared in much better and cleaner conditions. But how can you tell which are the better non free range chickens?

Until recently I had presumed that ‘Farm Assured’, often denoted by a Red Tractor, was the better version, along with ‘Freedom Foods’, which is the RSPCA’s own mark. As it happens, the Freedom Foods mark IS okay, the farm assured one? No, not really. They just lay out the minimum baseline of rules that need to be followed and that allows for intensively farmed chickens.

So, when shopping, look for the Freedom Foods mark or sticker on the meat.

Posted by Sarah

People constantly say or aim to just buy and eat fruit and veg that are in season so hopefully locally produced (or at least produced in the country you live in). Sure you can go around a supermarket or grocers and check on the labels (if they have them) to find out where things have come from, something I still do regardless of whether something is in season as not all places source from their own country unfortunately.

Anyway, I came across this chart yesterday which is a great chart to maybe print off and keep around when you’re planning your weekly fruit and veg shopping, so at least you’ve got a better idea of what will be best and tastiest to buy and eat (probably just covers UK and maybe some of Europe).

» What’s in Season - Red Tractor

Posted by Sarah

Another recent programme was again about Chickens and Eggs. Featuring Jamie Oliver, the show went into detail on eggs, the chicks and chickens behind the eggs, the various eggs and where they’ve come from (Battery, Barn, Free Range etc), along with Chickens and how they’re reared.

As long as I can remember I’ve always bought Free Range Eggs. To me it’s quite a natural thing. Living by and working on a Free Range farm when I was younger gave us an easy way to buy eggs from there, and then since buying for myself, Free Range eggs have always been the obvious choice. So, since buying free range Chicken I figured we were on the right road.

That was until I watched Jamie’s Fowl dinners, where he had examples of liquid egg, liquid egg whites and dried egg (gotta say, made me feel sick seeing it all!), and then explained how mayonnaise, coleslaw, dressings, quiche etc. have all probably either been made with one of these or at least from battery hen eggs. Wow, sickness feeling got worse that’s for sure! My mayonnaise of choice is Hellmanns, and I was very unhappy to discover that this was one to contain battery hen eggs (or dried egg, I forget). Yuk!! A representative from Hellmanns had been invited to this show and he said that from February they would be starting to use free range eggs and by June all products on the shelves should contain free range eggs only, which made me a little happier, although I still will be having a go at making my own mayonnaise for the time being.

So what else do you not really think about. Pastry? Chicken pies not only have pastry that’s probably made with non free range eggs, but most of these fillings that contain chicken probably get the meat from the battery hens after they’ve spent their year laying eggs. Yep, apparently the breasts from these chickens are used in various pie fillings. We don’t tend to buy many pies, but we have done on occasion, and this thought is even more stomach wrenching than intensively reared chickens.

This just reconfirms that your best option is to cook everything from fresh if you can, or if you can’t, check the labels and if you’re not sure then maybe it’s not worth it. I’ll also be learning how to make mayonnaise and pastry, it’ll be fun and handy to know too! Home made quiches are a lot cheaper than buying them, and you get to control what goes in. And if you’re eating out? Don’t be too embarrassed to find out where your food has actually come from. The more awareness there is, the more chance that changes can and will be made.