Category: Food & Drink

Enter The Food Nannies

Food & Drink, Two-Minute Hate

Here we go again:

Britain is set to be put on a nationwide diet from March this year as public health officials impose new calorie caps.
Lunches and dinners are to be cut to 600 calories at fast food outlets and on ready meal shelves at supermarkets, in new guidelines from Public Health England (PHE).
Breakfast portions will be cut down to 400 calories as the government aims to stop Britons overeating and combat high obesity rates.

FFS; is there no area of our lives that is exempt from this busybody we-know-what’s-best-for-you bullshit? (My advice: if the nu-meal seems inadequate, buy two instead of one. That will do two things: stick it in their eye, and end your stomach’s growling.)

But it gets worse, O My Readers. From the same article:

A separate study by researchers at Oxford University also found that current alcohol guidelines may be too generous.

As one of my heroes once put it:

As any fule kno, I’m on a diet at the moment. But when I see shit like this, I want to go to a pub, eat a double portion of fish ‘n chips, and wash it down with five pints of Wadworth 6x. Here’s the starter:

Or, if this bullshit ever comes to this side of The Pond, take down a couple-three family buckets of KFC (Original Recipe) with a dozen Classic Cokes.

Now, this wouldn’t be a pretty sight. But it would be a lot prettier than the alternative:

Question Of Taste(s)

Food & Drink

Home again, with absolutely no trouble at Heathrow from the TSA (Brit version) on this occasion. (Getting through DFW was another story, but that’s a tale for another time.)

Just as when I arrive in a foreign country, my first instinct is to dive into the local food and drink — e.g. Wadworth 6X and steak ‘n kidney pie in Britishland — the first thing I did when arriving back in Texas was to gorge myself on BBQ, washed down with copious quantities of bourbon. (Doc Russia seems to be in league with Mr. FM to destroy my liver. I love my friends.)

This morning, it’s the turn of Noosa yogurt with honey, and Krispy Kreme coffee. Yum yum.

I’m back: tanned, rested and ready. For what, I’m not quite sure.

Christmas Dinner

Food & Drink

If you’re crippled with guilt over the upcoming feast known as Christmas dinner, fear not. Some doctor bloke has debunked most of the myths associated with “bad foods”:

If you’re to follow the clean-eating gurus of our time, your life – and waistline – depend on avoiding carbs and sugar and dairy. By that logic, the indulgent dinners over the Christmas period sound like a death wish.
In actual fact, there is not much evidence underpinning these fads, points out Dr Aaron Carroll, a nutritionist and physician at Indiana University.

The fact that Dr. Carroll thinks the World Health Organization (and by extension, Gwyneth Paltrow et al.) are full of shit makes me feel quite festive.

So go ahead: enjoy yourselves, as will I. I’m spending Christmas Day with a longtime friend and her adult kids. See y’all later.

 

Off The Beaten Track

Food & Drink, Travels

Unless I have actual business to take care of there, I avoid large main streets like the plague. Notorious among the avoidees is London’s Oxford Street, which is a shitty thoroughfare full of tourists and other scum, all taking selfies and being fleeced by the stores selling the most awful tat (British for tchotchkes) while they try to persuade themselves they’re having a great time in the world’s best city.

Fach.

My advice: turn off the rotten thing as soon as you can — as I did when I walked down Soho’s Wardour Street, which is a narrow lane full of interesting places…

…such as the Pickle & Toast, which specializes in cheese toasties (grilled cheese sandwiches, to my Murkin Readers):

Exhausted by having had to walk a block down Oxford Street, I badly needed a cup of tea so I went inside.

I ordered my cuppa, and then sat down to drink it and relax awhile — but the smell of sourdough toast was too wonderful, so I ordered a cheese toastie. This was also because the place does not use just any old cheese, no sirree. This is the stuff they use:

It’s Quicke’s Cheddar, from Devon; and the sandwich looks like this:

Good grief. I could have eaten three, and the rest of the menu looked just as tasty — and they serve breakfast too, but I got there just too late. To say that this beats a Big Mac on Oxford Street is to utter the understatement of the century.

And just so we’re all clear on the concept: I could have eaten at about a dozen different places along Wardour Street, and I probably would have had just as good a time and just as good a meal. Now you know.

Delenda est Via Oxonium.

Best Sausage Ever Made

Food & Drink

In Comments to an earlier post, Longtime Reader & Friend Mh bewailed the lack of decent South African boerewors (sausage) available in the U.S. of A.

In the interests of Reader bennies, allow me to point all my Dallas-area Readers / visitors to Hirsch’s Meats in Plano, which has not only boerewors, but better boerewors than I’ve been able to find here in South Africa so far. It’s made to an original Afrikaans recipe, by the way.

The lovely stuff is kept in the freezers on the right as you enter the store, and people fly in from out of town to buy it there. The store assistants tell me that their boerewors is the only product in the entire store which is bought in multiple packs by customers (I typically buy three or four at a time myself; others buy still more). They are seldom if ever out of stock, too; if there’s none in the freezer, they’ll usually have some in the back which just hasn’t been put out yet. Ask in that unlikely event. (Warning: they’re closed on Sundays and Mondays.)

For best results, toss it on the barbie (or, if you want to go all ethnic, have a braaivleis). Just don’t overcook it, or it will be dry — the fat bursts out of the skin quite quickly. When ready, it should look like this:

As I said earlier, I eat it for breakfast every single day, except when I’m in Britishland or Yurp. I think I’ll have some now, come to think of it.

No More Reason Needed

Business, Food & Drink, Politics

If ever you want to know why Britain’s leaving the EU (“Brexit”) is not only a Good Thing, but absolutely vital, here’s proof:

A change in European Union rules could see doner kebabs banned across the continent, infuriating takeaways and fast-food lovers.
The European Union’s legislature is moving to ban the phosphates used in the slabs of meat at the heart of the popular street snack that originated in Turkey.
Up-in-arms kebab vendors in Germany have skewered the idea.
EU lawmakers are citing health concerns based on studies that linked phosphates to cardiovascular disease.

Just so we’re all clear what’s being discussed here, this is what these tools want to ban:

Lamb Shwarma happens to be one of my favorite “fast foods”; and nobody tell my kids about this or else there’ll be murders (as they say Over Here). Along with pizza and crêpes, doner was one of their staple street foods when we traveled together in Euroland: cheap, filling and delicious; and if these disappeared from Europe, it would be a major disincentive to go there. I’m not kidding.

And if the above pic has made yer mouth start to water, I’m sorry (not really).