Articles

I must confess that I have always liked the expression: I don't know much about art, but I know what I like. I'm not sure how the first person who said it meant it, but it is not just the stubborn sense of pride and the boldness of admitted ignorance that charms me, it is the basic honesty I like. A preference or a passion may be irrational, but we still know what we like.

The Turnip Man is a sprightly Canadian centenarian who still rides a bicycle. His real name is Emery Kilmer, of London, Ontario, and he celebrated his 100th birthday on October 1.

One of the bst thinks to do on a Sunday in London would have to be a trip to Candem Lock Markets. Ever since my first visit, I have loved going there, but not just for the bargains that can be had in the myriad of cloths stores. Camdem Lock Markets is a place where you can get a bargain in all manner of things "Foodie."

This question really bugs me: we humans eagerly devour most species of animals, birds and fish, so why do we shudder at the very thought of eating insects?

Green M&Ms aren't the only sweets calculated to promote young love. Love Hearts may also do the trick. We first became aware of them when we read this heart-warming story:

I thought to myself, ‘You can do this!'. After being married for almost 4 years, I had decided it was time to invite Sven's family over for dinner (See: From Borneo To Oslo). Four hours left before the guests arriving, my husband brought home the scallops I needed. I thought they would come neatly trimmed as I usually bought them but this time they only had live ones … with shells. So that left me with a problem, I had never opened a live one before and as I prided and prodded the shells to no avail for a good 15 minutes, I started to feel like choking.

I am not sure where to place the credit (or blame?) for the dietary restrictions I endured the past month. It may have been the subject matter of the past few columns causing a growing, not quite fully repressed, need to exercise an active conscience before devouring things. It might just have been my growing, not quite fully ignorable waistline.

I had a conversation with some work colleagues recently about the seemingly exorbitant prices charged in local restaurants for perfectly ordinary dishes. Ordinary to those of us who cook, of course. We discovered, on asking around that there are those who are not interested in cooking, don't know their roux from their roulade, and are therefore prepared to shell out quantities of hard earned dosh rather than have a bash themselves.

Many of the world's fruitlovers (including your humble scribe) think mangoes are the most luscious and desirable of all things edible. So, apparently, does Martina Navrátilová, "the greatest women's tennis player in the history of the sport."

I have to confess that I have been bingeing again. And not in the usual food and drink way. It's not the kind of thing I like to talk about in public, but here, among hopefully kindred souls, the guilty truth can come out - I've been buying too many cookbooks online again.

There is something oddly satisfying about being topical, even if you were told to be, and even if you weren't particularly enthusiastic about a subject. After last month's look at the sad state of the world's fish, which ended with an appeal to try some of the little-known delicacies hidden in a cod head, it seems that the matter has surged into public focus. Or maybe it is just because my reluctant conscience has now been trained to read sad and fishy tales? At any rate, I now have a surfeit, and have to clear my plate so that I can try to move on to something else.

When Queen Elizabeth visited Italy in October 2000, Italian chefs were dismayed at a ban on garlic for the royal menu. They were also warned not to offer the Queen long pastas such as spaghetti, messy tomato sauces, and blackberries and raspberries, presumably because of the tendency of the seeds to stick between the teeth.

If we believe the news reports over the last year, the Cauliflower is no more! Ok, I know you can still pop down to the nearest supermarket and buy one, so why such dire predictions in the press? Well, it seems that the farmers of Great Britain are facing more pressure to cut their prices so that the supermarkets can increase their profits! Now, I know that will not surprise anyone!

I would guess that the first gleeful, greedy pleasure the foodie experiences when let loose online is recipe gluttony. Or perhaps that should be a vice (or two) - but pleasure and vice are so often entwined. In any event, even voracious collect ors who would have to guiltilyadmit that their bookshelves already contain more than enough recipes for a lifetime would be stunned by the selection. Armed with the barest of clues - a search engine and the word "recipe" being the simple st example - and you are just a few keystrokes from untold riches.

I've got to say, this month's rant, or blog, is around something that I have a great passion for, that is Farmers and Foodie Markets. True, some markets are both roll into one, while some would not be considered "foodie" in any sense of the word, but are true farmers markets without any doubt down to the real, i.e., genuine, mud.

The word pasta comes from the Italian for paste, meaning a combination of flour and water - including the many forms of spaghetti, macaroni, and egg noodles. According to the American Pasta Report, 40 percent of respondents say spaghetti is their personal favourite, followed by lasagne (12%), macaroni and cheese (6%), fettuccine (6%), linguine (3%), elbows (3%), pasta salad (3%), and angel hair (2%). Spaghetti, the world's favourite form of pasta, isn't just a food: it can also be used to build bridges and towers. If you find that hard to believe, just take a look at this video from 2017: https://engineering.jhu.edu/videos/eisb-17/#.XzR5ry2r3yU of an entry in John Hopkins University's 2017 spaghetti building competition.

My husband Sven and his son Fredrik (from his first marriage) still sometimes poke fun at me when they remember my first real attempt at making omelette. I cracked some eggs into a bowl and tentatively asked Fredrik, What else do you put in an omelette? He suddenly looked as helpless as I felt and said, Err, dunno, cheese may be?. I should have considered that as my first calling but it was not until years later that I even thought about taking cooking a little more seriously.

Surprise your family and friends with a new spin on this old favorite, says Sherrie Rosenblatt, the U.S. National Turkey Federation's director of public relations. It's simple to be creative when you cook with turkey because it's easily seasoned and complements any dish on the table. Tom Turkey Tyson is no longer the world's biggest turkey. He's been KO'd by a huge bird we'll call Frazee Fred, in much the same way that Mike Tyson demolished Marvin Frazier in 30 seconds in a fight for another world title in 1988.

An assignment for a special issue on the Edinburgh Festival (11 - 31 August this year [2002]) sets off a chain of assorted thoughts. I have to confess that not ever having been there, despite many opportunities, has been a recurring regret. And the festival itself is just a reminder of the city's attractions as a whole.

This year Chinese New Year is on January the 26th, the year of the Ox. Chinese New Year also known as the Spring Festival is one of the oldest and most important festivals celebrated by the Chinese. It is a time for families for feast together and wish good fortune. It is likely that their is more food consumed during the New Years celebrations than at any other time of the year. The New Years Eve Banquet is an important part of the Spring Festival and often continues after midnight so that the good fortune may carry over to the new year

If your kids are like ours, they have a love for crisps. Like most parents I know, I worry about the junk food that our children are exposed to. I also worry that if I force my opinions upon them, they will more likely to want junk food. So, as parents we walk a fine line in wanting to do the right thing and wanting our children been able to decide for themselves.

Here at bare ingredients, we believe food should be seasonal, it should be sustainable, and what you eat should always be good. So, when I was sent a link to another fast food promotion, this time in Japan, I thought it was another one of those 'predictable' special offers. Well, it was one of those special offers, but this time it is one to promote Microsoft’s newly release 'Windows 7'!

Australia's Flying Pieman, English-born William Francis King. was famous in the mid 1800s for his remarkable athletic achievements and eccentric behaviour.

I kind of missed Christmas this year having been flattened by a particularly nasty cold virus the day before Christmas Eve. It didn't matter really. My sons live about a hundred miles away and were spending the festive season together in the youngest's first mortgage so I would have been on my own anyway. Besides, I was too sick to care. The very mention of turkey and trimmings made me heave.

With mllions facing starvation, there must be many party-poopers who deplore the forthcoming Yorkshire Pudding Boat Race as a senseless waste of valuable food, on a par with Italian farmers hurling tons of ripe tomatoes for another annual TV event.

Professor Peter Pfaelzer, of San Francisco State University, tells us he is working on developing international wheelchair production for the Whirlwind projects. The Whirlwind website https://www.whirlwindwheelchair.org says: Despite being confined to a wheelchair, British MP Anne Begg took part in a hotly-contested annual Pancake Day race in London on February 12. What's more, she led her team of four fellow members of the House of Commons to out-flip a team from the House of Lords.

The Big Cheese Making Kit launched in September last year and seems to have caught the imagination of foodies across the nation.

"Fish," said Alasdair, he who bolts this web site together. I had asked if he had anything on his mind for an article, even though I had a large and cheery agenda of topics for food with a dash of the Internet. "And not cooking or eating them, something about depleted stocks, tight quotas, the EU and beleaguered fishermen." Or something like that.

According to Snyders of Hanover's website "A young monk was preparing unleavened bread for Lent, the Christian period of fasting and penitence before Easter. Christians of the day prayed with their arms folded across their chests, each hand on the opposite shoulder. It occurred to him that he could twist the leftover dough from the bread into this shape and use it as a treat for the children to recite their prayers. He named his creation pretiola, Latin for 'little reward.' "Here in Pennsylvania Dutch country, we use pretzels for all kinds of cooking.," says Sturgis Bakery. "So if you're making a crumb pie crust, stuffing the turkey, breading the oysters, or tossing the salad, it's appetizingly apparent that pretzels are more than a snack food."

We've all created dishes by accident, haven't we? Or is it just me? I came home from work one evening last week, tired, cold, unwilling to cook and equally reluctant to shell out for a take-away meal that I could knock up - had I been so inclined - for half the price at home. This seems to be happening more and more often, lately. Must be the time of year, weather conditions - nothing to do with advancing years and hormones going on vacation. However, with a little imagination and the basics I usually manage to create something at least edible if not downright inspirational!