blowin’ in the wind
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009Check this out. A two and a half minute long advert from the Co-op, currently running on prime time television, promoting ethical values and with a nice dose of Bob Dylan too!
eurovision 2008
Saturday, May 24th, 2008Over to Belgrade for the glory of the Eurovision final tonight! Presided over by Terry Wogan. A wonderful slice of pop competition and not taking things too seriously.
We’re drinking with Alex and Tracie from Canada, and marking all the acts out of 12 for costume, performance, dance routine and song.
delia totally loses it
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008Matt and I are just watching one of Delia Smith’s new TV series, How to Cheat at Cooking. It’s a travesty. I still respect Delia’s Complete Cookery Course, but this series is an excrutiating embarrassment.
Her new take on cooking is that you have to possess an enormous store cupboard in which you keep a vast array of ready made sauces and tinned meats, and just whip together authentic seeming pre fabricated meals with them. In between ghastly bouts of cooking in which she repeatedly points out that she’s using ingredients that “I haven’t made, someone else has made this for me, and it’s lovely!” she pops out to food science laboratories in which they unconvincingly note that tinned products have just the same nutritional content as fresh food, though you have to watch the salt!! And E numbers are just ingredients that are designated for use in Europe!!! That’s why they’re called E numbers!!!! “I think people will be quite reassured by that,” says Delia brightly.
She hangs out with some more corporate food scientists who predict that canned meat is the next big thing. And they stand around extolling the virtues of ready made whipped cream. One of them says to Delia, “people think whipped cream is easy to make, but it’s not really! I mean, it could be too warm!” as Delia nods and laughs, though with an edge of discomfort, as if Satan’s big scaly corporate pecker might have been rammed a just a little too far down her throat. She has this slightly uncomfortable, unconvinced look throughout the show.
She even promotes ready made bread crumbs. Fine, I can deal with that, but she’s stood right next to a food blender as she does so. Is it really necessary to invest in a packet of ready made bread crumbs when you have a food blender? Is that really going to save any time?
No one makes everything from scratch. Dried pasta, pesto, mayonnaise … there’s loads of stuff you buy ready made and use. But it’s as if Delia has decided to take the concept of ready made convenience ingredients and elevate it into a religion, to the point where it makes your cooking harder, as you rush from supermarket to supermarket, spending masses of cash on sauces, tinned produce and ready chopped vegetables. She’s lost it!