Tag: munch

I forgot to report on the very tasty plum sponge pudding that was on offer in our work canteen yesterday, tho’ it was rather let down by exceptionally thin custard it came with. A bit more plum in the sponge would have been better too, but it was still well worth the 80p price (and much cheaper than the ‘healthy’ yoghurt option — it pays to be a glutton).

I don’t wish to get into the argument over the rights and wrongs of the Food Standards Agency’s traffic light labelling for food. However, I have noticed a certain selectivity at my local supermarket as to which foods are so labelled. (A supermarket which has taken its ‘Try something different today’ slogan to the extreme of replacing many of its food aisles with clothing. What to they want me to do — eat a T-shirt?) Its more upmarket ranges (Be good to yourself, Taste the difference) seem to be almost entirely labelled with the Wheel of Health. Its cheaper ranges, such as Basics are almost totally devoid of them. So those ranges most likely to appeal to those parts of the community where obesity is most prevalent are the ones where the simple guidance of the FSA’s scheme is missing. Similarly expensive ready meals are fully traffic light labelled, cheaper snacks, like pasties and pork pies, are not. So, in the interests of public health, here, based on the FSA’s technical guidance is the nutrition information for a Sainsburys 150 g Melton Mowbray Pork Pie. Per 100 grams

Carbohyrate:            21.7 g
of which sugars         1.1 g   low
Fat                        25.9 g   high
of which saturates    9.6 g   high
Salt                        1.8 g   high

Admittedly, I didn’t need a brightly coloured label to realise that a pork pie was not the healthiest food on offer. But there are many that might benefit from, at least, a reminder at the point of purchase of what it and similar foods contain.

Oh, and before anyone asks, yes the pork pie, washed down with a glass (or two) of honeysuckle wine, was very enjoyable.

It being Friday, for dinner (by which I mean my midday meal — I’m a breakfast, dinner and tea person) I had fish, mushy peas and chips. As usual, I poured a generous quantity of gravy over my chips. For some reason, some of my colleagues regard this as almost unacceptably ‘common’ and vulgar. I like my chips moist, and that means in gravy. (And if the fish is rather dry, I’ll put gravy on that too!) Some people are just too pompous to accept that personal preference and taste comes before silly ‘rules’ about acceptable food combinations.

Very disappointed with today’s pudding in the work canteen. It looked so nice: chocolate sponge with a sticky chocolatey-toffee topping, all in chocolate sauce – lots of chocolate sauce. Sadly, no amount of sauce could make up for the extreme dryness of the sponge. It totally spoilt my lunch break. A creme egg and a mug of hot chocolate this evening have almost made up for the disappointment.

Whilst Swindon may not be the first place many people would choose to live, it does have some advantages. One is the Cadburys shop in the Designer Outlet Village. It sells discounted chocolates, with nothing more wrong with them than being slightly misshaped or the wrappers not on neatly enough. I bought nine creme eggs at the weekend. I only have six left now. Delicious.

There’s nothing like a good health scare to bring down the price of food. I bought a half-priced chicken and a Gressingham guinea fowl today. I’ve not tried guinea fowl before. Yay to bird-flu!

An all-day meeting with external visitors at work today finished early, resulting in their afternoon tea being brought out for people in the office to eat. Three chocolate croissants and four biscuits (one of which was a bourbon and one a chocolate chip) was maybe a little too much chocolate. I am definitely on a sugar high at the moment.