The Food Of Gods

This is an image of one of my favourite meats.  Yes it's venison. Although not a cheap meat it's rich texture means it fills you much quicker than chicken.

Nick Collins of the Telegraph is suggesting more of us ought to eat venison because more than half of Britain's deer population needs to be culled every year because of the damage they do to the environment.

The problem is its cost. Suppliers keep the price high and thus consumption is low. Around here is usually easy to find venison because farmers want rid of the results of their share of culling, but the problem arises with the butchering.  The old-fashioned butchers who would prepare a carcass are long gone and modern butchers refuse to accept carcasses with no provenance.  A catch 22 situation.

However, a small portion of venison from a reputable dealer is rapidly becoming far more appealing to me in comparison with chicken which has, until recently, been a firm favourite.  I'm more aware that when I buy chicken I have little or no idea in which country it started its life.  Labelling conveys little because the EU refuses to allow retailers to state whether the meat is halal or not.  Now I approach it from the angle that all chicken is halal, except the organic free range ones I can order locally.  A four pound chicken from that source costs in the region of £10-£11 and provides a meal for four.  For £11 I can buy a couple of venison steaks, a pound of cubed meat to use in a casserole and a couple of venison burgers - and know which hills the beasts roved before being culled.

However, more informative labelling is also needed with regard to genetically engineered foods.  Some Americans appear to be far more ahead of the game in this matter and we need to start questioning too.

Ask your butcher if he can supply you with venison. A steak, grilled 3 minutes either side, with a crispy baked potato and some mashed turnip and lightly sautéd greens is the food of gods. 

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We Need A Change In Food Culture

One of the surprising developments in recent years has been the amount of fast food businesses which now seem to decorate town centres.  Even in small towns there are chinese, kebab, curry, sandwich takeaways and few of the old Scottish favourite, the chip shop. Many chip shops now provide Thai, Indian or Chinese food as a takeaway service.

I've never been a regular user of takeaway establishments.  Even when chip shops were the only takeaway in town, somehow I thought it a treat to have a fish supper now and again.  Perhaps that's from my childhood when money was tight and people actually cooked meals from scratch.  About once a month my mother would send me to the chip shop for two bags of chips to be divided between the four of us for a special tea.  A fried egg would accompany the chips (two eggs for my Dad) and I can still recall the 'this is special' feeling I experienced with egg and chip teas.  Fish suppers from the chip shop were out of the question for us then. My mother used to fry the fish and make her own chips because locally caught fish was in abundance in the 50s and 60s. 

When I was in secondary school we did have the occasional fish supper because our neighbours owned the local chip and ice cream shops and their fish suppers - and ice cream - were mouth-watering.  Needless to say they were Italians.

But the chip shop fell out of fashion when the multitude of international takeaways arrive on the scene, along with the American chicken and burger supremos.  'Fish and chips is too expensive' was a statement I heard often in the 80s and 90s as a reason to frequent BurgerKing or McDonalds.

For years I've wondered about the content of 'fast foods'.  When I was younger baked beans on toast was my chosen fast food because I've always felt a little concerned about the content of a burger roll, a ham sandwich or a piece of chicken encrusted in batter.  The present crisis in our 'convenience' food wasn't too much of a surprise to me and the 'discoveries' continue, showing that lamb kebabs can contain cheaper beef and/or chicken. 

Does this mean weekend party-goers will forsake kebab and curry shops and return in their droves to the local chippy?

Sadly, around here there's not a good chip shop left.  Other types of takeaways undercut them and the better one closed as a result.  During his many years in business the owner used fresh fish direct from Scottish waters and, apart from the splendid taste, you could smell the sea when you bit into the hot, crispy fish. He refused to buy inferior fish in order to reduce his prices and closed a few years ago.

There needs to be a change in the way we regard food. These days too many folk think quantity is value and of course that's untrue. 

Bring back the chip shop!  A chippy which uses only local fresh fish and doesn't diversify into international cuisine.

Come to think of it, what happened to the red pudding? I suspect it doesn't pass the food safety laws these days.  It's a funny old world.

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Home Made Ice Cream Using Condensed Milk

Dr Rohen Kapur has kindly provided me with his own version of vanilla HaagenDaz ice cream.  He says you can't taste the difference between his home made and the commercial product.  Somehow I think his home made may be better, but I won't know until I try this.

Here's Rohen's recipe:

Three egg yolks, 

A good quantity of demerara sugar about 4 dessert spoonfuls, 300 mls double cream and a tin of condensed milk along with a vanilla pod and a teaspoon of vanilla essence (the £5.50 vanilla extract in a brown bottle found in the supermarkets in the baking section)


A thermometer (You need the thermometer or your custard will become sweet scrambled eggs)

Method

Heat the cream and add the sugar and vanilla until starting to froth, let cool

Beat three egg yolks until they lighten in colour and then whilst stirring them pour your cream and sugar mix over them whilst stirring, make sure that the temp is not more than 50 degrees at this point ( remove vanilla pod) ( I use one that has been already used up and then just put them in a sugar container.

Once they have been mixed return the mixture to the hob and heat gently to 64 degrees Celsius This will make sure that the custard thickens and then take off heat and mix a tin of condensed milk in with the mixture, Mix well and then cool. 

Once cool pour into suitable container and freeze 

Tastes just like HaagenDaz Vanilla...



If you want strawberry ice cream miss out the vanilla and add enough strawberries to make the mixture pink (frozen work best apparently)

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The Answer To 'Disgusting' Sandwiches

A Police Federation report, called Lessons From the Front Line, asked officers how they coped during the summer riots. More than 8,500 responded to the federation's request for information and one of the most mentioned concerns was the poor quality of sandwiches on offer.  Fillings like tuna, chicken and egg had 'limited shelf life' and exposed our protectors to the risk of food poisoning. Others complained the fillings were poor.

Surely some of these officers must have been seconded from Lothian and Borders Police, who feel sandwiches deserve high priority.  They used a 45 page document to detail their request for sandwiches, crisps and a drink in its recent tender specification.

Who writes this nonsense? Is it some equalities department which has to substantiate their large salaries?

Lothian and Borders force insists that officers will need a baguette measuring 11 inches (photo) and containing one of the 17 fillings outlined, a 34.5g packet of crisps and mineral water supplied from Scottish wells or springs. The healthy eating lobby won't be happy to know that only 25% of the baguettes are to compose of brown bread.  Not a mention of wholemeal in sight.


A Scot, Dr George McGavin, has solved the problem (a must-watch video) and perhaps saved the treasury a few thousand pounds too.

If they're good enough for the military - albeit the US military at present - surely they're good enough for our police?  They sound rather good to me although I hope the filling isn't only strawberry jam. Reminds me too much of my childhood when 'jeelie pieces' (jam sandwiches) that filled the corners of a child's stomach between meals, consisted of home made strawberry or raspberry jam - no butter of course.  When my mother was short of a few pennies - which was often - our sandwiches composed of sugar sprinkled on an exceedingly scant layer of buttered bread.  We were always reminded by my father that butter was very expensive although was needed in the interests of 'science'.

Maybe that's when my interest in chemistry and other related sciences developed along with my interest in politics. One has survived - nay thrived - and the other is responsible for much of my cynical outlook.

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Food And Drink Subsidies

Fifteen Scottish rural food and drink companies are to share £3.7 million in government money.

One of the organisations which secured just under £1.6 million is a Taste of Arran, a cop-operative if firms based on the Firth of Clyde island.  It plans to build a factory for the production of milk, ice-cream, cheeses and oatcakes and create 37 new jobs.

This is the tenth year of financial awards from the Food Processing, Marketing and Co-operation Scheme (FPMC) which launched in 2008 and has provided a total of £30m of funding for small to medium-sized businesses across Scotland.

I'm slightly uncomfortable with these awards.  The food and drink industry is no different to any other manufacturing business, therefore surely it should be supported by Scottish Enterprise.  SE spends a considerable amount of taxpayers' money so why is the food and drink industry singled out for preferential treatment.

The Scottish Organic Producers Association at Ingliston will receive £8,442 of funding towards a feasibility study to investigate Scotland's current organic processing capacity.  I agree with money being spent towards the 'greater good' of the country, but is it the taxpayers' place to be funding Organics Ltd of Forres which will receive £150,000 towards the salaries and associated costs of a Marketing and Sales Manager and Business Development Executive?

Many of the other beneficiaries are receiving money towards new buildings, plant and equipment.  Surely it isn't up to Scottish taxpayers to pay for such capital investment when the only people who will profit are the individual companies.

When we're having to cut back on public services which benefit many, it seems rather out of place to be spending large amounts on the few.

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Eggs Ban-edict

It's some years ago, 1988 to be exact, since Edwina Currie provoked outrage by saying most of Britain's egg production was infected with the salmonella bacteria.  She angered farmers, politicians and egg producers and eventually resigned over the issue.

Throughout the western world eggs are regularly recalled because they have been shown to contain the salmonella bacteria.

Now German consumers have been warned to avoid eggs since a highly toxic substance was found in the feed of poultry and pigs last week.  The toxin is dioxin and if you thought salmonella was nasty, dioxin is nastier.

The origin of the feed contamination has been traced to a distributor of oils for animal feed production in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, where oils meant for industrial use in biofuels were distributed for animal feed.

Newspaper websites quoted consumer protections groups saying that people should avoid eating fresh eggs until further information was available, while it was unclear how other products such as poultry and pork meat could be affected.  Some media said organic products were not affected.

Thousands of chicken have had to be culled while 1,000 farms were ordered to stop selling their products.

In my grandparents' days there was little or no testing on eggs or any other staple food.  It's only with continuing improvements in science that we have the choice nowadays whether to eat a certain food which has been found to contain elements not suitable for human consumption.  I'm not suggesting in Scotland we should stop eating eggs at present, but this may just make us pause at the egg counter and check the labelling before we buy.

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Children Aren't At Fault

It hasn't been a good couple of weeks for Britain's children and youth. We were told the UK's education systems are failing (although it's since been reported that Scottish figures are static), the student/pupil protest failed to change the minds of those insulated in the Palace of Westminster, in Scotland intimate details of our lives are being 'monitored' and shared by public bodies without our knowledge and now child obesity is getting worse in Scotland.

One in 12 children were classed as obese, one in 25 were severely obese and the proportion of children who were already calculated to be overweight has increased by 0.6% in the last year.  Boys were more likely than girls to be overweight, as were children who live in poorer areas.  The study - of nearly 4000 people - was undertaken using children aged 5 in their first year of primary school - possibly with the use of the plan mentioned here.

In the 50s and 60s I can't remember any of my peers being called fat.  We walked to school, some ran home at lunchtime, others ran around in the playground to aid digestion after a school dinner and we had an afternoon playtime too in those days.  As soon as homework was completed outside we dashed, in all weathers, to play some game.  Kick the can was one I remember but I've forgotten the rules.  It did involve raking through bins for an empty tin to kick and also running like a whippet to hide before you were sighted.

I digress.  Families then lived on very tight budgets.  There was little money for treats although once a month or so my brother and myself were treated to a bottle of American Cream Soda and one scoop of ice cream to make ice drinks.  It was always on a Sunday evening.  We never dared suggest it or even drop the slightest hint, the decision was usually our father's and he would trundle up to the Hilltown to buy the ingredients for what I thought was the most exotic drink on earth.

So often I read it's children from poor homes who suffer.  Why, in this century when there are so many outlets for children's excess energy, is this happening?  I can only think the responsibility must lie with some parents.

Part of the problem started many years ago when Britain imported the American fast-food style. Then we imported more and more, until nearly every street in every town has a fast food outlet open long past the time children should be asleep.  In the 50s we only had chip shops and a fish supper was another special treat.

Not so long ago I was speaking to an acquaintance who told me she spends a couple of afternoons a month, on a voluntary basis, teaching mums to make soup. Lentils, split peas and barley were unknown to them when they started.  How very sad.  That problem belongs to my generation who, in trying to give our children a 'better' quality of life, we forgot to teach them the basics of good cooking.

So let's not blame it on the children or the young people.  Most very young children will eat what they are given.  If obesity is a problem today it's the fault of adults, yet most of those whose children are overweight refuse to acknowledge the fact.  They have to take responsibility for their children's health and plan their children's free time. The nanny state hasn't been effective because it removed the parental responsibility.  Is it not time to withdraw support, except in exceptional situations, and then perhaps parents would begin to accept they are the cause of their child being called 'fatty' and do something about it.  No parent wants their child to be fat but if the parent is overweight themselves then it will be so much easier for them to ignore the weight of their children.

The cost of living in rising and income is not. Could this be the catalyst for parents to realise good food can be cheaper than fast foods?  Instead of preaching the 'five-a-day' and 'healthy eating' mantras, how about having a television programme which shows how to make a pot of soup or a plate of mince and tatties?  A couple of years ago I vaguely remember some television chef doing an interactive programme about cooking a meal and it was a great success.  A similar format could encourage parents and older children to give cooking a try and in the privacy of their own homes without being assessed by the professionals.

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Food Labelling - The EU Backpedals

I few weeks ago I wrote about how halal meat was entering the food chain without being labelled.

My main concern was that this meat is not slaughtered to British standards and much of it is imported.  I was fortunate be provided with information from Osama Saeed who assured me that the majority of halal meat is subject to stunning, although the statistics would appear to cover the UK slaughtered meat only.

Earlier this year MEPs voted in favour of German MEP Renate Sommer's proposed amendment to draft legislation on food labelling which would mean that meat and meat products from ritually slaughtered animals must carry the label 'Meat from slaughter without stunning'.

However on Tuesday the European Council of Ministers today approved a draft of new food information regulation that did not include amendment 205.

The latest move to drop the proposals follows a Europe-wide lobbying campaign by the Jewish food lobby group Shechita UK, which has targeted European Ministers representing their various governments at the Council of Ministers.  Shechita UK has argued that unless meat from religiously slaughtered animals is allowed to slip into the general market covertly, the meat will become commercially unviable.  Electrical pre-stunning is not allowed under strict Jewish traditions, whereas the practice is acceptable to many British Muslims.

The NSS has been pressing the UK government to support the amendment, arguing where religious exemptions have been made to animal welfare regulations, no more animals should be slaughtered under the exemptions than is necessary for the religious market.  In a letter to the NSS just weeks before the latest move, Jim Paice MP, Minister of State for Agriculture and Food, signalled the UK Government's intention to oppose the labelling amendment say that he had recently met with Shechita UK to help him "understand the concerns driving their opposition to labelling".

That remark leads me to believe it was the Jewish lobby which halted transparent meat and meat product labelling.  It certainly appears to have lobbied Westminster successfully and therefore their religiously slaughtered meat will continue to be covertly slipped into the UK's food chain. Who said we benefit from the EU?  If we were a democracy our government would legislate in accordance with the majority's wishes and, as far as I understand, the majority of the population would prefer to know how their meat is slaughtered.  If nothing is done I can foresee the day when all UK meat and meat products are halal, mainly to appease one or two religions.

If you don't have a respected butcher near you, stick to what one commenter recommended on my initial post - scotch pies.

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Let Them Eat Chocolate

Dr Daniel Chandler,the public health doctor for NHS Dumfries and Galloway, has suggested there should be a minimum price per calorie as a solution to Scotland's obesity problem which is the second-highest in the developed world.

The proposal, intended to drive up the cost of fatty and sugary products such as crisps and chocolate, was put to a major conference attended by the country's leading public health professionals.  Denmark has already imposed 25% tax increases on ice cream, chocolate and sweets.

"The price [for healthier foods] is more expensive when you look at it on a per-calorie basis.” 

 I disagree with Dr Chandler's statement.  It's all too easy to label every high calorie food as 'unhealthy'.  Only this week it was reported researchers in Sweden have revealed that dark chocolate works on the body in the same way as blood pressure pills.  The same researchers previously showed the benefits of green tea.  The study proved that eating 75 grams of dark chocolate is as effective as ACE inhibitor drugs currently given to millions of patients with HBP.

There have been hundreds of studies involving food and fat content. In certain situations fatty foods may help aid concentration.

A fat tax is dreadful idea for two reasons. This tax would impact on the poorest most of all, because it would create an increase in the price of many foods. Also, taxation should never be used to control behaviour and impose the government's moral priorities on the public.

Then we have the problem of which fatty foods would be taxed.  Cheese is high in fat but has many health benefits.  Butter, another natural product, is far better for you than many of the spreads available today.  If sufferers of HBP took a chunk of dark chocolate every day that could possibly save our health services millions of pounds a year.  Who would decide what were the 'bad' or 'good' high content fatty foods?

Lifestyles have changed in the past half-century.  Many more people have sedentary lifestyles, such as working from home and losing out on the exercise usually involved with getting to work.  Also there is much more food available.  I doubt if there are many places in the UK where there isn't a fast food business. Until 20 years ago or so it was only the chip shop which provided the high fat, instant meal but nowadays the variety is mind boggling.

What is needed is more education about the amount of food we eat then governments to leave us to take responsibility for our own bodies.  Most people recognise that excess weight is usually acquired from excessive eating.  That's the point which needs to be emphasised.  Once people have the knowledge then they have a choice.  It's not for governments to remove the choice, by taxation, of what we consume in the way of food.

There is one piece of good food news this week.  I've always loved that vegetable and my favourite recipe includes a little bacon, while another is shredded, a tablespoon of water and two of lemon/line juice.  Cook on a slow heat for at least 45 minutes.  Delicious.

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Butter Up Your Friends

Pass The Butter .. Please.     

         

This is interesting . .. . 

Margarine  was originally manufactured to fatten  turkeys.  When it killed the turkeys, the people who had put  all the money into the research wanted a payback so they put their  heads together to figure out what to do with this product to get  their money back. 

It was a white substance with no food appeal  so they added the yellow colouring and sold it to people to use in place of butter.  How do you like it?   They have come out  with some clever new flavourings..    

 DO  YOU KNOW.. The difference between margarine and butter?   

Read on to the end...gets very interesting!    

Both  have the same amount of calories. 

Butter  is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8  grams; compared   to 5 grams for margarine. 

Eating margarine can increase  heart disease in women by  53%  over   eating the same amount of butter, according to a recent  Harvard  Medical Study. 

Eating butter increases the absorption of many other nutrients in  other foods. 

Butter  has many nutritional benefits where margarine has a few and  
only  because  they are added! 

Butter  tastes much better than margarine and it can enhance the flavours of  other foods. 

Butter  has been around for centuries where margarine has been around for less than 100 years . 

And now, for Margarine.. 

Very High in Trans fatty acids. 

Triples risk of coronary heart disease . 
Increases  total cholesterol and LDL (this is the bad cholesterol) and  lowers HDL cholesterol, (the good cholesterol) 

Increases  the risk of cancers up to five times.. 

Lowers  quality of breast milk. 

Decreases immune response. 

Decreases  insulin response. 

And  here's the most disturbing fact.... HERE  IS  THE  PART  THAT  IS  VERY INTERESTING! 

Margarine  is but ONE  MOLECULE  away  from being PLASTIC... and shares 27 ingredients with PAINT 

These facts alone were enough to have me avoiding margarine for life  and anything else that is hydrogenated (this means hydrogen is  added,  changing the molecular structure of the  substance).    

You  can try this yourself: 

Purchase  a tub of margarine and leave it open in your garage or shaded  area.  Within a couple of days you will notice a couple of things: 

 *  no flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go near it  (that should tell you something) 

 *  it does not rot or smell differently because it has  no nutritional value ; nothing will grow on it. Even those teeny weeny microorganisms will not a find a home to grow.  Why?   Because it is nearly plastic .  Would you melt your Tupperware and  spread that  on your toast?   

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Today's Non-Story

New research suggests the secret to maintaining a healthy weight could be as easy as turning off the lights at night.

Persistent exposure to light during the hours of darkness changes your metabolism and makes you pile on the pounds even without any change in the amount you eat.  The researchers, from Ohio State University, also discovered that staying up later often led to a change in eating habits with much more food eaten at night when the metabolism is slowing down.

Study co-author Professor Randy Nelson said: "Light at night is an environmental factor that may be contributing to the obesity epidemic in ways that people don't expect.

"Societal obesity is correlated with a number of factors including the extent of light exposure at night.

"Something about light at night was making the mice (in one experiment) want to eat at the wrong times to properly metabolize their food."

The answer is keep the lights off then you won't see your way to the fridge. Simple.

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The Food We Eat

This is not an anti-Muslim post.  It is a story about animal cruelty because rather than being killed with a bolt to the head, a halal animal is killed by having it's throat slit and bleeding to death 'in accordance with strict Islamic law.'

When I first heard about halal meat being served in various outlets I thought the media were mischief making.  My grandfather was of a generation who fought for the humane slaughtering of animals which resulted in the Humane Slaughter Act of 1933.

Evidence is now readily available that sports fans are being served Halal meat without their knowledge. All beef, chicken and lamb at Wembly, Ascot and Twickenham is halal.  Whitbread, which owns Costa Coffee shops and Premier Inn hotels said 80 per cent of its chicken is halal.  School children are being fed halal meat and hospital patients - all without their knowledge.

GateGourmet, the Swiss-based catering giant which caters for all long-haul British Airways flights from Heathrow, wants to standardise production to drive down costs and boost profits. Peter van Niekerk, head of GateGroup in the UK, said : "We are competing for some more halal business and when we make that, the scale tips."  He said the company would consult with ustomers such as BA and Cathay Pacific to 'manage perceptions and manage such a transition'.  No bacon rolls on these flights in future.

Do we need to be informed?  Can you taste the difference?  If it is says 'halal' on the menu does it matter to you?

Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell, secretary of the Associate Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare, says : "The vast majority of people in this country would not want meat of this origin."  Has he done a survey?

I'm reasonably content eating the little meat I do because I know it has been humanely killed.  My butcher can easily trace the animal back to the farm of origin.  But not all people have easy access to an old-fashioned butcher these days.  In supermarkets it can be difficult to assess the origin of meat as the labelling is confusing and the staff appear to be just as confused.

Do I want to eat halal meat?  No.  I wouldn't be comfortable knowing the process of the animal's death. Meat producers say the demand for halal meat is increasing.  Whitbread say they don't specify halal as a requirement in their procurement.  They base their decision on quality and price.  Some of their halal poultry comes from Turkey. Why would anyone want to eat a chicken which has come all the way from Turkey when we have a thriving poultry industry in the UK?  Price.

A couple of years ago I made a conscious decision to stop buying so much 'fresh' food from abroad.  Yes I do miss my baby sweetcorn and mangetout but I've found tasty replacements.  Bananas, melons and advocados I still purchase but that's about all. There is the other side of the argument of course. High quality Scottish beef, prawns and langoustines are exported to Europe.  Would I eat an Aberdeen Angus steak in France?  I doubt it because I prefer to eat local produce.

Do I want to be informed I'm eating halal meat without having to ask?  Yes.

As from now, when I eat out I intend to ask the source of the food I'm eating.  If I don't trust the reply then I'll choose the vegetarian option, a pork dish or leave.

We're fortunate enough to have a choice of home-produced food. I'm not suggesting anyone boycott the likes of Whitbread establishments, but I do suggest more of us become aware of the source of what we put in our mouths.  We may be surprised - and not pleasantly.

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You Are What You Eat - So 'They' (the food police) Say

Although this is a trailer for an American film, it also applies, to some degree, in the UK.

As for the Scottish Parliament Raedwald sums up the difficulties to do with Scottish eating habits.

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