Fish n Chips

We ate out on Saturday, at Rick Stein's fish n chippy at Padstow, not The Seafood Restaurant but the harbour side takeaway.
Service was a little iffy and the fish although battered nicely was not the best I have tasted, Kerry and I did think that the chips were nice though.
We also had a pot of garlic mayo which was served in a small polystyrene pot this coupled with the plastic cutlery reflected poorly on rest of the chip shop industry who use standard wooden forks.
These are the ones he should be using!

Overall a thumbs down from me.

3 Food Preparation tutorials

From lifehacker's Gina Trapani
how to pit an avocado the easy way!


A pineapple the traditional Hawai'ian way


From Produce Picker how to prepare a mango - click the link for some more prep tips

Michael Pollan Google Lecture

In an hour long lecture at the recent Google authors series Michael Pollan gives a look at food.
here's the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-t-7lTw6mA

Highlights:

* Eat locally
* Eat organic
* Eat grass-fed
* Shop the perimeter of the grocery store, not the middle.
* Do not eat it if:

* You cannot pronounce the ingredients
* Your great grandmother (or someone else) would not recognize it as food.

The whole philosophy boils down to seven words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.




taken from http://www.health-hack.com/archives/2008/05/07/12/54/michael-pollan-speaks-in-defense-of-food/

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

The Times has an article about what goes into being the boss - food wise

ChickenOut

I along with a fair few others finished watching the ChickenOut.tv experience last night. Hugh made a good job of trying very hard (he is a one man band) to convert his home town of Axminster to change the buying habits of its inhabitants from buying battery hens to free range chickens. You could see the obvious frustration he felt as he went up against the supermarkets and local stores that he needed to convert to enable the locals to actually be able to buy the free range alternatives. Did he succeed? I think he did, a social experiment on channel 4 that did not involve wife swapping, Big Brother or any number of other money making schemes, the difference with HFW was it was not an experiment it was a challenge. Fair play to Hugh and all of those involved in making the documentary. For more information on his campaign visit here.
For some more information on the certification standards - Free Range v Freedom Food

Hughs leftover chicken...

He makes a good effort with trying to win over the unconverted, by using the whole chicken he wins :)
The forum over there is really (no really) good, just don't look at the links page :(

Shopping howto

US site Allrecipes has a small but enthusiastic guide to food shopping here it reminds us to shop after we have eaten and wisely to shop around the edge of the store! have a look and see if it works in your life...

Globe Artichokes how-to

one of my favourite recipe sites has a nice walkthrough on Artichokes. Whilst you are there please visit the rest of the site and add it to your bookmarks.
i personally am not a great fan however they are rewarding if you take the time to prepare them correctly.