A little of what you fancy [26.02.07]
By Jared Read
The other weekend, I went shopping for my nan as my mum was away. She gave me a list filled with the usual stuff that old folks eat - bread (white Nimble), milk (full fat), dripping (pork), salmon (farmed) and tinned fruit cocktail (in syrup). As I was leaving, she asked me to get her some eggs. I asked whether she wanted free range and she replied 'Ooh, no, you don't know where they might have been'.
It struck me as her approach to food was remarkably refreshing in today's climate of food fear and traffic-light systems.
Yet you only have to switch on the TV or flick through a magazine to see that we're (or at least the middle classes) are a nation obsessed with what we put in our mouths...and not in a good way like the Italians or French where provenance, quality and seasonality are ways of life and not just fads.
Makers of builder's tea PG Tips are marketing their product as being good for you as it's packed with thiamine (whatever that may be). Pot Noodle tell us their delightful plastic pots of string and chemicals are only 10% fat. It's all rather depressing and worthy.
And that's before you get to the food press itself. Once a month, I eschew my right-wing fix of Clarkson in the Sunday Times for the Observer and it's Food Monthly Magazine. This is food porn at its height - full of luscious pictures that make me get all moist in the mouth just looking at them.
But patently its writers live in la la land as far as grub is concerned. They assume that, at the very least, everyone has a Waitrose at the end of their street and a pantry stacked with Spanish smoked paprika and vacuum packed chestnuts.
Last week, they featured 'the 40 easiest recipes ever' which left me aghast. On one page for simple midweek suppers, they had one that involved quail eggs and a concoction of eight ground spices for dipping them in. It may just be me, but when I get home knackered at eight o'clock on a Wednesday night I'm more likely to hack off my own testicles and saute them in a little butter than piss about with quail eggs.
I reckon we should abandon this food madness and get back to basics where eating it concerned. My nan has a saying - a little of what you fancy won't do you any harm - and I reckon that she's got a point. She's in her late 80s, as fit as a butcher's butterdog and eats like a racehorse, so she must be doing something right in the kitchen.
I'm off for Murray Mint and some tinned pears with evaporated cream. Anyone fancy some?
Have your say...
This would mean you would never be a good house guest for Rebecca Scott, where quail eggs and potted pheasant is the order of most meal times.
Her cupboard dinners consist of roast guinea fowl on a bed of filet mignon in sauce bernaize (not sure about my spelling).
Whereas I much prefer a fish finger and waffle sandwich - follow the following easy steps;
1). 2 slices of Warburtons toastie bread, 4 fish fingers, 1 x potato waffle and tommy K.
2). Grill fish fingers and waffle
3). Heavily butter bread and dose with large layer of tommy K
4). Lay fish fingers side by side, careful to ensure that the centre of the bread is exactly in between the 2nd and 3rd finger
5). Lay the potato waffle ontop of the fish fingers and reapply tommy K
6). Serve with large mug of sweet tea and a kit kat.
Dave Green [prego*]
I presume - with you having Scottish connecions and all - that it would be a deep fried Kit Kat, Dave?
Mikey [prego*]
Just need you to know that when I've been to Becky's all she has in the fridge are three peas, a lump of hairy cheddar and a toilet roll.
Wendy Scott [Becky's mum]
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