All The Way To Eastfield for a Loaf and a Moan
This afternoon, as I had nothing better to do, I decided that as I’d failed to get any bread this morning, that a quick trip to Eastfield was in order. Waitrose didn’t have the bread I wanted, but they did have a brown Genius and one of Genius’s excellent fruit loafs. So I bought both and then went into O2 to moan about my Junkberry. It’s not their fault, as they didn’t come up with the crap design. I think to be fair too, the Junkberry bubble has now burst with the share price heading towards Antartica. I’m afraid I don’t buy products from losers, unless the price is absolutely right.
I’ve already had an e-mail from Tonik, saying that my two old Nokia 630i will be back with me soon. In fact, knowing couriers as I do, I suspect that they’ll get my phones from Enfield, quicker than O2 could swap my phone.
I can do without a phone in the interim anyway, as no-one outside of a few people and scammers ever phone me these days. And the things I want to do with the phone, like texting where buses are, it can’t do.
I Can Now Cook Scrambled Egg Again
I’ve now got my new cooker, which fits neatly in the space, where the other one made itself a nuisance.
My New Zanussi Electric Cooker
The space at each side can be used, whereas the other cooker was so wide it just blocked the cupboard doors from opening.
I can now cook scrambled egg again.
Scrambled Eggs, Smoked Salmon and Cold Potatoes
I didn’t have it on toast, as my local Waitrose won’t stock any bread at the moment, so I used smoked salmon. Coeliacs, like me, often cook extra potatoes and eat them as snacks, so I added some to the plate, as I have a massive bowl fill of them.
I think too, that I’m feeling better, as the cooker is not creating all those oxides of nitrogen, that could be poisoning me.
I’m Getting Paranoid About Waitrose
Coeliacs are very particular about what they eat.
My list of must-have foods apart from the usual things, like meat, fish, vegetables and fruit includes :-
- Waitrose seeded, thin-sliced loaf. It makes good toast and lovely sandwiches.
- Waitrose semi-skimmed goats milk. As good as any, and there is no smell.
- Eat Natural gluten-free toasted muesli with vine fruit.
- St.Helen’s Farm semi-skimmed goats milk yoghurt. I have this with my breakfast cereal.
- Rowse organic honey. Again, I have this with the breakfast cereal.
But my branch in Islington does its best to annoy me :-
- They haven’t had the thin-sliced loaf for weeks. But they always seem to have the thick-sliced, which has the texture of the stuff with which they make IKEA furniture. It is ideal for making sandwiches for masochists!
- Recently, there have been days, with the full-fat goats milk, but not the semi-skimmed.
- They haven’thad this for months, but they’ve always got lots of unsold packets of the buckwheat version. So it means, I have to go to Sainsbury’s next door.
- I make sure, I always have the yoghurt in the fridge, as sometimes this isn’t for sale.
- The same applies to the honey.
And then of course there’s the check-outs, which were designed by a man or woman with two perfect hands.
It is any wonder, that I’m getting paranoid?
I suppose this afternoon, I had better go all the way to Eastfield to get a loaf.
Pasty Tax
As a coeliac, I can’t eat pasties and most takeaway food, so the pasty-tax was for me creating a level playing field in taxation.
It just shows how the country wants to eat themselves to hell and then travel there in a dump truck.
Vandalism In The Service of Ignorance
The title of this post comes from a phrase, describing the protestors, in the third leader of The Times, which defends the work at Rothamsted to create a strain of wheat , which has a natural repellant effect to pests, by crossing it with mint using gentic engineering,
Genetic engineering is a touchy subject to many, but properly used it should benefit mankind. The aim of the Rothampsted experiment is to produce a strain of wheat that uses less pesticides.
On the other hand, I would be against genetic engineering, that produced wheat with the so-called terminator gene, that meant farmers couldn’t use some of this year’s crop for next year.
There are now drugs coming on the market, that have been created by genetic engineering using plants or hens’ eggs as a starting point. Would these protestors stop this process as well? If I suffered from a disease, where the drug could be produced by genetic engineering, I would not be happy.
As I said, provided that the purpose of creating the organism by genetic engineering has a moral purpose, I can see no reason to ban it.
I’m also a coeliac, which is a minor genetic disease. I suspect a few decades down the line, they’ll be able to correct the faulty genes in babies by some clever genetic modification.
The NHS Gets Gluten-Free Food Spectacularly Wrong
According to a report to be broadcast on Newsnight tonight, the NHS pays things like £17 a go for a gluten-free pizza base. If I remember correctly, that buys more than one gluten-free pizza with a topping from somewhere like Sainsburys. i don’t as I like to buy my pizzas made in a proper oven, by someone who knows what he is doing. The last time I ate a pizza was in Naples.
Apparently, the NHS spent £27 million on gluten-free prescriptions last year and say it helps people stick to their gluten free diet.
I don’t get anything on prescription. I used to until I went through the boring list available with a pharmacist and I decided that as I liked food with taste, I’d pass. For instance on the NHS approved list there are no chocolate biscuits. A couple occasionally would liven things up.
I’ve just returned from the shops and for my lunch today and tomorrow, I’ve bought some gluten-free rolls, some smoked salmon, an egg and potato salad and some melon. I could have bought the salad and fruit unprepared, but with my gammy hand, I’d prefer to let someone else do it.
It is much easier to buy it in the local supermarket, in this case Waitrose, than get the bread delivered by post.
At the moment, I’m not cooking, as my cooker has gone and the new one is not delivered until Monday, so a couple of days a week, I live on gluten-free ready meals from somewhere like M & S. But when I get cooking again, there are so many simple things to cook that are naturally gluten-free, like fish, meat, vegetables and fruit.
So in some ways the solution to the NHS’s £27million bill for gluten-free food, is to get everybody to eat healthily. We already have a pasty tax, so why not have a super-tax on burgers, unhealthy sandwiches and other foods, that cause obesity. I would be pleased, as every day, someone has dumped the old fast food packaging on my front patio, sometimes with the burger remains in it.
If people need help to cope with the expense of a gluten-free diet, then they should get the help directly, not with food parcels, where the administration is the major cost.
There also might be a virtuous circle here, in that if the NHS stopped prescribing gluten-free food, the supermarkets would feel it was a market worth developing.
One interesting development over the last couple of years, is the Marks & Spencer’s widower’s range of ready meals. They call it Fuller Longer and the range contains very few allergens, with perhaps a third of the dishes being gluten-free. Probably the most common allergen is fish! I can live with that!
With food like that who needs the hassle of collecting a prescription of a load of cardboard-flavoured rubbish.
The only problem is probably bread, but then all supermarkets and many other stores, these days have a selection of gluten-free bread and rolls.
Perhaps the £27 million would be better spent on education. Let’s face it, the most expensive gluten-free products are things like biscuits and cakes. I wasn’t a coeliac, when I lived with my mother, but some of the biscuits and cakes she used to make in those days, are well within the skills of the average eight-year-old. There is always the old staple of a chocolate rice crisp, made from Rice Krispies or a gluten-free equivalence. Kelloggs also have an interesting alternative here. Just search Google for chocolate rice crisp.
Let’s assume that in the UK, one in a hundred are coeliacs, which means every coeliac costs the country £43.50 a year for gluten-free food.
Booze Cruises Return
The Times is reporting today, that booze cruises are returning due to the low level of the Euro.
London’s First New Conductress
As my cooker has now gone, all I have to cook food is a microwave. So tonight, I took a 38 bus up to Upper Street to go to Carluccio’s.
I got a New Bus for London from the Balls Pond Road on my outward journey and by chance the same bus on the return. It was the first time, that the conductor on the bus, hadn’t been a man.
London’s First New Conductress
Note that she has taken up the surf position, that all London conductors, male or female, used to use on Routemasters and their predecessors, like the RTs, on which I used to go to school.
Haringey to Limit Junk Food
The Sunday Times reports today, that Haringey is to going to limit the number of junk food shops in poor areas of the borough. Here’s a flavour of their report.
Health officials in Haringey, north London, plan to curb the number of fried chicken, burger and pizza outlets in poor parts of the borough where men die, on average, nine years younger than those from its leafier areas. It proposes using planning powers to limit fast-food restaurants after finding there were up to six times more such outlets in poorer districts.
Let’s hope it all works out and spreads to the next borough to the south, Hackney. The Kingsland Road has little else, except loan and pound -shops.
The Perils of Alcohol
The Old Queen’s Head in the Essex Road, often chalks up a humorous message.
Notice Outside The Old Queen’s Head
This was yesterday’s philosophy.
The Anonymous Widower 