A Very Good Marketing Idea
The Guardian describes them in this article as a St. Patrick’s day novelty, but surely shamrock-flavoured crisps are a superb marketing idea.
I wish Tom Keogh the best of luck with the crisps. But I suspect he won’t need it, as nothing succeeds like an idea that tickles everybody’s fancy.
I can’t find out if the crisps are suitable for coeliacs.
The Giraffe Web-Site Has Crashed
Tesco have taken over the Giraffe restaurant chain, as is reported here in the Guardian. This paragraph explains their strategy.
For a retailer that accounts for more than one in every £8 spent in UK shops, with UK sales of £47.3bn, the deal is pocket change. But added to the grocer’s recent 49% investment in artisan coffee shop Harris + Hoole, the group’s Dobbies garden centre business, and a stake in the embryonic, luxury bakery Euphorium, and the beginnings of a bold strategic shift begin to emerge.
I also wanted to look something up on the restaurant’s web site and got this message.
Due to today’s Tesco announcement we are experiencing extremely high volumes of traffic to our website.
We are currently working to accommodate the extra demand and will be back online later this evening. We apologise for any inconvenience.
I wonder if the wags will come up with jokes about Tesco swapping horse-meat for giraffe-meat.
Profits Before Health In New York
It would appear from this story about banning the sale of large sizes of fizzy drinks in New York, that American lawyers are on the side of corporate profits and really can’t care about the obesity and health of the American people.
As someone, who is built like the Aldgate Sphinx, and has always been like that, I have never understood obesity and why people get that way. My father was the same and it looks like my son is too! At least we could share clothes, if we wanted!
Jamie Gets Dropped In The Salt
I am someone, who’s never liked salt in his food. I would argue with both C and her mother, as I don’t even like it when you cook or in my mother-in-law’s case stew vegetables like sprouts. I do sometimes wonder, what she would have made of my gluten-free regime, as I hadn’t been diagnosed as a coeliac before she died. She was a great one for gluten-rich puddings, which I always declined.
Perhaps, my body was telling me something? It’s a pity her husband’s body didn’t tell him to stop eating, as too much rich food probably raised his cholesterol which caused the stroke that killed him.
So it is with a wry smile that I look at reports, like this one on the BBC, that the champion of healthy eating; Jamie Oliver, has been caught by the Consensus Action on Salt and Health, putting too much salt in the food in one of his restaurants. There’s a full list of the dishes they analysed here.
Only one thing I eat regularly in Carluccio’s is on the list, but then I always cook everything I( eat without salt. Sadly, one of the things I wanted to try, which is Pizza Hut’s gluten free pizza is very high in salt.
Educating The Germans
I’ve just read this piece on the BBC’s web site called “Affection for Britain brews in Germany”. Part is about the Germans new-found love of tea and the author, Stephen Evans, says this.
The office of one of the Green MPs in the Bundestag, you see, has made a collective decision to switch from coffee to tea.
So when I was there the other day, I was relentlessly quizzed about brewing times – they seemed to want the correct answer to the very second – and which tea to use.
I was not much help, except to say, “Make sure it’s a strong, black tea, probably Indian.”
They had made a bad start, offering me a cup of insipid weak Darjeeling, which would have shamed a gnat. They had not made sure the water was boiling.
It is definitely a piece worth reading.
What everybody forgets is that the Great British Breakfast is actually the Great German Breakfast, as in the Victorian age, everywhere had their German delicatessen which introduced bacon and sausage to many in the UK. The Germans had to leave, when there was a bit of trouble with the Kaiser in 1914.
A Taxi Driver In Mumbai
I’m just watching the BBC documentary of a London cabbie trying to drive a cab in Mumbai. Fascinating.
I posted this story of my holiday in Mumbai.
Mothering Sunday At Carluccio’s
I got to Carluccio’s in Canary Wharf for a late breakfast.
There were obviously a few parties celebrating Mothering Sunday, but surprisingly, there were several singletons of both sexes. There certainly appeared to be more than usual, but then I was half-an-hour or so earlier.
You’d have thought that on this day, where mothers and their partners and children tend to celebrate, that dining alone wouldn’t have been so common.
I know that as a widower, who has lost his mother and contact with his two daughters-in-law, I am a bit short in the mother stakes. But my family has always been like that, with no woman having given birth on my father’s side with the coeliac gene, since 1820, that I can find.
Still those genes, when linked to my mother’s Huguenot ones gave me a strong survival instinct and I like to think an active and fertile mind.
The Only Starbucks I Habitually Visit
I don’t generally go to Starbucks very often, but I will use this one in Bold Street in Liverpool.
The Only Starbucks I Habitually Visit
In the 1960s, I’m fairly certain, it used to be La Bussola, which was the coffee bar, where everybody went.
A Liverpudlian Hotel
I’ve just come back from Liverpool, where I stayed in the Hope Street Hotel. It is one of my favourite city hotels and I would rate it as the best city hotel, I’ve stayed in, in the UK. It certainly magnitudes better than one famous London hotel, C and I stayed in, where we were constantly interrupted all night by the reception wanting someone, with the same name as myself.
What I like most about it, is that it is a real Liverpudlian hotel, where the staff reflect the true nature of the city, where they have a joke and a tale for everyone. So many luxurious city hotels, as the Hope Street Hotel is, are very anonymous and could be anywhere. In some, I’ve stayed in, you find no local staff at all.
It is also an excellent gluten-free hotel, that actually bakes all of its own bread, including the gluten free. How many hotels do that? On Thursday night, I ate in the restaurant and they’d also made their own ice cream. Also, as befits a coastal city, there is always plenty of fish on the menu.
C liked her baths and the bathroom in the room I had was spectacular.
A Spectacular Bathroom
She would have loved it, although despite several tries she never managed to book the hotel.
I have feeling that I got a room upgrade because I booked with a Platinum Amex card. It’s happened to me quite a few times in 4 and 5-star hotels, as often a lot more guests want the cheaper rooms, so those they know or have a decent card get the upgrade.
Every time I go, the hotel seems to get better. This time, they had fitted new televisions which gave access to all the Freeview channels and Sky Sports. So often C and I stayed in a hotel, where her favourite Radio 4 wasn’t available and most don’t have my favourite Radio 5 either. But Hope Street has both and also all of the odd ones like BBC3 and ITV4.
Full Freview Television
Note that the Hope Street Hotel scores 4.5 on Trip Advisor, as opposed to the Lowry in Manchester, which scores 4. Remember too, that the Hope Street Hotel is at the heart of the University and many attractions in the city. Most of the other places you want to go are just a walk down the hill and if you need one a taxi back.
A New Food Source To Develop
As someone, who has planted more than a few trees in his time, I’ve had the odd runs-in with deer, who feel that the new shoots of saplings are tasty for breakfast, lunch and dinner. C also hit a deer in my car, which to say the least didn’t do it much good.
So although they are nice to see in the countryside, when the University of East Anglia says we have too many deer, as reported here, I tend to agree. The researcher, Dr. Dolman is quoted as follows.
We are not killing something and then incinerating the carcass – what we are talking about is harvesting a wild animal to supply wild free-ranging venison for or tables – for farm shops, for gastro pubs.
“What we are advocating isn’t removing deer from the countryside – what we are advocating is trying to get on top of the deer population explosion and try to control the problems that are being caused.
“And in a way, [venison] provides a sustainable food source where you know where it comes from, you know it is ethically sourced, you know it is safe to eat, and that puts food on people’s tables. As much as I love deer, to be a meat eater but then to object to the culling and harvesting of deer seems to be inconsistent.
That sounds all very sensible, but I suspect that the RSPCA and others will be against the large scale cull, that he suggests. The RSPCA’s view is in this part of the article.
In a statement, the RSPCA said it was “opposed in principle to the killing or taking of all wild animals unless there is strong science to support it, or evidence that alternatives are not appropriate.
“Even if a cull is supported by science, it is very important that it is carried out in a humane and controlled way.
“Any decision to carry out a cull must be taken on a case by case basis based on the specific issues which impact a specific area. We don’t believe this should be rolled out in a uniform way across the whole country. It is certainly not a case of one size fits all.
If we don’t cull the deer to reasonable levels, we will get a double destruction of the countryside. By the deer on the one hand and on the other by farmers and householders putting up more and more secure fences to keep the pests off their land.
With all the trouble over horsemeat, it does strike me, that we ought to develop our taste for venison and support those like Marks and Spencer, who are using it in high-quality ready meals.
After all, venison is supposed to be good for you and certainly doesn’t have the health problems that are being reported today for processed meat.
The Anonymous Widower 