Cooking With Ginger

I made a pilgrimage to the Edinburgh Farmers Market this morn and my eyes fell upon a most holy vision of loveliness. A giant, fragrant pyramid of fresh baked hot cross buns.

Only yesterday I'd received an email from Tesco offering me a free six-pack of their Finest Hot Cross Buns with my next order as thanks for my loyal custom. I know I'm supposed to trot around to local providores and cheesemongers in search of groceries, but I live out of town so we get a weekly delivery from the evil global conglomerate.

So I was going to add these Free Bunz to my shopping list tomorrow, but then I saw these lovely fresh ones in Edinburgh today, just 50p each. That's 50p more and five less than the free 6-pack, but that's when I had to ask myself, Do I need six free hot cross buns?

My mother used to have one of those flippy calendars beside the telephone, you know those Day To A Page ones with a daily quote from Confucious, Winston Churchill or some other approachable smart person. I was about ten years old when I read this quote:

Cheap is dear, because it tempts us to buy what we need not.

I can't remember who said it, but I do remember filing it away in my insufferable ten-year-old memory. On our next trip to the supermarket, I trailed behind my mother waiting for my moment. As soon as she started scavenging through the reduced-price yogurts and discounted mince, I intoned sagely and smart-arsedly, "Cheap is dear, Mother; because it tempts us to buy what we need not."

Pre-teen smugness aside, it's good advice in terms of weight loss. Six free hot cross buns may sound like a good deal on paper, but one good quality 50p hot cross bun, savoured slowly with a smidge of butter and a cup of tea, is much better for the size of my arse.

Happy Easter, groovers!

Posted by at 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Is anyone else out there FREAKING OUT about food?

It is bloody exhausting, all these things we're supposed to worry about at dinnertime. Everytime you pick up a magazine or flick on the telly, there's a new report about something else we should or should not be eating.

We are all drowning in food information, scare stories and buzzwords. Antioxidants, superfoods, free range, fair trade, arrgh! A trip to the supermarket is now a stressful ordeal of label reading and moral dilemmas.

I dunno about you, but I'm conflicted and confused.

Not only do I need to eat healthy foods to lose weight, I need to eat the really healthy foods, the ones they say can ward off heart disease, diabetes, crappy livers, dry skin, bad breath and cancer.

I've banned the trans fat, cut down the sat fat, because I need to eat low fat, but I can't forget the good fat!

Such as omega-3s. As seen in salmon and tuna. As long as they're not farmed or full of mercury or over-fished. I don't want to eat endangered fishes. I love sushi but every bite gives me guilty nightmares.

I need more whole grains but they need to be real whole grains, not the Bullshit Whole Grains like Nestle are trying to convince me are contained in a box of Cheerios.

I've subtracted additives.

I'm avoiding corn syrup and all things partially inverted. Plus sucrose fructose maltrose dextrose pantyhose, anything ending with -ose.

I'm don't eat any animals that were cooped up in small places.

I avoid processed foods. Although I do eat Quorn sausages now and then. Is it more noble to eat a processed vegetarian sausage instead of a processed "meat" one consisting of ground-up snouts, trotters and rusk?

Am I getting enough protein?

I try to buy organic produce, but if it's organic and shipped from Peru, is the organic smugness cancelled out by all the air it pollutes en route to the UK?

But if I don't buy the Peruvian organics, will the poor Peruvian economy suffer? Then again, what about my poor local farmer? Does one Buy Organic or Buy Local?!

And chocolate. I know I should choose the antioxidantal 70% Organic Dark made from fairly-traded cocoa beans, but what if my body is screaming out for a shitey old Mars Bar? Will I be struck down by a bus in punishment?

Sometimes I feel like I can't even just simply unpeel a freaking banana these days before I've sent it a lab for nutritional analysis, traced its lineage for seven generations, then personally met the farmer who planted it.

It's almost enough to put me off my food. Almost.

Posted by at 9:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)