Eating Basque food in Catalonia is a bit like, well, ordering French cuisine in Italy, a no no. Still, great location, great food, great drink: the Sagardi Valencia Centro. Highly recommended are the typical snacks (Pintxos). Best of all is the fresh cider from huge barrels (Kupelas). If you want to have a "real" meal, here's the menu (PDF). Mrs Rainy Day recommends the fried cider cod. Scrumptious!
Coming in June from Little Brown, Bit of a Blur, in which Blur's bass player Alex James confesses to drinking a million pound's worth of champagne. Bit of a blur. Geddit?
And talking of Alex James, he now owns a farm in the English countryside, and here he writes about giving up vegetarianism:
The collective noun for rooks is a parliament, and a parliament of rooks can be deafening. The sheep farmers claim they will peck out newborn lambs' eyes.This may well not be true, but they do eat other birds' eggs, and if you "let it be", you end up with just rooks. It seemed that the reasonable thing to do was to reduce numbers, to lend a benign hand to the balance of nature, to cull them. Kill them, that is.
Killing rooks is not nice at all. There are no neat boxes for exterminating them; shotguns are the only thing that work and it's a pretty medieval and messy business, which I don't enjoy.
But I felt I was acting for the greater good. It was a hard decision for a vegetarian to make, and the moment I made that decision was the moment I became a farmer.
Soon, he's enjoying the fruits of his labours: "Chopping up my first lamb stayed vividly on my mind for a few days. The anatomy of a sheep is pretty similar to our own, really. I couldn't scratch my ribs without the image of that immaculate carcass springing to mind. I thought about it involuntarily as I lay in bed at night. But, boy, those chump chops were good." Hope he had a glass of champagne with them.
The attractions today are sunshine and a slower-paced, less expensive lifestyle in an exotic setting. In the 19th century, it was Andalucía's mystery, fiestas, sensuousness, flamenco, bullfights, heat and spiritual history that attracted the visitors, well, the literary ones, anyway. Lord Byron set his Don Juan (1829) in Seville and Washington Irving actually went as far as to live in the Alhambra before writing Tales of the Alhambra (1832). The following extract is from the award-winning "Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucía" by the English writer Chris Stewart, who settled in the region 20 years ago . His neighbour, Pedro, is preparing the staple fare, papas a lo pobre — "poor man's potatoes".
First he put a greasy frying pan, greasy and blackened, onto a tripod over the flames and poured into it what I judged to be two coffee-cupfuls (after-dinner size) of olive oil. Then with his pocket knife he hacked up a couple of onions, without being too delicate in the matter of peeling them. As they fizzled gladly in the oil, he pulled to pieces a whole head of garlic and tossed the lot into the pan."Don't you peel the cloves?" I asked.
"Lord no! If you don't peel them, they don't burn, and they keep their flavour better. Less work too."
He's right as a matter of fact.He then took a bucket in which were potatoes hygienically swimming in water; these he had peeled. Squatting over the fire, sweat pouring from his huge body, he chopped them roughly — great coarse chips, straight into the spitting oil. When the pan was brimful he stirred it about a bit with a stick and added some twigs to the fire for a better blaze. In a basket hanging from a pole were green and red peppers. Taking five or six small ones, he again tossed them in whole.
"Right, that can look after itself for a bit now," said Pedro, giving it a quick stir, and proceeding to the laying of the table. A wobbly wooden drum stood on the terrace. Upon this he placed an old fish-tin which he filled with a huge fistful of olives and a dozen pickled chilli peppers. From a paper sack he took a round loaf of bread like a river stone and cut it into quarters, returning two to the sack. Then he put two bent forks and two tumblers on the table and went to check the main dish. I sat down and poured wine from the plastic bottle and ate an olive — pickled with lots of garlic, lots of salt and a little less thyme, lavender and heavens knows what else. A swig of the thick brown wine washed it down.
Pedro emerged grinning with the sizzling pan which he plonked onto a tile carefully placed to prevent it staining the cable drum. Then he fetched a huge greasy ham, cut two enormous fatty wodges, and put it back on a hook on a beam. He then sat down on the step, took a swig of the wine, and sighed with contentment.
I jabbed into the pan with my fork, gnawed on my ham, gulped my brown wine and chatted to my amiable host. The food was delicious. I did a lot of cooking that month and it was almost papas a lo pobre, which Pedro favoured for breakfast, lunch and supper, each time with the statuary two glasses of wine. But I never managed quite the same effect with the dish as Pedro achieved.
Most of Spain's post-civil war writers have been from outside Andalucía, but Antonio Muñoz Molina (born in Úbeda, Jaén province, 1956) is one of country's finest novelists: "It was almost two years since I'd last seen Santiago Biralbo, but when I met him again, at midnight, in the Metropolitano, we greeted each other as casually as if we'd been out drinking the night before — not here in Madrid, but back in San Sebastian, at Floro Bloom's bar, where Biralbo used to play."
The crispy slice of bacon, the sizzling sausage, the voluptuous round of Clonakilty Black Pudding… Rainy Day likes its pork. Of course it comes at a price, but the thing about being a carnivore is that one cannot afford to be sentimental. The ecosystem is harsh, but fair.
So, anyway, there we were last week in a rather exclusive premises looking at some choice cuts of pork when the name jumped out: "Osnabrücker Friedensschinken" (Osnabrück peace ham). Peace ham! What in heaven's name could that be? The small print announced that for every ham bought, one euro would go to a project called "Children in war". A splendid idea. Given that some four million people have been slain in the horrific Congo war and that there's genocide going on in Darfur, collecting money to relieve the suffering of the children there is noble and, come to think of it, many of the starving in these conflict regions wouldn't say no to a succulent slice of ham.
Now it so happened that the Osnabrück "peace ham" came with a marketing leaflet and, being an omnivore along with a carnivore, we had to read it. It began, "Under the impression of the shocking images from the Iraq War…" The ham crashed to the floor and the nearby shoppers jumped in alarm. Do the butchers of Osnabrück not know that 95 percent of Iraqis are Muslim and that pork...? Didn't the Danes get into a spot of bother recently for mixing up their cultural messages? Of course, this could be nothing more than a sly attempt to piggyback on the latent resentment at the liberating of Iraq. And, one can picture some guilty Green, remorseful that a pig had to die to sate her appetite for Speck, cheering up at the prospect of a euro going to help the innocent victims of Anglo-American aggression.
Peace, ham! Peace, man! As our hippie friends might have said. They also might have said, killing pigs for peace is a bit like…
Talking of food, and we were on New Zealand lamb is, by all accounts, succulent. Not surprising, when you think of it. That "Lord of the Rings" film set looks beautiful and it's bound to be strewn with all kinds of magical roots and herbs that young sheep spend their happiest days ingesting before they end up in stews and on grills. Anyway, if anyone knows how to cook New Zealand lamb it's Peter Gordon. The Kiwi chef runs the hit restaurant, the Providores and Tapa Room, on London's Marylebone High Street and Dine in Auckland and the customers are content.
He's now offering the web's most delicious lamb sandwich recipe, with Vegemite/Marmite, cheddar, tomato chutney, watercress and wholegrain mustard, all on toasted ciabatta. And as an added treat, you can download and watch the recipe on your iPod. Just a slim 28MB, too. Yummy!
As we get ready to do without sweet things for 40 days and 40 nights, word comes that Mars Inc., maker of Milky Way, Snickers and M&M's, has launched a new line of chocolate products that are supposed to be good for one's heart. CocoaVia snacks are made with a dark chocolate high in flavanols, an antioxidant found in cocoa beans that is thought to have a blood-thinning effect similar to aspirin and may lower blood pressure. The snacks are also enriched with vitamins and cholesterol-lowering plant sterols.
But, and there's always a but, The Wellness Letter, a health and fitness newsletter published by the University of California-Berkeley, evaluated CocoaVia and advised readers to enjoy the snacks for pleasure, but not as a health food. "CocoaVia's benefits are still unproven," the newsletter said. "Eat it only if you like it and are willing to pay the premium price."
But, and there's always another but, Norman Hollenberg, a professor at the Harvard Medical School, told a recent cocoa symposium at the National Academies that the Cuna Indians of Panama, who drink flavanoid-rich cocoa beverages, have a 10 percent lower risk of dying of heart attacks and a 20 percent lower risk of dying of cancer than average Panamanians.
What's Rainy Day going to do? Bypass the medieval fasting ritual and protect the heart by taking flavanols in chocolate form? No. You see, fruit and vegetables are still the best source of the antioxidants found in dark chocolate and they also contain vitamins, minerals and fibre not found in chocolate. So, it will be apples and broccoli instead of Kit Kat and Mars bars from next Wednesday.
As we prepare to depart, detox and diet, let us give thanks for that most fragrant of Christmas flavours, the clove. Where would our glasses of hot whiskey be without the spice of life? Can one imagine vats of mulled wine without its warming presence? The Christmas cake would not be complete without some crumbled clove and the same goes (and went) for the pudding. Neither apple tart nor braised ham does the business without the addition of cloves.
Can one have too much clove? Too many cloves? When Clarence, the angel in It's a Wonderful Life, goes to the "Evil" bar, he orders a glass of mulled wine that is "heavy on the cinnamon, easy on the cloves." I know what he means, but still, cloves are hard to beat and their popularity is not just a seasonal thing on those chilly islands washed by the Atlantic. You'll find cloves in five-spice powder, so popular in Chinese cuisine and any garam masala worth the name must contain clove (s). Actually, it is only second to saffron in price in India. So, here's to Christmas past and may we all live to see the next one. Cheers! Cloves!
It's far from Spain that we are today, but Ireland and Iberia are bound together by love of the potato. You don't believe me? No proper meal here would be complete here without potatoes and it's the same in many parts of Spain. The following extract is from the award-winning "Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia" by Chris Stewart. His neighbour, Pedro, is preparing the staple fare, papas a lo pobre — "poor man's potatoes".
First he put a greasy frying pan, greasy and blackened, onto a tripod over the flames and poured into it what I judged to be two coffee-cupfuls (after-dinner size) of olive oil. Then with his pocket knife he hacked up a couple of onions, without being too delicate in the matter of peeling them. As they fizzled gladly in the oil, he pulled to pieces a whole head of garlic and tossed the lot into the pan."Don't you peel the cloves?" I asked.
"Lord no! If you don't peel them, they don't burn, and they keep their flavour better. Less work too."
He's right as a matter of fact.He then took a bucket in which were potatoes hygienically swimming in water; these he had peeled. Squatting over the fire, sweat pouring from his huge body, he chopped them roughly — great coarse chips, straight into the spitting oil. When the pan was brimful he stirred it about a bit with a stick and added some twigs to the fire for a better blaze. In a basket hanging from a pole were green and red peppers. Taking five or six small ones, he again tossed them in whole.
"Right, that can look after itself for a bit now," said Pedro, giving it a quick stir, and proceeding to the laying of the table. A wobbly wooden drum stood on the terrace. Upon this he placed an old fish-tin which he filled with a huge fistful of olives and a dozen pickled chilli peppers. From a paper sack he took a round loaf of bread like a river stone and cut it into quarters, returning two to the sack. Then he put two bent forks and two tumblers on the table and went to check the main dish. I sat down and poured wine from the plastic bottle and ate an olive — pickled with lots of garlic, lots of salt and a little less thyme, lavender and heavens knows what else. A swig of the thick brown wine washed it down.
Pedro emerged grinning with the sizzling pan which he plonked onto a tile carefully placed to prevent it staining the cable drum. Then he fetched a huge greasy ham, cut two enormous fatty wodges, and put it back on a hook on a beam. He then sat down on the step, took a swig of the wine, and sighed with contentment.
I jabbed into the pan with my fork, gnawed on my ham, gulped my brown wine and chatted to my amiable host. The food was delicious. I did a lot of cooking that month and it was almost papas a lo pobre, which Pedro favoured for breakfast, lunch and supper, each time with the statuary two glasses of wine. But I never managed quite the same effect with the dish as Pedro achieved.
Isn't that marvelous? Makes one want to cook. To eat. To drink. So, let's get that pan sizzling, then. Give me some potatoes!
Because a lot of Christmas food is rich and sweet finding a matching wine can be tricky. What grape, if any, goes with mincemeat? In some parts of Ireland, it is the custom of the country of offer a glass of mulled wine with the mince pie. The combination of spicy morsel and spiced drink is an odd one and baffling to many a palate, but there you are. Mrs Rainy Day says it's traditional in the midlands, where she comes from.
As one heads to the south, however, towards Mr Rainy Day territory, a glass of port is often placed under the nose when the mice pies come around. This is certainly preferable to mulled wine, but the high alcohol content of the port can quickly eliminate the charm of the mincemeat. The graceful Quinta de la Rosa is unknown in these parts, which is a great pity as this delicate, almost feminine port would be an ideal compliment. What to do? Personal experience with delicacies suggests that a white wine might be a good match and, if your bank balance is exceptionally healthy, an Egon Müller Scharzhofberger Riesling Kabinett would be worth trying. Elegant, off-dry, it has a clean, frost-like freshness with a luscious texture. Talking of frost, if you want to go head-to-head with the mincemeat and have an unusual experience, try a Scharzhofberger Eiswein made from frozen grapes. Question: does global warming mean that the end of Eiswein?
Pocket Penguin 43 has been added to our library thanks to Mrs Rainy Day's colleague Tina Krauss. It's Jamie Oliver's Something for the Weekend. "My mum said that I probably shouldn't call it this because of the associations with condoms and everything," writes the star Brit cook. "We certainly couldn't have used a title like this seventy years ago, but times have changed." Indeed. From "Something for the Weekend" here's an ideal recipe for hot days. It's dead easy, too. Another advantage for someone with Rainy Day's limited kitchen skills:
Yoghurt with blueberry jam and elderflower cordial (serves 4)1 x 500g/1lb pot of good-quality Greek or natural yoghurt; 4 tablespoons blueberry jam; 8 tablespoons elderflower cordial; 4 sprigs of fresh mint
Divide your yoghurt between 4 dessert bowls or small glasses. Spoon over your blueberry jam, cover with your elderflower cordial, and top with a sprig of mint.
Jamie Oliver is a genius. His idea that cooking should be fun and not a chore has struck a chord with children, grandparents and, yes, bloggers.
Talking to the Rainy Day mother last night. Neither Iraq nor the North (Ireland or the Caucasus) was mentioned during our phone conference. Those "bothers" were put in their proper place by hens and eggs. Rainy Day readers will recall that we diversified into the poultry business last year and the good news is that our brood of hens, for "brood" is the correct collective term, is producing magnificently. And why wouldn't it? These lucky hens roam the farmyard and adjoining fields every day, dining on luscious grass and plump worms, pecking at everything that arouses their curiosity and snoozing in the spring sun. It is an enviable life. The only the danger is Mr Fox, but the hen house is snug and secure.
Are you an egg lover? Does battery hen farming disgust you? Is Faberge beyond your budget? Are you tired of chocolate Easter eggs? If you answered yes to any of those questions good news is at hand. You see, it's never been easier to get into the real egg business. A company in Oxfordshire, charmingly called Omlet, is selling compact hen houses that are ideal for suburban back gardens. The package comes complete with a brace of hens and the price includes delivery and installation of the "eglu". The only catch is that you must live within two hours' drive of the Omlet HQ. Still, the idea has great franchise potential so entrepreneurial egg lovers can kill the proverbial two birds, as it were, if they get in now.
And the chicken&egg meme is spreading. In May, Darina Allen, owner of the famed Ballymaloe Cookery School in Cork, will hold a one-day course titled "How to Keep a Few Chickens in the Garden". As Ballymaloe was recently the subject of a gushing portrayal in the New York Times, you might want to book soon. For those of more modest means, there's always eBay, God bless it.
So, shall we have more egg-related posts here this Easter Week, or is un oeuf enough? As Hilaire Belloc once asked.
Lent starts tomorrow and that means 40 days and 40 nights without booze and sweet things for your blogger. But before the fasting begins, there'll be one final feast tonight featuring pancakes washed down by Pinot Noir. Known to the Romans as Helvenacia Minor, Pinot Noir is one of the oldest grape varieties and it's now a movie star. In the Oscar-nominated Sideways, the hero Miles, played brilliantly by Paul Giamatti, tells the woman he's hoping to bed that he likes Pinot Noir because it's sensitive, somewhat temperamental, subtle, sometimes great, and sometimes a disaster. "Only the most patient and faithful and caring growers can do it, can access pinot's fragile, delicate qualities," he says. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that Miles is really describing himself.
As for the pancakes, they're best when simple. Here's how Jamie Oliver does them. First the ingredients:
3 large eggs
1 cup flour (122 grams)
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup milk (110 milliliters)
Pinch salt
THE BUSINESS: Separate the eggs, putting the whites in one bowl and the yolks into another. Add the flour, baking powder and milk to the egg yolks and mix to a smooth batter. Whisk the whites with the salt until stiff. Fold into the batter. Heat a non-stick pan on a medium heat and pour a little oil onto it. Add some of your batter and fry for a couple of minutes until it looks golden and firm. Loosen and flip over. Continue frying until both sides are golden. You can make them large or small, to your liking. Serve covered with maple syrup, butter or creme fraiche. Optional toppings: blueberries, bananas, chocolate... Tastes pukka! Here's to Easter Sunday and the next bottle of Pinot Noir!
Inspired by Mrs Rainy Day's choice of Book of The Year, Happy Days With The Naked Chef, I spent some time leafing through it at the weekend and was struck by how much Oliver tends towards hunter-gather foods. Very big on fish, wild meat, fruit and nuts, he is. There's a certain amount of dairy products in there as well, which some of our Palaeolithic ancestors would not have been unfamiliar with. The sad thing is that the ingredients Jamie Oliver would have us cook with have become too expensive for most people today. The modern innovations of the food industry such as starchy grains, which upset our digestive systems and cause us to put on weight, are much more affordable and much more popular.
Another interesting thing about Oliver is that he's not afraid to promote alcohol with his appetising and healthy cooking. There's a slight echo of another Londoner here — Kingsley Amis. In his 1972 book "On Drink", Amis laid down the rules for a successful diet: it should help you lose weight without reducing your alcohol intake in the slightest. With his high-protein, zero-carb "Boozing Man's Diet" Amis pre-empted Atkins and with a much more sociable regime, too. So, if you want to enter the New Year looking sleek as opposed to stout, keep your wines as dry as possible over Christmas and if you must drink beer try low-carbohydrate stuff. Here's a small excerpt from the Amis diet plan:
"Eat as much salt as you like. Some diets disrecommend this, on the grounds that salt causes the body to retain fluids and so in effect makes you heavier. This is true, but ludicrous, unless you are so titanic that an extra few ounces will kill you as you rise from your chair. As well lose weight by donating blood or having your hair cut... Another eating-out tip, applying to restaurants: order a dish you hate, or one you know they do badly. After a few mouthfuls of the average chicken a la Kiev or boeuf stroganoff — two of my own unfavourites — your appetite will be fully satisfied. Make the waiter leave your plate in front of you while your companion's gateaux, crepes Suzette and so on are being ordered and consumed."
Throughout his writing life, Amis stuck to an unflinching schedule of 500 words each day. "Any proper writer ought to be able to write about anything," he once said.
Do you know the work of the English comedian Graham Norton? It's an acquired taste, but once you've been hooked, there's no getting off the drug. His humour isn't PC, though. An example: back in February last year Bee Gee Robin Gibb threatened to "rip his head off" after Norton made a joke about his brother Maurice. After Maurice Gibb had died in a Miami hospital, Norton joked on TV: "I bet Maurice Gibb's heart monitor was singing the tune of Stayin' Alive." Tasteless? Of course. That's Norton's thing.
Anyway, he's made a very successful move across the Atlantic where The Graham Norton Effect is now wowing them on Comedy Central. The other night the put two hot topics together when he joked that President Bush could almost justify the war in Iraq if he found a big bag of rice. Geddit? Evil carbs.
Because of my focus on The War on Terror, I've missed out completely on the War on Carbs, which is raging across the US at the moment led by the cadres and foot soldiers of the Atkins Diet movement. As I come from a bread and potatoes culture and have developed a taste for pasta, I think I'm on the wrong side in this one. And that's where I'm staying, too.
The whole carbohydrates fixation was put in perspective by cooking instructor and author Giuliano Hazan in The New York Times last week in an excellent article called "You Are How You Eat". Here, the key grafs:
"Ultimately, it's not the carbohydrates — or the next unsuspecting food group that will come under attack — that will make us overweight. It's our relationship with food and our lifestyle. In other words, how we eat is just as important — if not more so — than what we eat."
Slow instead of fast...
"The antithesis of the Italian eating style is fast food and 'eating on the run,' where little attention is given to what is being consumed and the quicker one is done, the better. There is a physiological benefit of eating more slowly, too: your body senses that food has reached the stomach and shuts off the feeling of hunger before you overeat."
Eat and exercise...
"Italians also tend to lead less sedentary lives. Walking is a necessity not just in cities but also in smaller towns where cars are usually banned from the center of town. Many people live in walkups, and elevators are usually found only in high-rises."
Small portions, please...
"So although per capita pasta consumption in Italy is four times as much as in the United States, Italians actually eat less pasta at a single sitting than do Americans, who tend to eat it only once or twice a week. The trend in the United States seems inevitably headed toward larger and larger portions. To suggest that more and bigger is not better seems almost un-American."
And now, a conclusion that's worth memorizing...
"Eating sensibly is really the best diet, and the better we can teach our children to appreciate good food and the pleasure we can take from eating leisurely together as a family, the less likely we will be to feel the need to try the latest diet fad. Savoring a good meal simply makes us feel good. Food should not be feared. It should be a source of pleasure and well-being. So saute a little sliced garlic in extra virgin olive oil until it sizzles, add ripe fresh peeled tomatoes, cook 15-20 minutes, stir in some fresh basil and toss with some spaghettini. Then sit down with your family and enjoy one of life's simple pleasures together."
If you liked Hazan's arguments, you'll enjoy Quackwatch's withering critique of Low-Carbohydrate Diets. Me? I'm going to have another slice of bread and butter!
Did you know that the UN has declared 2004 the International Year of Rice? Every day some three billion people around the world chow down on this amazing grain. Marvellous as rice is, though, enough of it doesn't get to those who need it. More than 300 million children are chronically hungry and can only dream of the luxury of a cup of rice a day. Moved by their plight, Rainy Day has just donated €100 to the World Food Programme, which fed 72 million people in 82 countries last year. Our donation will allow the organization to purchase 5,000 cups of rice. That's just a grain of sand, of rice, in this ocean of misery, but it's better than doing nothing.
As many of the fortunate among us prepare to sit down to generous family feasts, it's worth pausing for a moment to think about what we can do to help create a world in which everyone has access to the nourishment they need for a healthy life. The advent of the International Year of Rice offers us an opportunity to thing about the options and our choices.
Diarist of the day: Evelyn Waugh, 23 December 1946"The presence of my children affects me with deep weariness and depression. I do not see them until luncheon, as I have my breakfast alone in the library, and they are in fact well trained to avoid my part of the house; but I am aware of them from the moment I wake. Luncheon is very painful. Teresa has a mincing habit of speech and a pert, humourless style of wit; Bron is clumsy and dishevelled, sly, without intellectual, aesthetic or spiritual interest. Margaret is pretty and below the age of reason. In the nursery whooping cough rages I believe. At tea I meet the three elder children again and they usurp the drawing room until it is time to dress for dinner. I used to take some pleasure in inventing legends for them, about Basil Bennett, Dr Bedlam and the Sebag-Montefiores. But now they think it ingenious to squeal: 'It isn't true.' I taught them the game of draughts for which they show no aptitude."
How much of the world's maize crop is lost to insect pests each year? Almost ten percent says the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA). Can we put a figure on the loss? According to the ISAAA, it's $5.7 billion, with a further $550 million spent on insecticide. The effect on poor countries, where maize is mostly used to make animal feed, is significant. But it need not be because Bt is at hand. Bt is short for Bacillus thuringiensis, a natural bacterium that fights many serious plant pests: caterpillars, mosquito larvae and simuliid blackflies that cause horrible river blindness in Africa. But there's a slight complication.
The thing is that it is possible to genetically modify maize and engineer the Bt delta-endotoxin gene into it. Death to the pests says the plant! The ISAAA reports that trials of maize modified with Bt increased yields by up to 24 percent in Brazil and up to 40 percent in the Philippines. Good news surely for the poor countries and their struggling farmers that the well-off, well-fed citizens of the first world profess to care so much about. Except, of course, that endorsing genetically modified (GM) food would stick in the craws of many of these people. After all, many of them have nice little earners demonizing GM food. But that's not all. The production of maize in poor countries is growing rapidly and is predicted to top that of wheat and rice by 2020. Why? Well, as mentioned above, maize is used to make animal feed and animals are used to make meat. When poor countries get less poor, meat consumption rises. "They ate meat three times a day!" was an awe-struck comment I remember from my own childhood in rural Ireland. Poor people aspired to that state of grace.
Many who have progressed from poverty to affluence and from meat eating to vegetarianism, seem to have short memories and very selfish genes. It will be interesting to see how they spin this one because it's win-win for the developing world: less pesticide, less hunger, better environment, better world.
Diarist of the day: H. D. Thoreau, 11 November 1851" 'Says I to myself' should be the motto of my journal. It is fatal to the writer to be too much possessed by his thoughts. Thing must lie a little remote to be described."
You need to reserve two months in advance to enjoy dinner at Fifteen, Jamie Oliver's expensive London restaurant. If you don't have a reservation, and we didn't, don't despair, though, as one can always enjoy breakfast in the upstairs deli, with its neon-blue and pink decor. A large bowl of the Naked Chef's personal "pukkola" muesli, a hearty sausage sarnie and a steaming mug of tea set us back a little over £8, and we felt the lot was very good value indeed.
Fifteen is a restaurant with a difference in that Oliver chooses 15 young people who have no restaurant background and trains them to be chefs. All the profits go to the Naked Chef's Cheeky Chops charity and the plan is to train 15 new kids every year. Located at 15 Westland Place, Fifteen is just a short walk from Old Street Tube station. Breakfast is served between 8.00 — 11:00 am and Sunday Brunch is from 11.00 — 5.00 pm.
Diarist of the day: Joan Wyndham, 4 October 1977"Came in expecting to cater for twelve and suddenly swamped by the entire cast of The Good Woman of Szechuan, extras and all. In a panic rushed to Sainsbury's, bought fifty chicken pieces, some packets of country stuffing and few tins of pineapples, combined them all in a couple of roasting tins and rushed down to the oven. A huge success! Ann Jenkins was most impressed. 'The thing about you and me, Joan,' she said, 'is that we are both pros!' I positively glowed with pleasure. I wonder if it would work with pork chops?"
Despite the odd treatment of number ("less fries"?), the CNN headline yesterday gave cause for optimism: "White House urges less fries, more fish". So, after all the years of denying the damage that killer fats have been doing, the move against meat is getting support from the office that counts. But wait, there's a "may" in the very first sentence of the report:
"Cut back on foods like french fries made with artery-clogging fats and eat more fish and other foods that contain healthy fats, the government may start advising consumers." Why the conditional? Aren't the dogs in the streets barking that the trans fatty acids in fried food are poisonous? Well, maybe they are, but we mustn't addle those poor consumers with warnings say the jolly bakers and their caring friends in the food industry. The second sentence here is audacious in its arrogance:
"The FDA also is looking at putting a warning on foods that have trans fat, which consumer groups support but the food industry opposes. Manufacturers argue that a warning would confuse consumers and cause them eat more saturated fat, which also is unhealthy."
Given this kind of mendacity, it won't be easy to get out the message that omega-3 fatty acids can prevent coronary disease. On the other hand, this may be the moment that Dr. Ronald L. Hoffman has been waiting for. He's been promoting a diet that stresses the value of omega-3 oils for some time now and it's rapidly gaining attention.
Called "The Salad and Salmon Diet", it focuses on three food groups: "the foods to emphasize, the foods to enjoy in limited moderation, and the foods to avoid." Fish, particularly fresh salmon, trout, tuna, sardines and mackerel are central to the concept. The notion of a daily diet of fish for one's protein needs might be off-putting to many, but I've been trying it for three weeks now and can only report positive results. OK, I don't stick strictly to the diet but I've seriously upped the fish intake and cut down drastically on the meat, the bread and the dairy produce, and I can tell you I feel much better as a result.
Diarist of the day: Count Ciano, 31 May 1938"A great hullabaloo is being made in Germany over the people's car -- seven million are to be built and almost every family will have its own little car. Mussolini's comment, upon reading a report on the subject, was that this will promote the spirit of hedonism already innate in the Germans and make the people less warlike. If you turn your people into bourgeois, you also turn them into pacifists."
Habibi: Away from Barcelona's traffic, this is a simple corner of tranquillity whose calm is reinforced by a waterfall (inactive during our visit) and plants that wind their way around the fittings. The menu offers a range of dishes including couscous, stuffed vine leaves and urugi burgers with houmous. But if it's meat you're after, owner Hassan can create such treats as kube halabi (spiced lamb in a semolina pancake with fruits and nuts). Habibi uses only organic meats and vegetables, by the way. As well as shawarmas and falafels, it is known for its matabal aubergine dip. The two of us dined well for less than 20 euros. C/Gran de Grࣩa 7. Metro Diagonal.
Le Kasbah: Open from 8pm to 3.30am daily and located at the back of the Palau del Mar, this is the place for the de la Ribera crowd to see and be seen. The theme is North Africa-light with low sofas and rugs and chill-out sounds; the fare is cocktails, Shisha Marguile visuals and light food. Outdoors, the bar's pavement extension has cosy pillows and armchairs. Six euros seems to be a standard price. That's what a generous gin and tonic cost and it's the same tariff for a relaxing water pipe. Pla硠Pau Vila (Palau del Mar). Metro Barceloneta.
