A Suggestion

Pretty much every week I get advertising fliers and letters from various food companies that promise better prices, better products and of of course the current most favoured buzz word of the ad-man, solutions, solutions, solutions.  Well here is a solution I would actually like.

Next week we have a double bank holiday.  Bank holidays are times when many catering businesses and quite busy, Christmas, New Year, May Day, and of course this bank holiday for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.  All of the food companies, who spend so much time and effort trying to persuade the catering industry how wonderful they are, will be closed for the bank holidays.  This means that we have to take our deliveries for fresh food for Monday and Tuesday (and perhaps Wednesday if it is food for breakfast/lunch service) on Saturday, or even Friday if it is one of those 'solution' based companies whose solution is not to work on a weekend.

My solution then is for the food supply industry to be more flexible, get their arses into gear and deliver food when we actually need it.  It isn't just a question of freshness, although I gather some butchers are warning customers not to order fresh chicken products as they would fall outside the 5 day safety margin. It is often a question of refrigerated storage, many catering businesses simply do not have enough cold space to carry goods for a busy 4-5 day period.

I'm going to give Lishman's of Ilkley a plug here.  Lishman's will be open on Tuesday, which is vital to me as I have a large order placed with them, which I could not possibly carry in my cold storage over the weekend. So thanks to David for opening, and thanks to Stuart and the team who will be making hundreds of burgers and sausages for me on Tuesday morning, I appreciate the effort, thank you.

Units Of Alcohol

Units of alcohol

Bottle (75cl) of wine - 10 units
Small (125ml) glass of wine - 1.5 units
Standard (175ml) glass of wine - 2.1 units
Large (250ml) glass of wine - 3 units
Pint of weaker (3.6%) beer - 2 units
Pint of stronger (5.2%) beer - 3 units
Bottle (330ml) of beer - 1.7 units
Can (440ml) of beer - 2 units
Alcopop bottle (275ml) - 1.5 units
Small (25ml) shot of spirits - 1 unit
Large (35ml) shot of spirits - 1.4 units
Source: NHS

Does this make sense ? Although the NHS have noted differences in beer strengths, they have not flagged up any difference in the abv of wine.

A Plague on Evangelical Vegetarians

Image by robpurdie via Flickr

I appreciate that almost all of us have things we believe in, or traditions we have carried on for years, or political or social goals that we believe, deep down, if the rest of the world thought and did the same the same as us then the rest of the world would be a far better place. Personally, I would like to see a much broader appreciation of hard rock music, the introduction of Neal Gaiman's Sandman as a compulsory part of all English literature courses and the police to be allowed to arrest any adult caught wearing a tracksuit in public when the wearing of said clothing is not immediately related to a sporting event. But that's just me.

I know a lot of people get upset at people who have faith, they hate proselytizing. The very worst single belief people though are the ardent vegetarians and associated animal rights folk. Theirs is the one and only true path, they have achieved perfection and nirvana in their views and all others, meat eaters and leather weathers in particular, are unthinking souls lost in the limbo of uncaring and harmful ways. Yet, they can be saved, especially if you bang on about it for long enough.

My views on vegetarianism and its ultra orthodox relative veganism are the same as my views on religion. I am quite happy for you to hold whatever view you want, but once you have stated your view and someone else has stated they are not in agreement you should not persevere with explaining your viewpoint until the cows come home – of their own accord, only if they wish to spend the night in a barn, and not to be cruelly exploited for the purposes of extracting the precious gift that is mother’s milk.

Militant vegetarians always try to claim a moral high ground by continually pointing out the various cruelties involved in meat production. They do so though by always taking the most extreme examples they can find. Whilst engaged in a rather one sided ‘discussion’ recently I was repeatedly informed that if I would only watch a particular YouTube video showing chicken factory workers being cruel to their flock then I would never want to eat chicken again. This is false and fuzzy logic, I have in fact seen the footage in question and what I desire after seeing it is for nasty people to stop being unnecessarily cruel to chickens and using them as footballs. Not for a moment does this sort of thing turn me off from being a meat eater; a ‘lovely roast hen with Yorkshires and gravy’ is still on the menu for me.

If you wanted to show the health and farming benefits of being wholly or partly vegetarianism I would be much more willing to listen. I think the Meat Free Monday movement is quite a decent idea, there are lots of us who should perhaps eat less meat and less extensive and intensive animal rearing would be beneficial in parts of the world. Perhaps the idea could be extended into Fish Only Friday and Tofu Thursday, but only if people want to join in.

I dislike the way some vegetarians try to demonise meat eating, the whole Meat Is Murder moral high ground thinking is rubbish. People are not evil because they enjoy a bacon butty or Big Mac. They might not be particularly well educated about the meat they eat though, so there is always room for education.

People should be allowed to eat meat, meat is wonderful. Last night chef Rob and myself made some slow honey and chilli slow braised belly pork with crackling and it was truly wonderful. As some fundamentalist vegans would have it though, this was the act of two evil men; an innocent animal lost its life just to provide a family with a meal.

I will be quite honest here, and this is the bit that might upset some people. I hold that animals and people are two different things. Animals are not people, they do not have to be accorded the same rights and respect that I would grant to any human. However, I see no reason at all why any food animal should be put to any unnecessary suffering. Beasts farmed for food should live decent lives free from pain and suffering and the killing should be accomplished in the most humane manner possible.

Many of us should perhaps eat less meat, bought from less intensive farming styles. Yorkshire Dales lamb would be an example of a good choice due to its non-intensive farming methods, while artificially fattened beef is less good. Neither of these, nor hardly any other meat choice is evil. The moral high ground claimed by the militant vegetarians is not a high ground at all; they have taken a value judgement and made a decision based on their own moral standards, as I have done. Neither of us stands above the other in moral terms, it only looks that way from your narrow point of view.

Ham Bikini Bouncing Explosions Mayhem!

ICC Dinner & Wine Night

Image via WikipediaThe food cooked by Dave, Richard, Owen & Callum, Maitre D'd by Liz, and served by Ellie and Rae of this parish, was wonderful.  Seriously folks, hats off to you, I think you did a quite remarkable job cooking a five course meal for 50 people from what is really just a standard home, non-commercial, kitchen, I was most impressed.

The ICC wine nights are a fund raising event for the cricket club, always popular and very well supported, where a team of very hard working volunteers cook and serve the food, and a selection of 'wine experts' select and present a wine to go with each course.  I got to choose the dessert wine (with a fabulous budget of £6 a bottle), and my presentation ran like this....

"Ladies and Gentlemen, there is a wine, the grapes for which are grown only in a single, near inaccessible valley in the Nava De Roda hills of the Ribero Del Duoro wine region in Southern Spain.


Lavish care and attention is spent on the grape vines, grape tenders camp out in the valley ensuring that each vine receives exactly the amount of water it needs and keeping the vines clear of pests. The grape tenders have to be somewhat accomplished at a musical instrument, for wine grower Jesus Montilla is convinced that the grapes grow riper with music, preferring light classical music in the growing season, and a little flamenco as the grapes ripen.

The Moscatel grapes are only picked at night, during the first frosts of Autumn, and only after being blessed by the bishop of Valencia. They are then transported in padded baskets on the backs of mules, at the winery each grape is inspected for ripeness and any that do not pass Jesus Montilla’s exacting requirements are rejected.

The grapes are then gently trod beneath the feet of young girls, filtered, and barrelled for two years before being bottled. The resulting wine is said to taste somewhere between sexual ecstasy and religious revelation, and this, ladies and gentlemen, is not that wine.

However, there is another wine, grown in vast quantities on the plains of Valencia, where the grapes are watered by the urine of passing goats who are herded by the infamous winemaker Pablo Ossario. They say that if you are downwind of Pablo that on a breezy day you can smell his BO in Madrid, on a bad day in Portugal. Pablo seasons his goat piss tinted grapes by spitting regularly and heartily into the fermenting vat, and because Pablo can’t be bothered waiting for the grapes to really ripen he sweetens the resulting wine with antifreeze (which is only rumoured to cause cancer in lab rats). This pale green, sometimes lumpy and frankly repellent vintage is bottled in stolen Marks & Spencer bottles and shipped to the UK to be aimed at the slapper & chav Lambrini girls market.

This ladies and gentlemen, is that wine, cheers."

National Farmers' Union Stand, Great Yorkshire Show 2011