To mark her 61st birthday, Camilla received an organic carrot cake, but the more interesting garden vegetable involved at her birthday: a giant, flowery Durham Early green cabbage.
As fervent green thumbs, the Duchess of Cornwall and Prince Charles of Wales spent the day touring the Dig For Victory allotment, a project between the Royal Parks and Cabinet War Rooms promoting gardens on public land, first inspired by Lord Woolton, the Minister of Food during World War II.
Probably not accustomed to receiving birthday cabbages, Camilla responded to the gift: "Oh my goodness me, look at that. It's a big one."
Got a cool link from Serious Eatser 2qrs this morning:
In the issue of The Cool Hunter newsletter I got this morning, one of the features was this deli in London: http://www.pierluigipiu.it/web/projects_olivino.htm. It is what I would imagine a delicatessen inside the MoMA would look like.
You know, 2qrs, it is somewhat similar to what the Museum of Modern Art has going on in its Cafe 2 eatery, which is, as you'd imagine, über-designy. Thanks for the link!
David Caminer, who helped develop the world's first business computer, passed away two weeks ago at age 92. What in the world does this have to do with food? As an employee of J. Lyons & Company, Caminer helped the famous British tea shop chain computerize its commercial operations for its over 200 teahouses in London with the LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) computer, which helped do things like standardize cost-effective cups of tea. In other words, a tea company developed their own hardware and software in 1951:
LEO performed its first calculation on Nov. 17, 1951, running a program to evaluate costs, prices and margins of that week’s baked output. At that moment, Lyons was years ahead of I.B.M. and the other computer giants that eventually overtook it.
"Americans can’t believe this," Paul Ceruzzi, a historian of computing and curator at the National Air and Space Museum, said in an interview last week. “They think you’re making it up. It really was true."
That a food conglomerate did this seems almost incredible. New Scientist said in 2001: "In today’s terms it would be like hearing that Pizza Hut had developed a new generation of microprocessor, or McDonald’s had invented the Internet."
The Guardian UK is reporting on gardeners who have unknowingly poisoned their own vegetables by using manure contaminated with a powerful herbicide, causing plants and vegetables to grow "deformed and withered" in gardens and allotments across the UK. The pesticide appears to have entered the food chain via grass treated twelve months ago: "Experts say the grass was probably made into silage, then fed to cattle during the winter months. The herbicide remained present in the silage, passed through the animal and into manure that was later sold."
The extent of this problem is not known, but gardeners are being warned not to eat any home-grown vegetables that bear signs of damage by the herbicide, and are being advised not to replant in the same soil for at least a year.
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has been inundated with calls from concerned gardeners who have seen potatoes, beans, peas, carrots and salad vegetables wither or become grossly deformed. The society admitted that it had no idea of the extent of the problem, but said it appeared 'significant'. The affected gardens and allotments have been contaminated by manure originating from farms where the hormone-based herbicide aminopyralid has been sprayed on fields.
Aminopyralid, which is found in several Dow products, the most popular being Forefront, a herbicide, is not licensed to be used on food crops and carries a label warning farmers using it not to sell manure that might contain residue to gardeners.
Is eating trash about to become cool? The forthcoming British Internet game show Ready Steady Skip, based on the popular TV show Ready Steady Cook, is poised to give dumpster diving some image-boosting publicity. Promoted as "the game show where needlessly wasted food is recovered from the bin and turned into delicious dishes before your very eyes," the full show will be released online in July. In the meantime, enjoy the cheerfully zany trailer, after the jump.
Oreos may be the wold's best-selling cookie, but it has yet to make much of a impression in biscuit-obsessed England. Nightline covers the Oreo invasion on British soil: what's the Oreo's strategy, how is it being received, and, most importantly, does it dunk well in tea? After the jump, watch the analysis of the Oreo takeover.
Leave it to the Brits to come up with an annual event as nuts as Cheese-Rolling: every year on the Monday that corresponds with the American holiday of Memorial Day (Spring Bank Holiday in England), dozens of crazy people line up on a steep slope in Gloucestershire, England and propel themselves head-over-heels downhill, chasing after a wheel of cheese. Whoever makes it down the hill first wins. And what is this lucky winner's prize? Cheese!
According to the BBC, which has also published an amazing video of the event, the tradition of chasing after a rolling wheel of hand-made Double Gloucester is centuries old, which just means to me that these folks will never learn.
With all the cultural exports the U.S. floods the world with, it's hard to imagine the iconic Oreo is only now making a splash in England. But, sources tell me, drinking a glass of milk, let alone dunking cookies in it, is an alien concept in Europe. I love the subhead on the Christian Science Monitor story on the phenomenon: "What fresh vulgarity have the Yanks brought now? Milk dunking!"
At Highgrove shop, the prince is sticking to the formula that has served him so well; on offer will be everything from seasonal vegetables freshly pulled out of the ground from the prince's nearby estate—no extra charge for the royal mud still clinging to them—to apple juice from Camilla's orchards in Wiltshire.
There will be jams, jellies, honeys, chutneys, and mustards, as well as handmade biscuits and chocolates. But the coachloads of visitors, tourists and shoppers that will beat a path to his store should not come expecting a bargain.
To be fair, it's the spendy souvenirs at the shop that the Guardian knocks; the produce, it says, is reasonable.
The English and Food is a photo essay that photographer Duncan Raban shot for French magazine Gala. Perhaps old hat for you if you're English, but interesting if you're not. [via Noodlepie]
As we noted earlier on Serious Eats, a London chef is opening a fish and chips shop selling only sustainably caught seafood. A basket of fish and chips is going to cost about $20. This reminded me of the age-old question facing all of us: Are we willing to pay more for food that is sustainably grown, raised, or caught?
Food in the U.S. is still, relatively speaking, incredibly cheap, mostly because of a combination of government policy and the laws of supply and demand. Our food supply is created too efficiently. So people who can pay more should. And I don't think it's an either-or proposition. We produce enough food in this country to feed every man, woman, and child in it. That we don't is downright shameful.
British restaurateur Tom Aikens is working on a sustainable fish and chips shop in London: "He has consulted half a dozen environmental groups to decide 'which fish I shouldn’t be using' and to make sure the rest are sustainably fished. He will get most of his fish from 30 British fishermen whose practices he has studied." A typical basket of fish and chips will cost £10 (about US$20).
All-business-class airline Silverjet sells tickets between New York and London for about a thousand bucks each way on short notice. British Airways and Virgin might be worth a shot, too.
Posted by Jamie Forrest, October 9, 2007 at 12:00 PM
The story of Stichelton is the story of a couple of brave entrepreneurs trying to reclaim a tradition of English cheesemaking that went the way of so many other traditional foodways. In 1989, England suffered an outbreak of gastrointestinal illnesses that was blamed on raw-milk Stilton, a cow's milk blue cheese made in the counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Nottinghamshire. Subsequently, Stilton cheesemakers decided to switch to using pasteurized milk, and in 1996 the European Commission granted the cheese the status of “protected designation of origin” (PDO). From that moment, if a cheesemaker wanted to create a raw-milk Stilton, he would be legally obliged not to use that name.
We have all heard (and possibly made) jokes about how bad English food is, especially when compared to its European neighbors, and yet last week, while in the West Midlands of England, I made a discovery that calls all of that into question. Meet the chip butty.
I'm a huge fan of french fries in a sandwich. Israelis stuff their falafels with them, and Primanti Brothers in Pittsburgh puts fries on every sandwich on the menu (unless you ask them not to). But, a sandwich of just french fries? That takes it to a completely different level.
Prosecutor Michael Wrigglesworth said: "At this point she went mad. She grabbed him by the neck. She went out of the living room and came back. She said the words, 'Eat my food, feel my fork,' which they both accepted was a reference to the Quorn advert. She then stabbed him with the knife."
Tracy Wenn pleaded guilty to the attack, which she says was simply a case of drunken shenanigans gone horribly awry, and was given a nine-month suspended sentence.
Here's the commercial that inspired the madness:
Though it's not exactly what the commercial or Wenn uttered, I think "Touch my pork, feel my fork" is destined to become a new catchphrase at the Serious Eats office. [via Anil Dash]
Although I'd love to try all the dishes, one stood out as the most intriguing: nitro-scrambled egg and bacon ice cream. Don't tell me this doesn't sound awesome:
It's been 50 years since the British Egg Marketing Board promoted their unfertilized product by telling the public to "go to work on an egg". While its series of advertisements about the benefits of eggs was deemed appropriate in the 1950s, on Tuesday the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) banned the ads from being shown on TV because the ads do not promote a varied diet. Here's more explanation behind the ban from Guardian Limited:
A BACC spokesman said the issue was not whether a daily egg with your breakfast would be harmful; only that it should be served with fruit juice or toast.
"We are not questioning the effect it would have on your health," Kristoffer Hammer told GMTV this morning. "Our role is to ensure that advertising that goes on television is in compliance with the [Communications] act. It's quite clear from the act that they should be presented as part of a balanced diet."
You can sign a petition to vote for the airing of the ads.
Is the BACC afraid that the people watching these ads will think, "Gee, I guess I should eat loads of eggs and nothing else"? On the other hand, do people who watch ads for breakfast cereal think, "I should eat a bowl of cereal only if accompanied by fruit and toast because the ad told me to have a balanced breakfast"? In either case, some people may follow the ad, some will not. I'd like to believe that most people have enough common sense to figure out that an egg-only diet does not make for optimal body functioning. Aren't there more dangerous ads out there than a 50-year old campaign about eggs?
Course by course, bite by bite, breadth by breadth, a zillion-course meal at L'Enclume just outside the Lake District in England. Tzatziki foam sounds OK to me. Of course, tzatziki itself is nothing I would travel for. If I told you the greatest tzatziki in the world was in, say, Chicago, would you be itching to get on a plane to head for the Windy City? I don't think so. [Via Megnut]
London has gotten frighteningly expensive, so it was good to see New York Times London correspondent Jane Perlez's guide to budget restaurants there. Here's the list.
Tendido Cero: Tapas featuring fresh green asparagus fried in olive oil and garlic, $30 a person. 174 Old Brompton Road, SW 5; 44-20-7370-3685
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese: Oldline British food featuring fish and chips and cheap beer (About 2 bucks for a half pint of bitter ale), $25 a person. 145 Fleet Street, EC4A; 44-20-7353-6170
Bar Shu: Sichuan food freaturing dry fried green beans cooked with minced pork and mustard greens, $50 a person (that's not cheap for Chinese food! Maybe it's a misprint). 28 Frith Street, WID, 44-20-7287-8822
E&O: Pan-Asian featuring black cod tempura with miso aïoli, $60 a person. Again, not cheap!. 14 Blenheim Crescent, W11; 44-20-7229-5454
Alounak: Iranian food featuring grilled meats, $30 a person. 44 Westbourne Grove, W2; 44-20-7229-0416
Popina: Savory and sweet tarts. $5 for an individual tart, $15 for one that serves four. Available at numerous farmers' markets around London on weekends.
I must say I wasn't all that turned on by the Times list, so I checked out the Epicurious London budget picks. Its list of restaurants—Anchor & Hope, Busaba Eathai, Carluccio's Cafe, Inn the Park, Masala Zone—sounded much more appealing and delicious.
The full English: bacon, eggs, sausages, toast, tomatoes, fried mushrooms, and baked beans. Composition may vary from region to region. Photo credit: iStockphoto.com
In a sense French President Jacques Chirac was right when he said, "One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad" He was talking about us. The British that is. But... well... the thing is. He's wrong. It's not that British food is bad—because it jolly well is not—the perception problem stems from what masquerades as British food and not what British food is.
David Caminer, who helped develop the world's first business computer, 
With all the cultural exports the U.S. floods the world with, it's hard to imagine the iconic Oreo is only now 
It's been 50 years since the British Egg Marketing Board promoted their unfertilized product by telling the public to 
