Author Archives: everybodyshomefordinner

Would changing food pricing and marketing really make a difference?

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There was a report published that suggested that the price of healthy food is one of the strongest factors in determining whether people will buy it or not:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1753-4887.2012.00518.x/full#ss2

A recent Forbes article leapt on this report and had the tagline, “Today’s food marketing is making us fat, but it doesn’t have to” (http://www.forbes.com/sites/insead/2012/11/20/can-food-marketers-not-make-us-fat/) and lists four great ways to help food marketers promote fresh food:

1 – bring down the price of healthy food to make it easily available to everyone.  Nobody will have an excuse not to buy it if it’s cheaper than one of those microwave burgers, unless…

2 – drop the word “healthy” from fresh food advertising to stop the association of “healthy food” with “disgusting-tasting food” and use words like “natural taste”, or tap into the Green Living notion of “sustainable production”.

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What do you do when you *really* don’t want to cook…

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Does anyone remember that BBC daytime TV show in the 1990s called “Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook” with the ever-irrepressable Ainsley Harriott?   He used to get one person who can’t cook in one corner and another who won’t cook in another corner, and teach them step by step how to make something in front of a live audience.  I grew up with this show so it’s a bit of a blast from the past to have found an episode on YouTube:

(there is another part also available to watch linked through that episode if you’re really keen!)

Sometimes the reason why the Won’t Cook chef didn’t cook was because he/she couldn’t cook, which meant that occasionally it was actually a show of  “Can’t Cook, Really Can’t Cook”.

Sometimes the Can’t Cook chefs were a bit like Bender from Futurama – desperately want to cook and enjoy it, but end up doing something a bit odd.  We all know someone who’s done something a bit odd – like put hamburgers in the toaster to cook them, or decided that they couldn’t be bothered to chop up the onions and tried to blitz them instead in a smoothie machine…

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Going Umami For Food

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The current buzz-word in high-end food circles these days is “Umami”.  It’s a Japanese-coined word based on “Umai”, meaning “tasty” (although as a kid I’d say “Umeh”, which is the slang version of “Umai”…most men would also say “Umeh” as well…as a girl or lady, I’d actually say “Oh-iishii”, which means delicious/tastes good).

On Wikipedia it is described as the 5th category of taste: a sort of savoury taste that is very satisfying to the taste-buds, the special something that gives food a particular depth of flavour:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami

I like to think of it in a similar way to a great perfume. You have top/head notes, middle/heart notes and bottom/base notes in a great perfume:

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5 Ways to Get Primal with Food

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No, I’m not talking about sticking vegetables in dodgy places where the sun doesn’t shine – just thought I’d clear that up!

I’m talking about reconnecting with food at a primal level.  We are so obsessed with the nutritional value of food that it’s become difficult to truly enjoy and celebrate it any more.

Yes, without question, it’s good to know what you are eating and where your food comes from.  But it’s so much more fun and valuable to go into the kitchen and just stop, stand still, take a deep breath in and slowly breathe out…and get primal with the food you’re about to make:

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The One Thing That Will Help You When It All Gets Too Much

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I read this wonderful article recently on HelloGiggles about Liz Lemon in the TV series 30 Rock, and the title was awesome:

http://hellogiggles.com/i-dont-know-if-i-can-have-it-all-but-i-can-have-this-sandwich

“I don’t know if I can have it all, but I can have this sandwich”.

Women in particular are constantly told by the media, our peers and society that we can have it all – marriage, kids, that house/flat you’ve always coveted, the career, the dog, the shoes, the handbag…what have you.  In fact, it’s not just the case that we can, but we MUST, it is our duty as women to DO EVERYTHING and to GET EVERYTHING without ever breaking into a sweat, caving in under pressure and still being thin and pretty despite not getting enough sleep at night because of ALL THE THINGS WE MUST DO!

It all gets too much.  Heck, I don’t even have children yet and I struggle – all you mothers out there holding down man, kids, career, house and car, I salute all of you!  You’re awesome to get to this stage.

And to all those men out there, working hard to bring in the money for your families, and doing it all with incredible grace under pressures to keep going, never cracking, staying strong – I salute all of you too.

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Family Recipes Are Awesome – Let’s Bring Them Back

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I love family recipes.  They are different from national/regional and traditional recipes because they are unique to each family.

Normally this might make you think of a stereotypical Italian family where everyone says, “Ah, but I miss the way my Mama used to make this dish”, and it is passed down from generation to generation; but I have brushed with this myself when I tried to make Kartofelgulasch (Austrian potato goulash) for my partner.  He’s Austrian (surprise!) and Austrians have a very strong (and tasty) culinary identity and history.

It’s become something of an obsession of mine to try and recreate my partner’s family dishes – not just to surprise him, but also out of curiosity, and we get to eat the whole lot regardless (yum!).  I tried to make it as per the traditional recipe – lots of onions, equal amounts of potatoes, the whole pot of paprika, dry-cured sausages, beef stock and goulash spices – but when I presented it eagerly and expectantly to my partner, he said:

“This is tasty, but this isn’t Kartofelgulasch from my childhood”.

And I was utterly stumped.  I checked the recipe again and used a different sausage, convinced that maybe this would be the cause.

But no.

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Convenience food is here to stay. Great!

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There was this good article on the Forbes website recently that I’d like to share with you today:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/bethhoffman/2012/07/17/its-convenience-not-cost-that-makes-us-fat/

It was particularly fascinating because it states that, contrary to common belief, it’s not the price of food that is making the general US population fat, but the convenience of food that is causing it.

If you look at the actual report from the Centre for Disease Control (the report on which the Forbes article was based: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db50.htm), the broad headlines are that there isn’t much prevalence of obesity amongst different socioeconomic groups of men, however higher income women, and higher educated women, were less likely to be obese than low-income, less educated women.  There also was a general rise in obesity amongst all adults over the last 20 years regardless of income and education.

We’ve always assumed that it’s because fresh food is expensive that lower-income families couldn’t afford to buy it in and instead would opt for fast-food, but actually it would seem that, according to UPI, people would actually eat more fast-food as their income rose – hence the article title at Forbes. Continue reading →

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