Tag Archives: food

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

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…

Continue reading

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

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.

Continue reading

Convenience food is here to stay. Great!

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

Enter your email below and get Letters From The Kitchen Table - learnings, love and wholesomeness on and off your plate

* indicates required