Buy Salad With Bugs Or Not?

I have a leaflet from riverford.co.uk which says: Choose bug-free-salad Don;t Choose Riverford. They say they choose not to spray food in their organic veg boxes with chemical pesticides. The Bees, butterflies and birds will be grateful.'

I remember in Singapore we had a dichotomy between these two opposing schools of thought. Natural versus clean and modern.

Some of the Americans would not touch food from Malaysia (or Singaporean food from Malaysia) because they had a horror of food fertilised with 'night soil' manure from animals or humans.

An Australian at a Australian sewing circle complained that she had taken back flour containing weevils back to the shop where she bought it. The corner shop person looked surprised and asked, 'Why don't you just sieve them out like everybody else?'

The Australians liked food from Australia which they knew and trusted. The Americans liked food from America free from bugs. The Brits liked food from Britain. The Malaysians liked their food free from chemicals.
Now the wheel has come full circle again. Those in the know and with the trend are trying to go back to organic. Take your choice.

Riverford.co.uk
tel 01803 227 227

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Preparing For The Party: H M The Queen's 90th birthday

In case you'd forgotten, the queen's 90th birthday is coming up. Celebrated in Britain and no doubt around the world. Any excuse for a party, especially if you support or are fascinated by the royal family. The supermarkets have kindly reminded us to prepare. 

Waitrose has an iced fruit cake, decorated with a yellow crown, the letters ER, the number 90.  Around the edge of the cake red and blue bunting.

It costs £10, is vegetarian with lots of organic ingredients. You can read the ingredients on the Waitrose website, though they do warn that recipes change so check the ingredients in store if buying in store. 

If you were wondering about making your own centrepiece cake, or individual teacakes to match the central cake, here are some ideas for colouring and motifs.

To celebrate or picnic at home, a great offer on English sparking wine by award winning Nyetimber. We stood by the offer checking online for the usual price, the year, the maker, and our own stocks of wine. (If you have a short memory, keep last week's shopping list.)

An article about Nyetimber is in this week's Weekender free newspaper from Waitrose which you can pick up in the store. (Lots of great articles. My favourites from this issue were on tracking whether you have hedgehogs in your garden with a hedgehog tunnel which records hedgehog footprints. Another article features looking after bats.

Twinning tea tin with patriotic red, white and blue design.

To carry home or store your goodies and tea time treats, a bag featuring tea pots.

Another design of bag, this time more red.

My experience is that you need plain coloured clothes to go with a patterned bag, plain bags to go with patterned clothes. So if you are buying a red white and blue bag, look out your plain red, plain white, or plain blue dress or travelling outfit. I just bought a white baseball hat which goes with everything.

When is it? Thursday 21st May, but H M THE QUEEN will be performing walkabouts the day before.The place to be, or watch on TV, is Windsor. Expect the queen to walk about, and horse guards in a pageant.

More information from:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36025967 (Details of the Queen's events.)
http://www.waitrose.com/shop/DisplayProductFlyout?productId=497938#BVRRContainer (cake)

http://www.hellomagazine.com/royalty/2016040130677/the-queen-90th-birthday-plans/

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Incanto Restaurant, Harrow on the Hill, New Chef - and my menu translations

Incanto has recruited a new chef Michelin star restaurant chef, Peter Howarth, from Pennyhill Park.

We read the news on a Harrow newsletter. A google search threw up a picture of the chef and other staff plus restaurant photos and pictures of food on the Incanto Facebook page. I managed to read it and see lots of photos.  Now the page keeps jumping about and sending me error messages.

The Incanto website has lunchtime and tasting menus with some terms I don't know so I'm doing some research.
http://www.incanto.co.uk/index.php/restaurant/menu/

A handy explanation of organic and biodynamic wine is on their website.
http://www.incanto.co.uk/index.php/restaurant/wine/organic

Amuse - to amuse - a little free taste
Anitpasti - starters  (Italian)
carpaccio - sliced meat like salami, beef not pork?
ciabatta - bread - crusty with big air holes, goes dry fast, oval loaf
confit - pressed meat or vegetables, with lumps and strings compressed, like a thick pate or pot of corned beef, weighted and cooled
croutons bread cubes fried or baked until crisp, often in soup, sometimes in salad
Duxelles - mushrooms and onion fried (sauteed) in butter and reduced (made thicker from heat)
primo piatti -  first course
guanciale  - pillow
hollandaise - Dutch (sauce made with egg yolk, like mayonnaise, but mayonnaise mixes the yolk with oil, whilst hollandaise used butter which is richer and more calorific)
Madeira jelly - made with Madeira wine from Portuguese island in the Atlantic, in four grades of sweet to dry but mostly in England Malmsey which is the sweetest
Pain au chocolat - French bun with chocolate (pain means bread)
penne - short pasta
(pesto dressing for pasta made of olive oil and pine nuts, green colour from basil)
puree - made liquid or into a thick smooth soup or paste in a liquidiser
quail - small bird meat eaten on bone
rosata - pinkish (wine which is pale pink)
rose - pink
rum bab sponge pudding shaped like a donut ring or bombe (ball) soaked in rum
scallop - seafood
(shallot - oval shape onion with pointed ends)

Wines:
Grand Cru - vintage - highest quality in most parts of France such Burgundy and Alsace (but in Bordeaux premier cru) and in right bank of Bordeau St Emilion main village has grand cry class A and other variations
NV non vintage (not old - not a good enough year to be stored in oak barrels for long periods)
blanc de blancs - white wine from white grapes
brut - dry (wine)
extra brut - extra dry (wine)
sec - dry (wine)
Klein Kloof - (Dutch for small gap)
noir - black (French)
Pedro Ximenez
Pinot Noir - a black skinned grape - noir is black
rose - pink
Tokay /Tokaji - Hungarian


I'll bring you more news in another blog post in 24 hours time.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.