Category Archives: Fun stuff

Foodie findings in April

Food and drink are two of the most important things in life, and I think they are much better when they aren’t taken too seriously. I’m always on the lookout for new and interesting foods, so here’s a roundup of the fun food related things I found this month.

Baking madness

If you want to find absurd cooking gadgets then Lakeland is the best place to visit. The baking section is my favourite area with its twee silicon moulds, decorations and varied baking trays. Usually the cutters just tend to be the generic heart and stars shape, but this weekend I found hipster cookie glasses.

The things you find in Lakeland | Photo: Charlotte Reid

They actually call themselves shade cookie cutters, and “ideal” for the summer. Mostly it makes me happy that Lakeland stocks bizarre goods so items like this can exist.

Nostalgia

Every now and again products which for whatever reason vanished from the shelves are brought back. The most recent comebacks are Coca Cola Vanilla and BN biscuits.

BN biscuits and Vanilla Coca Cola | Photo: Charlotte Reid

I don’t remember Vanilla Coca Cola being so popular, but at the moment every other post on Twitter or Facebook is someone excitedly buying a can of the stuff. The drink is as sweet as I remember and you have to really concentrate to taste the vanilla flavour, but it’s fun.

The BN biscuits comeback is far more exciting though. The French biscuits haven’t been sold in the UK for the past 13 years, but they are back and with a rebrand. They are only available in chocolate and vanilla for the time being, but they taste just as I remember. I used to have the biscuits in my packed lunch at school and with one bite I was transported back to the lunch hall.

It might have been years since the BN adverts have been shown, but admit it you occasionally find yourself singing that advert.

Everyone, join in.

Sewing for beginners

Sometimes I am amazed at how susceptible I am to television. The Great British Sewing Bee started on BBC Two soon after Easter. The show is similar to the Great British Bake Off, but instead of best bakes they are looking for Britain’s top amateur sewer.

The Great British Sewing Bee | Photo: BBC

The contestants have a number of challenges to show the judges, May Martin and Patrick Grant, that they have a good grasp of working with different techniques and materials.

The programme advocates making your own wardrobe rather than just buying off the rack. It’s really impressive to see people whipping together dresses, blouses and trousers and enjoying it. To get the audience joining in this sewing revolution they set little projects to try out.

Over on my television review blog, TV Talk, I mentioned that this was the weakest part of the show. There was an expectation that most homes have a sewing machine hidden away. It skipped the step from an interest in sewing to a person who had all the equipment and some basic knowledge.

Despite this I decided to make a smaller version of a laundry bag that was on the programme. You can find the pattern on the Radio Times website.

My little Zoom recorderI got a little Zoom recorder as a birthday present last year, it’s really handy to stick in my bag when interviewing people. However, there is all sorts in my bag so I thought about making a little bag for it as protection. And actually the laundry bag design looked perfect.

I don’t have a sewing machine but I do have a little sewing kit that my Mum put together for me to take to university. A few nights this week were spent stitching together pieces of fabric by hand hoping that it was going to end up looking vaguely like a bag soon. It’s oddly satisfying when something starts coming together and looking like it should.

The most complicated bit was the drawstring top, which took me a while to get my head round, and I still don’t think I got it quite right. By this point there was a lot of fabric too so my stitches started to get a bit big which I can gloss over for now but will have to sort out eventually.

The most important thing is my Zoom does fit in the bag.

The zoom showing off its new home. | Photo: Charlotte Reid

This is what it looks like finished.

The finished thing | Photo: Charlotte Reid

Now I’m starting to think if I should do another project. I want it to be something that I would actually use, so I don’t want to practice by making hundreds of cushion covers. So any ideas of things for beginners to make?

Hollywood’s hunger

Paul Hollywood likes to stare. It’s a wonder he manages to make any bread in between all the staring. Yet he does, and he now has his own BBC cookery show to tell us how to make bread too.

Paul Hollywood's bread | Photo: BBC

Each week Hollywood offers up a different slice of bread history and culture. In the first episode Hollywood explored the bread classics: bloomers, ploughman’s and malt loaf. He occasionally flirts with meat and cake recipes, but the series is predominantly, as the title suggests, about bread.

This week his focus was on flat breads. They might be really interesting but it looks like making them will be more effort and hard work than my little kitchen could handle. He started by visiting different restaurant kitchens to learn how to make impressive looking flat breads.

It was all very educational but then Hollywood began to act like he was in his own episode of “The Generation Game” all about bread. He would see the experts doing it and then decide that he could do it better. Annoyingly Hollywood didn’t end up plating up some rubbish, like Generation Game contestants normally would.

Hollywood has landed this series after showing off his baking skills on “The Great British Bake Off”, playing the bad guy to Mary Berry’s comforting figure. Innocently it makes sense that Hollywood, a keen and knowledgeable baker, wants to get the nation making their own bread, as he says: “I can’t just be beaten by a piece of dough, it ain’t going to happen.”

Not so innocently, the Hollywood stare seems to have caught some people’s attention. Nicknamed the ‘Silver Fox’ he seems to be a bit of a sex symbol. Looks aside, he does end up playing up to his reputation. He likes to get his hands messy, demonstrating how he likes to use his hand as a mixer. He also started to pound his dough roughly against the table, instead of just rolling out his flat breads. He isn’t doing himself any favours.

The important test for any cookery show is does it make people want to cook. Hollywood surely knows that he has a battle on his hands. Any person watching a heavenly chocolate cake being made on the telly would surely try making it themselves? You show someone how to do meat, potatoes and veg a bit differently then someone will give it a go. But even if you show how amazing it is to make your own bread, then almost everyone will say: “That’s nice but it costs about £1 in the shop.”

However, he does make it look simple and that’s encouraging. Make your own judgement and watch “Bread” on BBC iPlayer.

Guardian TV tweet along

All week the Guardian’s TV section have been using their Twitter account to tweet their evening of telly watching. As well as a chance to review shows in 140 characters it has been an opportunity to chat to people who are all watching the same telly at the same time.

Then the morning after all the jokes about how awkward Embarrassing Bodies is, for example, the Guardian then make an article out of a selection of tweets from the evening.

This morning I woke up to an @message from Guardian TV telling me my tweet had got in. While a bit excited I was dreadfully worried because I could remember my tweet was all about how I am loving having two Brooker shows a week. And there it was, underneath an embedded tweet from the man himself.

You can read the whole article here.

Growing your own

Since moving into my own home and not having to negotiate the student lifestyle inside my home I have started to grow my own vegetables.

I began this ill fated adventure in August and fully expected them to not even begin growing as even though I was growing basil, tomatoes and peppers indoors even I know that they were out of season. However, one of the draws was that as they are out of season they were ridiculously cheap with three little pots of soil and seeds coming in at under £1.50.

So starting life as the underdog they ended up becoming an endearing part of my life as I was fascinated from their little first shoots to their now fully grown plants.

Before I started this gardening adventure I spoke to Penny Golightly, the bargain hunting journalist, as part of a university project. She saves some pennies by growing what would be expensive vegetables in the supermarket, like chili, peppers and fancy herbs in her own backyard.

Penny says: “It allows you to grow gourmet ingredients for a few pence, instead of paying a premium for supermarket packs which go off before you can finish them. So it is fresher, cheaper, no transportation/food miles and there’s less waste.”

You can tell that the onset of the autumnal weather is starting to upset them because of the lack of sunlight and their cramped conditions so over the weekend there was operation recover the plants where I gave them new pots and a splash of tomato feed and since then they have been looking healthier.

The only problem with becoming emotionally attached to my little plants is I want them to do do well and then have the reward of being used in my cooking. So if they die then the whole opportunity has been wasted.

Penny does have a few words of encouragement for people beginning to grow their own: ” My top tip is use sterile compost (don’t bring creepy crawlies into your house from the outdoors by using topsoil).

“Also, don’t overwater and make sure there’s drainage from your pots. A south-facing window is like a mini-greenhouse, so grow heat-loving plants, but a north-facing one is better suited to cool and shade-loving plants, like lettuce, baby chard or spinach, and mints.”

So if this works out well then maybe I will become a little more ambitious than a few pot plants.