Food Glorious Food

Yesterday was a chance to take advantage of Paula's more sedentary manager lifestyle and "do lunch" in town. Lee also joined us in the Yatra Lounge as we chatted away a very pleasant hour or so before heading back to our respective city centre bases. We should repeat the experience soon and hopefully joined by more of the city and near city workers.

It was my turn for the Wednesday Meal^tm this week. Due to lower numbers caused by rampant thespian-ism and family commitments we filled the numbers with special guest star Jo which was as always a pleasure. The meal I cooked was well received although I felt I could of done better. I miss having a decent butchers available. I'm not sure if the lamb steaks I got where quite what was intended when the recipe says "lamb chumps". However with no human expert to query I had to guess and I suspect the meat was meant to be a little more juicy than it ended up. I also think I may of used a little too much vinegar with the peas. Still if you don't experiment you'll never get better as a cook.

In a remarkable display of three's (which seem to be the rage at the moment) I got collared by the market research people this morning. I occasionally allow myself to be submitted to these interrogations to get an idea about what business wants to know about its consumers. Today's research was quite an interesting one about labelling. It seems they are trying to get an idea about the best way to label pre-packaged food for its salt, fat and sugar content. The traffic light system was the easiest to follow at a glance but my preference was for the more detailed gram amounts alongside % of GDA. I don't support the noises the government is currently making about "fat taxes" on unhealthy food but as far as labelling is concerned I'm of the opinion you can never have too much information. The last question was the most telling: "Would I be happy if the GDA was calculated by for example Tesco?". Of course I wasn't - I would far prefer someone independent of the retailers and preferably at arms length from the government. My choice of preference was the FSA.