Free Things (by sarah)

Saturday I went to Arts Cafe at Centre Arts in Cheltenham to again soak up some creative vibes - I was writing my novel this time rather than poetry.

But whilst there I was given four lovely glasses - just the sort I want for serving deserts in!

Then on the way out a man stops me and Jean and says the green grocer is giving away the stuff that wont last till Monday - so I'm thinking he's selling it off for pennies and go round there and no it's free and he starts giving me bags of stuff!

It would all go to waste other wise - it was strange how everyone was apologising about taking free food - so British.

Alaric just looked at me and said 'I see your waif and stray field kicked in again' cheeky sod!

We took some of it around to our neighbours and some of it was just beyond, we eat a load of it and had enough for some jam making etc...

Food Safety (by sarah)

As the horse meat issue rears it's head once more, we are faced with a bigger problem than most people realise. As I said before when this first came out - food needs to be what it says it is as if it doesn't it can kill or make people sick through food allergies and the like.

The issue is not that it is horse meat but that it is an unknown in there and the horse meat has turned out to have drugs in it that are not safe for humans. This is an issue on two levels - first off it means they are not food animals, have not been raised for it and have been medicated with things that would not be given to livestock. Such meat should not enter the food chain - wasteful perhaps in some eyes. And secondly where on earth have they been getting the animals from did they just fall from earth from space??!

People are saying that this is a reason to buy from your local butcher which is great except a lot of people can't afford to do this - this is the point; it is the cheap foods that are being hit. Families that are struggling anyway are now being hit with the fact that the cheap food they can afford is not what it says it is and good be harmful to their families.

Also from an economic point of view it gets worse - people understandably will stop buying the products affected or a lot of people will. It has hurt the brand name which is good in same ways as it might well drive business back to the local farmers and butchers but... it could have a knock on effect resulting in all meat producers being hit.

Hopefully there will be an upsurgence in ethical farming practice and better food standards but how long has this been going on?

The people who investigate the food - Trading Standards have steadily had their funding cut so that they can't police everything the way they used to. And beef is not the only thing that is iffy.

I'm seeing lots of veggies going 'hahaha see you should all be veggi' - but how many of them really know what they are eating?

There have been instances of meat turning up in veggi processed food, as Alaric said - who's to say that your veggie mince doesn't have horse meat in it - has anyone checked?

But worse there is an entire swathe of counterfeit foods in this country ranging from cheese analogue (not cheese at all it just looks like cheese and though you may think this sounds good and vegan it is harmful).

And it is not just the cheaper foods that are affected, things like Extra Virgin Olive Oil are often fakes as well - not good if you are trying to control what fats and oils you are eating.

Ok so as I myself have said the only way to be sure of what you are eating is to make it yourself from scratch but more than that you have to grow the products on a patch of land that isn't itself contaminated by something. This is not realistic for most people - I wish it was, but modern life does not allow this.

My personal suggestion is give away free veg and put a tax on processed food. It is stupid that processed food cost less than fresh. Add in a policy to try and get as many people as possible growing rather than building on the allotments. Make more of them - people want them - there are huge waiting lists!

And yes I realise this would have an economic knock-on but then so does horse meat in the beef burgers.

Free cooking lessons at community centres and the such like would be good too so that people are not afraid of ruining the food they have just bought.

Also importing less food would be good for our economy, due to not having to convert our money to buy and transport costs and so on. It would be good for the environment too.

Horse Meat and Food Standards (by sarah)

Ok so everyone has been going on about the horse meat in the beef burgers and there have basically been too reactions 1) Oh my god! and 2) hahahahaha.

The first one tends to be along the lines of 'oh no I ate poor horseys!' which for people who eat meat is a bit silly. As has been pointed out they are moaning about the wrong animal being minced up for food. Is a horse really more valuable than a cow?

It could be argued that the horse is more intelligent but the people arguing this will nearly always be bacon eaters too and pigs are really intelligent. The other thing is that this seems horrific to the English but the rest of Europe eat horse! All the time not just when there is a cock up.

People need to assess what they are actually eating rather than burying their heads in the sand. I have friends who don't like the idea of the animals being killed but will not give up meat - they just buy bits that don't look like animal and try not to think about it. Maybe if they thought about it a bit more things like this wouldn't slip in under the radar.

This is interesting as Alaric doesn't even eat fake meat as the idea is alien to him. And this brings me to the point that though I think the reaction is silly, there is still the matter that people where choosing to by minced cow and not minced horse and the choice should be there. Not just for ethical reasons either - now I am not a vegitarian but have issues with cow fat. They make me sick weather in milk or the meat so for me a mistake like this could have serious health consequences. Say I was buying lamb burgers and they happened to contain cow - I would be getting sick and not know why. This is a safety issue.

Also if they have managed to put the wrong meat in there what else has accidently slipped in?

This mess is also going to result in a hell of a lot of food wastage at a time when people are queueing at soup kitchens and food banks are struggling to supply what is needed for all the families in crisis and that makes me want to cry or throttle someone. I know it would seem like a solution to give the patties to them but that would only work if they could be guarenteed safe otherwise you might be making a bad situation worse.

Lets hope it ends up in the bacteria vats for gas and electricity production than in landfill.

Bread Maker :) (by sarah)

I discovered a while back that soya was making the bleeding worse so we tired to get bread without it in - this ment no ready sliced bread etc... and checking with bakeries etc... but then it turned out that some of them didn't really know what was going into their bread and we were told they didn't contain soya and then when my Dad went he was told they did!

So we were making bread by hand except that my hands can't really take the neading, fortunately a friend stepped in with some no nead bread recipes which are great but I still missed classic bread.

Then my cousins decided they did not want their bread maker anymore and said we could have it! This was in the summer - it took us until Christmas to actually go and pick it up!

But we have been enjoying it 🙂

The End of the Festive Season (by sarah)

Today we had our last Christmas visitor, Barbara, so I put out the minced pies and cut up Christmas Cake and we apologised as we seem to have lost her tea towel with Mary's print on it that we were going to give her - so we gave her same homemade jam instead.

She gave Mary some lovely Hello Kitty wellies which is brilliant as it was starting to be a squeeze to get her into the ones she has and the previous bigger set she lost one of whilst we were out shopping one day. Jean got an art casse which she was excited about and Al got cheese which is always a hit with him. I got a pot of tulips which shall be going outside the front door.

Jean also tidied the front garden, litter picking the litter that blows in and sweeping up the leaves - mainly as she is whipping through her worst witch books and wants to earn money to buy the missing ones.

There would be photos of today but unfortunately Jean was taking photos yesterday and dropped it and today it has gone completely screwy 🙁 It was on it's way out anyway which is why I had saved up money to get a good one but I spent it on the TV so that we could use the X-Box, I do not regret this but I do now find myself with out a camera - right at the point where I am trying to launch myself back into things seriously - sigh.

On the other hand I do have a rather serious back log of photos to sort out anyway so maybe this will give me time to do that?

After Al's aunt left we started taking down all the decorations to general chagrin of the kids - Mary was walking about saying 'Oh! No!' whilst Jean was whining that the room was starting to look so bare which we felt too. Somehow Christmas went so fast this year.

It has been a fun one though.

Of course tomorrow I have one of my best friends from school visiting in a sort of post-Christmas/pre-birthday type of way which is going to be ace!

And last night I forgot to go to the pub with one of my local friends which I feel really bad about - It wasn't a good day medically for me but still...

Anyway the good thing about the decorations coming down is that I am in the mood for Spring Cleaning to be honest. We started today with putting hooks up to hang various house type things up, such as sun catchers and wall art butterflies and the broom and duster and carrier bag suasage.

Today also marks the constructed language Lojban's 25th Birthday - this is the language that Alaric has been learning for the past few years and that he has been teaching to Mary. So we have begun work on a little language comic type thing - we came up with the idea ages ago but haven't had the time to act upon it!

Apart from that we made bread in the bread maker and made our own sauce for the chickpea hodge podge we had for dinner - January is already a month of highs and lows but net effect seems to be positive at the moment.