I had the most wonderful carrot cake yesterday. Moist, fresh, with the most delectable creamy yoghurty topping. As I munched I felt a sense of childlike cheerfulness colour in my mood.

It wasn’t cheap sweet, fatty or breadcrumb coated rubbish, but a really delicious treat and it got me thinking about foods that lift our mood; not because health books tell us they will, but because they really do.

Carrot Cake
Home made, well made, oozing naughty health and sweetness.

Chocolate
Dark and as pure cocoa as possible. A beautifully presented box of Belgian or Swiss chocolates are also wonderful.

Honey
Drizzled on things, stirred into warm milk, eaten off the spoon. There are so many types to try, herb, heather, flowers…

Ice Cream
Home made, or the best manufactured from pure ingredients without additives.

Chicken Soup
Why a portion of roast chicken doesn’t have the same mood lifting affect I don’t know.

Home Made Flapjacks
It’s like eating a hug. Bought ones may taste great (though few do) but they just don’t work.

An apple fresh from the tree
The smell as well as the taste is mood enhancing.

Organic strawberries and clotted Devon cream
Try to spot someone eating without a smile.

Hot buttered crumpets
With honey…mmmmmmmm!

Treacle Toffee
Ishloverlyanshtickybuddushyerteeffin.

There is so much writing on healthy foods that food itself is becoming a worry rather than a pleasure. Mass produced cheap foods have made us see ‘treat’ where there is none, and guzzle them with what may seem to be pleasure but does not come anywhere near real enjoyment of food.

The focus on healthy eating has educated us about what these are and the glut of cookery programmes mean we have plenty of ideas. If most of us were organised enough to take down the recipe or log on to find it, rush out for the ingredients and then somehow find time to cook it as well, it would be great. Unfortunately we just watch for the entertainment and maybe sprinkle a few freshly chopped herbs onto our beans on toast.

Wondering how healthy our food is while trying to get vegetables into children’s meals by elaborate disguises (children are rarely fooled if a sprout dresses up as a pea,) or feeling vaguely guilty every time we munch chips, pies or anything in batter has made the whole process utterly depressing. A very clever master plan to put us all off food and cure the national obesity problem, maybe?

We all know that producers employ psychologists who know exactly which buttons to press to ensure children pester their parents for the toy, trainers, cereal or food product that they want.

McDonalds have honed child manipulation to perfection by the use of their Ronald McDonald clown character and their happy meals. How they can get away with the title ‘happy meal’ without being sued for misrepresentation, when regular happy meals would lead to anything but, is beyond most of us.

It’s up to mums and dads not to give in ,.say the ‘experts’ who are obviously not parents themselves.

Pestering is big business in the world of children and the best know that they can get what they need to trump whatever their friends have got.

Mums and/or dads can either give in, or be the ‘meanest, nastiest, most selfish uncaring parent in the world.’ It takes a strong parent not to try to prove that they aren’t.

This is something I heard a woman say to her child, in the queue at a supermarket and it struck me how much diet has changed in the last twenty years.

It happens so gradually that we barely notice but not only do we have oven ready fast foods and microwaveable meals but we also have ciabatta’s and panini’s, cous cous or quinoa, arborio rice and rice noodles. Instead of spaghetti or macaroni we can choose Conchiglie, farfalle, fusilli, gemelli, gnocchetti, gramigna, lumache or angel hair.

Never has their been a greater choice of healthy and unhealthy options at a time when the majority could do with losing a few pounds. Maybe it is the amount of food and choice on offer which makes us want to try it all!

So awful it’s funny. I guess you could exercise to it if you can bear it for long enough.

The Government has decided to make cookery lessons compulsory for teenagers. Not a bad idea if they go back to basics and avoid trying to follow the fancy plans of umpteen TV chefs.

Boiled egg and omelettes, a good spaghetti bolognese or shepherd’s pie with plenty of veg chopped up with the mince, soups and how to roast a (free range) chicken, would be a start. I hope plans to provide ingredients for those who cannot afford them will ensure that these are good quality, locally produced and free range and not the cheapest, old, vitamin dead produce.

Maybe gardening classes will also become compulsory so that schools can grow their own vegetables.

I’ve tasted my share of grey fairy cakes and gritty buns baked by the children in nursery and primary schools so it will be interesting to see how teen offerings turn out. If media coverage of teenagers is anything to go by everything will be highly alcoholic or laced with cannabis.

Today’s headline is ’Can Your Diet Make You Young?’ WHAT NOW? 

Dieting now makes us young? Great!  but all the worrying about all the things I shouldn’t be eating and should be doing has aged me so i’ve just broken even!

I spend extra time buying and paying for vitamins when the time and money would probably do me more good  splashed on a holiday. 

I spend ages reading ingredients to check that rubbish has not been added. There is something seriously wrong when we accept that to eat healthily we have to edit our foods.

Everything we eat and drink eventually seems to have some kind of health scare attached to it so that the worry will kill us if the foods don’t.

Chloe decided she was a vegetarian two weeks ago. I scoured the supermarket for vegetarian produce and stocked up the freezer.

She was quite cheerful when I served her vege-sausages, instead of ordinary bangers with mash and fairly happy when served a Linda McArtney vege-pie instead of a meat pie; but when presented with vege-bacon when the boys had sizzling rashers on their plates she was not happy.

“You did this on purpose! You wanted me to stop being a vegetarian and now you’ve done it. Well done. You hate it when I do anything different don’t you?” she said in her most aggrieved voice.

“Whats the matter? I’ve given you vegetarian bacon.” I reply, equally aggrieved.

“It’s disgusting, that’s what. You deliberately bought it to make me want real bacon!”

“No I didn’t”

“Yes you did,” by this time she is peering into the frying pan to see if there is any more real bacon left.

“Great, you’ve given it all to the boys. Typical, you always favour them.”

“But you said you were vegetarian so I ….”

“Fine, I’ll just eat plastic crap while they eat proper food then.”

Exasperated I get the rest of the bacon out of the fridge. “Here I’ll cook you some.”

She looks at it in disgust. “You never wanted me to be vegetarian did you? Now you are making me go against my principles and eat pig just to make you feel better!”

I cook the rashers and slide three onto her plate. “yes,” I agree, and watch as she gobbles them up.

My own version of the glossy magazine article I’ve just read. ‘ 20 things I keep in my fridge’

• Some sticky spillage that has dried on the button so the light takes three seconds to come on.
• A lip gloss.
• Dish of green gunge which could be leftover spinach, pea soup, mint sauce or a school experiment which the children have long since forgotten.
• Home-made bird cake with a suspicious hole scraped in it as though somebody has tasted it.
• Brown meaty stuff in a cling film covered dish which could be dog food or casserole leftovers.
• Folklore chutney that looks as though its made from garden bugs
• A cool-eyes headache soother.
• Green trimmed yoghurt
• A group of mushrooms in a container which could be (a) mushrooms or (b) fungi growing on some long since shrivelled foodstuff.
• A plastic yellow brick which turns out to be ancient cheese.
• A jar of mincemeat dated 1999.
• A water filled polythene glove (preparation for Halloween)
• A misshapen once melted, chocolate bar.
• Three quarters of a bottle of disgusting wine meant for cooking when I remember to add it.
• A plastic fork, wrapped in cellophane.
• Half a tub of dead cress.
• Flat, sparkling water.
• Half a shrivelled onion open side on a plate (that explains the smell.)
• Out-of-date cough mixture
• A notice to self, hanging down from the top shelf saying -CLEAN FRIDGE!

Pies.

I sat in a coffee shop at the only available table where somebody had left a half eaten pie on a plate. Before it was whisked away I couldn’t help noticing the grey sludge inhabiting the pastry case. I’ll never buy a pie again.

http://www.weeklygripe.co.uk/a250.asp

They must have been invented to hide rotten meat or cooking disasters.

Times were hard when Mrs Figgis made goulash for hubby with leftover’s from the previous weeks leftover’s. She cut off the green bits and picked off the maggots before mixing it with gravy and potato.

‘I’m not eating this’ hubby said looking at the heap of unappetising brown gunk on his plate. He got bread and cheese instead but Mrs Figgis couldn’t bring herself to throw the gunk out so she added the left over stale bread and a sad lump of cat food and was just about to throw in some left over pastry when she had a eureka moment. She put the pastry in a dish, put the filling in the middle and put a lid on.

‘What’s this?’ Mr Figgis asked.

‘A pi….’ Starting to say ‘a pile of poo’ and stopping herself.

‘A pie?’ he takes a bite. ‘Mmmmm yummy. I like pie.’

Next day Mrs Figgis serves pie again, but leftover baked beans and stale cheese are added to the mixture. Hubby is pleasantly surprised when he takes a bite. ‘It’s different!’ he exclaims.

Now she’s on a roll. Meat pie, potato pie, mince and onion, cheese and onion, jam, lumpy custard…. Food manufacturers catch on and realise they can throw eyeballs, tails and old abscesses and not worry too much if the odd rat gets included in the mixture.

Nowadays it is easy to hide a tracking device in a pie and follow someone’s movements until nature takes its course, obviously their last movement is recorded at their last movement…so to speak.