Author Archives: Sarah


Irish Potato Candy

Joy the Baker

Traditional Irish potato dish neither Irish nor contains potatoes reports confused cook on Paddy’s Day.

There’s a weird thing I have to tell you:  this candy is not Irish. Another strange thing you should know:  this candy does not have a trace of potato in it. It is, however, a traditional confection from Philadelphia made from coconut, cream cheese, butter, and sugar. If you don’t think that coconut, cream cheese, butter, and sugar make a winning combination? you must not like me very much.  That’s a shame, really.

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Wal-Mart Just Too Cheap say Customers

Reuters

Wal-Mart's lengthy struggle to open in New York City has hit fresh problems — a controversial report that said America's biggest discounter does not just sell cheap, it makes neighborhoods poorer.

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Iowan Farmers Can’t Handle the Truth

slashfood.com

Farmers from Iowa decide criminalising documentary food makers is probably easier than making their farms less appalling.

Cramped cows and abused chickens are at risk of losing a powerful ally: filmmakers. A new bill up for House ruling in Iowa today would make whistle-blowing documentarians like Robert Kenner of "Food, Inc." fame criminals, reports the Iowa Independent. And similar action is on the table in Florida. Any undercover videotaping or photographing of livestock or farm operations would be a classified aggravated misdemeanor calling for two years in prison and a penalty fine of up to $6,250; subsequent offenses would be class D felonies (five years and up to $7,500 in penalties). Tough break for journalism

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Veggie Food back from the Dead

Image credit: Jim Summaria

Linda McCartney returning to TV after 15 years. Not an image to get me reaching for that veggie sausage

Linda McCartney Foods is returning to TV advertising for the first time in 15 years as competition in the vegetarian food market heats up. The brand is launching a week-long documentary style ad takeover of ITV’s This Morning to drive awareness of its meat free food ranges and grow market share.

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Steak owner stuck for a strategy

Image credit: By Ewan-M
Ewan Munro

Hawksmoor restaurant owner tries and fails to make his job sound complicated

When Will Beckett of Hawksmoor was asked about how they used Twitter and Facebook to accelerate their launch of Seven Dials he was initially a bit stumped. Then he realised what their 4-point strategic marketing initiative was all about. Read on, it may not be what you think…

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Dying Happy In the Arms of General Tso

Eat Noodles Love Noodles

I've finally tracked down a decent version of General Tso's chicken (左宗堂雞) in London. Never having had a proper rendition of this American-Chinese dish before, I wasn't sure quite what to anticipate. That said, it felt more real compared to my previous brush with what turned out to be a fake General.

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Burger King Sorry for Ugly Women

Daily Mail

You’ve got to feel sorry for the Burger Queen.

As far as foot in mouth moments go, it's a bit of a whopper. The global boss of Burger King has had to apologise after branding British women unattractive and describing our country's food as 'terrible'. The comments were made as Brazilian-born Bernardo Hees, 40, spoke to a group of U.S. students about the time he spent at the University of Warwick where he was studying for an MBA.

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Octopus on Toast

Food Stories

Total marmite dish. While I couldn’t shovel this down if my life depended on it, my bloke reckons it looks divine

A dreadful thing has happened: I am too busy to cook. If I’m at home of an evening then I’m so dog tired that I just need something fast, tasty and relatively healthy before I fall asleep in front of the telly, glass of wine in hand. Octopus on toast is ticking all those boxes. I buy ready-cooked baby octopus in oil, chop them up, mix with herbs, chilli and lemon, pile on toast and sprinkle with a little good EVOO. You can find cooked baby octopus in fishmongers, or they are readily available uncooked in Asian supermarkets (a cheaper option). You can also buy octopus morsels tinned in major supermarkets.

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Can’t be Beet

nami nami

Have you got a glass of pickled beets lurking in the back of your fridge? If yes, then you could use them for making this colourful and lovely quiche. The otherwise sweet beets have quite a piquant flavour when pickled, and that works well with the saltiness of the blue cheese. I used Valio AURA, one of my favourite blue cheese (made in Finland), but it will work with any other crumbly blue cheese

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Taking Subway Down

Image credit:

Top critic tries and fails to find something nice to say about Subway

I would like to think I'm not a food snob: in my job as a restaurant reviewer I've visited Heston Blumenthal and Pizza Hut and found points to favour and to criticise in both. But I've avoided Subway until now. I'd thought it was a sandwich bar, and a sandwich is a sandwich, right? Wrong. My visit yesterday revealed that these are no sandwiches, that Subway's slogan "Eat fresh" is scandalously misleading, and that it may be fast, but it certainly ain't cheap.

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