Displaying items by tag: snacks

The  French lady in our village has started a frog patrol.  She goes out in the evening to rescue frogs from the traffic. We are not quite so sure of her intentions.

This three hour tour takes you through the foodie paradise of Bethnal Green in East London - from the famous and beautiful Columbia Rd flower market for fresh morning coffee and pastries from Italy,  to Brick Lane, the home of curry, with foodie stops all the way.  Jamie Oliver comes here to buy his Vietnamese street food and even the kebab vans are good.  So we can try fresh oysters; beigels stuffed with salt beef or smoked salmon, traditional Cockney pie, mash and eels and home made baklava - from the traditional shops that have been here for years, and from the fabulous new street food vendors that cook here at the weekend.

The tour is £10 per person, runs most Saturdays and Sundays and meets at Hoxton station. You buy your own food throughout but don't worry, it's mostly under a fiver and you'll easily walk it off! It starts at 11.00am going for coffee, and ends at 2.00pm with whatever you liked best...and there is even a Cockney cashpoint to get your money out in rhyming slang!

Send me a message for details of the next tour dates and how to book.

If you can get salt fish try these, the fish needs soaking overnight and smells horrible but the flavour afterwards is worth it. Just make a thicker batter than usual, add the shredded salt fish, some chopped spring onions and chili, and fry until crisp. Mmmmm... 

I found another good lunch stop in Southwold. You can't miss the Blyth Hotel as you arrive in the town.  It's not on the seafront, just a short walk away. The bar and dining area has a rustic look and some great dishes on the blackboard. I had a roast beef and horseradish sandwich which arrived with some chips and a little pot of homemade coleslaw.

On the specials board at Baileys2 in Bury St Edmunds yesterday, a homemade sundried tomato scotch egg. It was deliciously fresh with a nicely soft  yolk.  The caramelised onion jam was rather tasty too. Baileys2 have just won the Suffolk magazine award for best Tea and Coffee Shop in Suffolk.  Well done!

Today in the car I listened to a progamme telling us we would soon be eating insects. It has been predicted that by 2050 the world’s population will have increased to nine billion, and the demand for food will grow with it. One of the things we will be worrying about in the future is food security, and we won't care what we eat, as long as we eat something. Much has been done behind the scenes to develop this idea. It's not just a notion - it has legs. In an article in the New Yorker Dana Goodyear quotes the man who first explored the idea of so much protein being freely available. " DeFoliart envisioned a place for edible insects as a luxury item. The larvae of the wax moth (Galleria mellonella) seemed to him to be poised to become the next escargot, which in the late eighties represented a three-hundred-million-dollar-a-year business in the United States. Given a choice, New York diners looking for adventure and willing to pay $22 for half a roasted free-range chicken accompanied by a large pile of shoestring potatoes might well prefer a smaller pile of Galleria at the same price."   You see, it's all in the name; call it something nice and we'll all try it.

• casa marzu cheese
• drying out bugs
• yum yum
• crickets anyone?
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It's only in Europe that we cringe at the idea, although in Sardinia there is the cheese riddled with maggots pictured here, called Casa Marzu. Bugs are a traditional food in many cultures across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and over 1,000 insects are known to be eaten in 80% of the world's nations. They include 235 species of butterflies and moths, 344 species of beetles and 313 species of ants, bees and wasps, as well as 239 species of grasshoppers, crickets and cockroaches, amongst others. Other commonly eaten insects are termites, cicadas and dragonflies. And we do eat them already, we just don't know about it - there are permissible levels in tinned sweetcorn, some shredded bits in fruit juice and the odd bug in frozen broccoli. Of course in the old days we would have had much less choice,  John the Baptist is said to have survived on locusts and honey when he lived in the desert, and we would all eat a spider if it was life or death or I'm a Celebrity. But most of us have a long way to go. It needs to look right...we're not good at wings and eyes and legs, so we need it to be presentable, on lettuce and in breadcrumbs. But some people do have the recipes - cabbage, peas n'crickets anyone? It's just that the website they're on - girlmeetsbug.com, looks a bit like the old suffolkfoodie blog...

Wholemeal crunchy ginger shortbread -  a shortbread type ginger biscuit to bake in a tray and that I couldn't resist with my cup of tea today. The wholemeal flour makes it healthy doesn't it?

Flippin' good pancakes for breakfast this morning. We ate them simply with a squeeze of lemon and a sprinling of suger. Pancake batter recipe here.

...made by some young suffolkfoodies - thanks for the picture Arianne and Dominique - I'm coming to your house for tea!

Parsnip Fritters - crispy and light vegetarian fritters suitable as a starter, light supper or as nibbles with drinks. Who can resist a plate of savoury fritters? This recipe is an original recipe created and served by me at The Chalice Restaurant in the 1980's.