Percy Pig and friends

Now you have Percy (right) with his friend Cola Cow (Coke flavoured) and its Ba Ba white sheep friend (which I think is grape flavoured). The farm is expanding! This confectionery is only found at Marks and Spencer.

AlitaliaMore pathetic airline food last week. I was starving but so rushed to catch my flight I didn't have a chance to eat properly so I had to suffer through this horrid little thing they call a sandwich. I thought the Italians could do better but am not surprised as Alitalia has been having a lot of trouble lately. So after a disgusting walk through Milan's Linate airport which should be burned to the ground as it is so grey and depresssing, they serve this fake toasted panini which has bresaola inside a sliver of butter and a sliver of ricotta inside it. Not even spread evenly, just in these two hard lumpy lines. It was gross but I had no alternative so ate it. The other options were biscuits but not sure what those would've been like.

Lucky me, I sat beside a troll who snarled at me behind her bifocals. Why can I not sit beside a socialble and mildly attractive person who doesn't get the pillow stuck in their arse crack due to their fatness? This happend on my last flight to Toronto! This pre-Christmas troll had scary facial hair, a big gut and clothes that were too snug and too short which meant that the blub was hanging out! I know I am going to rot in hell but people, when you are that fat a little extra material goes a LONG way! You are not a size 8 anymore.

And if you are so fat that you don't notice a pillow stuck between your ass crack then you need to cut down on something. Maybe start with that bag of candy she scoffed on the flight - pre her two glasses of wine and Coke and her meal. Seriously I wanted to crawl into the barf bag!

Can someone from BA read this and put me in a seat at Easter next to a normal person? I should be flying privately, non?

Red Bull appears at The LeathermarketVery funny, on Friday afternoon I was saying that I needed a boost of energy and about ten seconds later two Red Bull models came with little coolers on their back to give our office samples of the new Red Bull Cola. I was stunned at the sheer coincidence.

They said that another agency down the road told them to come visit us at The Leathermarket (we work in an old leather market), which was very nice. So we each got a can of the new cola and the lovely sampling staff explained that it is all natural with ingredients like lime, cinnamon, ginger etc.. and there is no 'secret recipe' like another cola brand, all ingredients are listed on the back of the can.

The verdict in the office: we said it tasted like Haribo candy and most people liked it, no one really said they loved it but at the end of the day no cans were left over. Many said they still like the one and only Coke.

Not sure I would buy it often as having a few Haribo candies is great but drinking a can of it may be a bit too much, will have to try it again.

Where does canned corn come from?
I remember watching an episode of Jamie Oliver's TV show called Jamie's School Dinners where he went to a school and laid out 10-12 basic fruits and vegetables and asked kids from varying ages to identify them.

99% of kids in that group could not identify things such as spring onions, sweet potato, celery, broccoli and other BASIC fruits and vegetables. I remember watching in shock but not surprise as I worked at a school for a few months and some of the lower kids would come to school hungry or with a Coke and a bag of chips for lunch. Some were so hungry they ate the rotten pumpkin after Halloween, sad but true.

The School Dinners show demonstrated that kids in these schools do not recognize these foods in their raw state because they never eat them in that state, their parents never buy them and they are never involved in the cooking process at home if their parents cook. At school and at home kids from these schools ate only processed and pre-packaged foods.

Turkey Twizzlers were made famous on the show as they served them in many UK schools to children as part of the standard lunch program. TTs are a bizarre chicken nugget type food with some ridiculously small % of actual turkey in it and it is shaped as a coil so makes no resemblance to any natural food or turkey for that matter. It is a food listed on the UK school lunch program list - after the show Jamie got them banned from schools -yay! And the Department for Education and Skills created the School Food Trust to provide support and advice to improve the standard of school meals.

During the show Jamie followed some parents to the grocery store and watched them shop and all they put into their baskets were microwave dinners and more turkey twizzlers (they said, 'but our kids like them'). He even went home with a few parents to see what they could 'cook' and since they grew up on frozen foods too they could not actually put a basic soup together or cook some pasta as they had never seen their parents do it. The show pointed out the need for parents to get educated on proper health, nutrition and basic cooking skills.

When I first arrived in England I was impressed by this prominent 'ready meal' aisle at the supermarkets as for £2 you could have a lasagna, turkey dinner, Chinese food, Indian curry etc... When you finally read the label and see what crap was in there you soon re-think your choice. But think about this spend £14-20 a week and have a ready made hot meal each night after just 60seconds in the microwave or spend £20-40 a week and have to come home, peel, prepare and cook? For lazy and ignorant parents guess which option they choose?

That whole show was fantastic and can be a whole blog in itself. The reason for today's post is that some of the neighboring kids at the cottage had a diet which consisted of packaged foods all the time and the snacks they came out with were always chips and some type of sugary juice. Their parents didn't really enforce meal time so some of them also went without dinner on several occasions. The parents also did not spend much time with them and only seemed to be smoking in front of the tele each and every day. The kids were always at our place staring at our healthy dinners and lunches with hungry looks. This angered me and I blame lack of education and laziness on the parents part. In this situation do we feed the neighbors kids each night? There was 4 of them so not an easy task even if we wanted to. We did give them healthy snacks but who does that when we are not there?

Our little ones were always helping with meal preparation, tending the vegetable garden, coming along to do the grocery shopping, choosing which pint of strawberries they wanted and which carrots to put in the cart. This all makes up the educational experience of children which keeps them involved, teaches them good food habits and makes them appreciate food.

PM is peeling fresh corn in the pic and he loved it - we almost had to go back to the store to get another basket full so he could peel more. I guess my rant today is that kids need to eat fresh, whole foods and parents need to stay away from the gimmicks and easy avenues of junk or fast food. Yes kids like Coke and chips and boxed meals but think of how bad it is for them, they only like these things as they are filled with sugars and salts which makes them crave more!