Don't eat the f**ing corn!
I must stress this loud and clear, don't eat it! In Istanbul, for 50Turkish Lira (50p), you can buy a hot and delicious looking piece of corn from one of the many street vendors. I say 'looking' as when you bite into it, like I did, I almost vomited as it stank and was rotten!

After my Turkish friend pulled out my first piece, I did ask him to dump it back into his bubbling pot and find me another piece that didn't have a black tail. He pulled out a few that were all the same and reassured me that they were fine. I thought that maybe it was a Turkish thing to have a brown tip?!

I soon realised that the water was probably boiling street rats at the bottom of it too and that the corn had fallen off a truck about 6mths ago and these street vendors then sell it off to stupid tourists, like me! After my horrific bite I spat it out in disgust and then Kat decided she didn't believe me and took a bite too. Bad move, she hurled her bite into the nearest tree - people were staring. It was so awful an experience that we immediately laughed as I probably would cry if I knew how old that corn and water was.

I love corn on the cob and did have an amazing one off a street vendor in Budapest, Hungary a few years ago (you can read about it here) so didn't think I would need my stomach pumped after purchasing this one. Well, lesson learned!

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!

FC bathing suit weather
Bathing suit weather is fast approaching am trying to get back into shape after a month of inactivity. Am trying to eat healthy and take vitamins to get back to normal after a busy and stressful month.

On my first weekend off I get a b-day gift of free tix to the Toronto FC game - thx George & Hellen!

Picture it -30+degrees the sun is shining down, smog is high, humidity is higher. We are roasting in the sun, sweating and sticking to the seats but admiring all the lovely men and the amazing atmosphere and spirit of the fans, it was great!

After about 40 min of sweaty viewing we ducked inside to get some water and food. As per the sporting venue stereotype the menu is totally not suited to anyone who is trying to be health conscious or to vegetarians.

What the new 'beemo' BMO field does have is great toilet facilities as there seems to be enough to go around without long queues of women wasting the whole break/intermission (what do you call it at a football/soccer match?) trying to make a nature call and to check their makeup. In our case to splash water on our red arms and legs!

Anyhoo back to the menu, as you will see from the pic lots of burgers, dogs, popcorn, nachos, pretzels, popcorn etc..but nothing remotely healthy. I asked if they had veggie pizza and the guy said that the 'supreme' is the veggie one. When it arrives it is laden with pepperoni and some green pepper (guess he didn't know what veggie was?!) Pizza Pizza must give these people a briefing.

But alas....as we ate our pizza we saw someone with fresh boiled corn on the cob, he told us that there was a stall only a few metres away! Next time I guess.

Get to a game it is great fun! Toronto FC won 2-1. I would love to see the Beckham game if anyone wants to get me a b-day gift still...ol' Becky in action with the LA Galaxy would be nice!

Hungarian snacks -yellow, boiled and delicious

The people of Hungary are a healthy bunch; could this be due to the lack of crisps and snack foods during the communist era? Not sure. Well you know how we have local shops chock full of crisps and every type of fatty food on every corner in the UK. After spending a few days in Budapest I realised that there aren't too many shops like this to be found. They have street vendors selling freshly boiled corn on the cob everywhere. Wonderfully healthy and tasty and such a great snack this was something I think London or any city, for that matter, needs.
So after enjoying the hot thermal baths in Budapest, I worked up a little hunger, and when I emerged corn on the corn on the cob seller filled that feeling, then walking around during the national holiday weekend sightseeing and enjoying the celebrations of their first king, St. Stephen I then had another lovely cob -freshly boiled by a very friendly looking man who had a queue for quite a while and for only 200Forint (50p) it was a healthy bargain.

Although I wasn't really observing closely I think that Hungarians are quite fit people, so maybe instead of indulging on a packet of crisps people opt for a corn on the cob? Maybe this is what Jamie Oliver should start up -fast food corn on the cob trucks/concessions.

But it is not all healthy as I discovered a little too late, at the national holiday celebrations on the riverbank I went to purchase a chicken kebab and what I thought were onions in between each piece of chicken was actually pig fat. Ildi -my Hungarian friend told me this after I couldn't figure out what vegetable or onion type this was?? I must say it was tasty but a tad tooooo fattening and debated trying to pick it out, but as they say, 'when in Rome'....so I ate it.

Am walking to work tomorrow -at a brisk pace!