I have never had these before as I usually only have gummy bears that are hard and chewy. These Bassetts' ones were soft and had white icing sugar on them. It was very weird to eat them - and my colleague at work thought it was strange to have never had them before.
Rub a Dub Dub
CANs Ahoy!
Arc-CAN-ciel (Rainbow of Hope)
Only 20minutes outside of central London by train, you can visit the markets of St. Albans, here are some pics of my last visit there which was on a Saturday morning. The street market is held in Market Place and St Peter's Street on Wednesdays and Saturdays, as it has been for many hundreds of years. There is also a monthly farmers' market, normally on the second Sunday, and a French market every four months. I always love the vibe, sights and sounds of a street market and just visited Borough Market on Saturday after a very long time -yes even on a chilly winter day it was packed full of people! 
And Happy Birthday Dearest Sister!!!!
It is a very British place and most likely has been around for ages, check it out - although if you don't like a little old school then don't go, grab a latte at the Starbucks on the high street instead.
Had a lovely lunch here today at this little gem in Kensington Square. It is so fresh and clean inside and has a very Californian feel to it. I love the interior decor and the light and fresh menu was great. I had a club sandwich, which you rarely see on British menus.
Also in Germany, 5.4 litres of juice was extracted from grapes by treading in just one minute by teutonic treading titan Martina Servaty, beating Belgian Tijs Vandoorne into second place for the coveted (and imaginatively named) 'most juice extracted from grapes by treading in one minute' record.
And in New Zealand, two separate records concerning the time taken to peel and eat kiwi fruit fell - the 'fastest time to peel and eat three kiwi fruits' is now, officially, 36.91 seconds (an astonishing average of 12.3 seconds a fruit) and the world's 'fastest time to peel and eat a kiwi fruit' now stands at 16.15 seconds, both feats achieved by Alastair Galpin (that's 16.15 seconds for a single fruit? Hang on a minute ...).
Source:OFM
It gracefully slid off the sword and landed in Quinn Jr, the Bunny, Quinn Sr and my plates. We all gave it a try and it was very interesting indeed, a bit rubbery but a tasty little bauble of goodness. It was a tiny chicken heart that was barbecued to Brazilian standards, served up at Rodizio Rico on Westbourne Grove in Notting Hill.
Pork or beef rump, rind, steak or something - who could keep track?!
The chicken hearts
These days, I make a lot less money on the other side of the fence but you'll forgive me for being more than a little cynical about any news story that features a scientist coming up with a formula for anything - if I read a headline saying that Einstein had discovered that energy was equal to mass times the speed of light squared, my eyes would flash to the end of the story to see which power company was behind the release.
So imagine my delight at yesterday's story of a scientist opining on the perfect Yorkshire pudding. I scanned the copy for the name of a flour company, a purveyor of powdered gravy or the Yorkshire Tourist board and found nothing but the Royal Society of Chemistry and John Emsley, a scientist from Yorkshire, sharing a perfectly innocent recipe.
I can't tell you how clean and redeeming that feels. A story based on nothing more than geekery, love of food and regional pride. I can't, even at my most venal and cynical, see it having any underlying commercial point beyond a little well deserved profile raising for the RSC - and if the Royal Society of Chemistry have turned the filthy ways of PR to their own ends, then, good on them.
It's truly heartwarming proof that not everything in the world is crap and I can think of no better way to encourage it than to reproduce the recipe in full …
Ingredients
Tablespoon and a half of plain flour
1 egg
Half milk, half water to make a thin batter
Half a teaspoon of salt.
Method
Put flour in a bowl, make a well in the middle, add the egg, stir until the two are combined then start gradually adding the milk and water combining as you go.
Add the liquid until the batter is a smooth and thin consistency.
Stir in half teaspoon of salt and leave to stand for 10 minutes.
Put beef dripping into Yorkshire pudding tins or into one large tin but don't use too much fat.
Put into hot oven until the fat starts to smoke.
Give the batter a final stir and pour into the tin or tins.
Place in hot oven until well risen – should take 10 to 15 minutes.
Serve
Always serve as a separate course before the main meal and use the best gravy made from the juices of the roast joint. Yorkshire housewives served Yorkshire pudding before the meal so that they would eat less of the more expensive main course.
NB: When the batter is made it must not be placed in the fridge but be kept at room temperature
The Quinn's were in town this weekend so there was a lot of drinking and dancing. Mr. Quinn can shake it alright! We also went to a Brazilian barbeque restaurant in Westbourne Grove and ate very large quantiies of beef, pork, lamb and more - we even sampled the chicken hearts. More pics to follow, we are all just trying to recover...
Pics are of a pub in Camden called Quinn's.
Maybe it's the Irish in her that makes her eat funny foods, but she keeps telling me to blog about this cheese, I think it is nasty but am happy to see it thrives on the black market. I recall reading somewhere that a man attributes his good health to eating pidgeon every day - so...to that and to this maggot cheese I say, 'to each his own!' May your stomach rot in gastronomical delight.
Sicilians do like their sardines!
The pics were taken at a food market in central Palermo. There were fresh sardines filleted and ready to grill and tinned, salted sardines. Sardines on toast is such an easy dish to make.
Busy at work and will blog more soon but for now you will have to enjoy some food foties (that's how they say photos in South Africa) Bought this deliciously divine cannoli at a pasticceria in Palermo. Mmmmmmm
Instead of buying a frozen, massive turkey which would take 2 days to defrost (and the packaging had a hole in it) I opted for 2 fresh, free range, Waitrose chickens.
I started cooking at 11am and didn't stop til guests arrived at 7pm - that is a long day of peeling and preparing, my respect for housewives significantly increased that day!
Freshly picked, peeled and eaten right on the Puzzo farm. Prickly pears, opuntia or as the Sicilians call them fichi d'India are delicious. 
You must peel them carefully otherwise you get the spini (spines) from the cactus plant in your skin and it is painful (I got one stuck somehow). I ate about 4 of these in a row and thought that was my limit although I haven't had one since that sunny day and now wish I'd had more. I think they will be around at Christmas so looking forward to some imported ones. I also like the red ones as I like the way they stain your fingers and lips. 
AMAGASAKI, Japan - Japan, a country not known for its overweight people, has undertaken one of the most ambitious campaigns ever by a nation to slim down its citizenry.[...]Former Tax Foundation Summer Fellow Adam Creighton came up with an idea like this in a tongue-in-cheek paper he wrote last year:
It would be a progressive tax: the fatter the taxpayer, the higher the tax. The top of the "normal" range for BMI is 24. A BMI above 25 would pay a small surtax, say 5 percent, BMI 30s would pay 10 percent, etc. The brilliance of Art Laffer's flat income tax notwithstanding, a flat fat tax simply would not work, since it would not encourage weight-control once the taxpayer's BMI was well above the taxation threshold.
To deter falsified BMIs, IRS doctors could offer a second opinion. BMI audits might be required at three or six-month intervals to get an accurate reading of each taxpayer's average BMI during the year, and to prevent unhealthy fasting during the tax season. And given the latest research showing obesity spreads socially, the IRS could even demand friendship data (cross-checked) to ensure individual friendship networks don't exceed a particular fat-friends quota.
Unlike communism's poor, capitalism's poor are generally fat, and the very poor even fatter. Indeed, up to one third of the three-year-old children in low-income families are reported to be fat or obese. Thus, to ensure its efficacy, any fat tax should be a bottom-line item on Form 1040, paid after all deductions and credits. For many obese, poor people, the passage of the fat-person tax may be the first time they've ever filed a 1040 with a positive liability: an especially poignant incentive to lose weight!
A fat-person tax, being evidently simple, transparent and well targeted, is not weighed down by any of the implementation problems of a fatty-food tax. But politicians should act now-the obese will soon be a majority, and once that happens, the fat cats in Congress will never enact a fat tax.
Thx Momma Power for sending this along
The lovely Carolina got us tickets to the Frieze Art Fair, which was held in Regent's Park a few weeks ago. It was wacky and wonderful and the Deutsche Bank VIP lounge was also lovely. We had champagne and a lovely meal that ended with this exquisite apple tart. We almost didn't have time for the art!
