Browsing: Food & drink

The hot weather has been beating down all week, and I don’t know about everyone else, but my thoughts have been turning to picnics, barbeques and enjoying myself in the open air.

There’s the perfect opportunity to get involved in this summery vibe coming up – put the 19th of July into your diary - the nationwide ‘Big Lunch’ is coming right to your doorstep! Well, only if you choose to get involved, but we think that this countrywide picnic sounds like a great plan.

The idea is that two weeks tomorrow, millions of us throughout the UK will choose to sit down and have lunch together, wherever we fancy. It’s a great excuse for a street party, and a wonderful way to have a fun day with family, friends and neighbours. Just register on the Big Lunch website - www.thebiglunch.com -  to plot your event on the Big Lunch map, sort the food and get the invites out, and you’ll be good to go.

We’ve teamed up with the lovely folks at Divine Chocolate to devise a The Big Lunch Fair Trade Hamper to make sure your party goes with a swing.  It’s designed to take away the hard work by creating your picnic for you - complete with delicious sweet treats as well as something healthier to munch on, not to forget drinks for adults as well as the kids. In fact all you really need to add is the sandwiches!

We’d love to know if you’re planning to get involved in the Big Lunch – where are you, who are you inviting, and how are you bribing the weatherman…?

Image via: foodforlife.org.uk

What to offer my children to drink has always been a source of anxiety for me. And I’m not even talking alcohol here; that’s a subject for another day.

I remember when my first son was tiny. I was determined to do everything right and be the best mum in the world. I used to give him fennel juice to drink because that was what the Health Visitor told me to do. My baby boy would spit it out and scream the house down. He so often screamed the house down over so many different things that I soon gave up on being the best mum in the world. (I can still remember my reply when the Doctor asked if I was depressed - “Anyone would be depressed if they lived with this baby!”). I switched to heavily diluted sugar free squash and haven’t looked back since.

Actually, that’s not true. When my youngest daughter had her first trip to the dentist, I was told she must be drinking too much juice and that was why her teeth were eroding into sharp points (and I thought she was just related to a terrier). We tried hard to break her addiction for a while. She made herself ill by not drinking enough when water was all that was on offer. We relented a little and hoped for the best for her adult teeth.

Anyway, the reason for all these confessions of a rubbish mum is to show the dilemma that I have lived with for many long years. Just what is it OK to offer your kids to drink? How hard is it to just offer water when there are so many more tasty and colourful options out there to choose from? I have had friends who have thought they were doing the right thing by only giving their children pure fruit juice only for their kids’ teeth to be rotted away by the high acid content. Some people believe diet drinks are full of too many chemicals; others believe that the chemicals are preferable to the high sugar load of normal fizzy drinks. Some avoid caffeine; others avoid aspartame. What a minefield!

As for water, the options there are endless too. Is tap water really filled with unwanted unknown chemicals? Is bottled water an extravagance both financially and environmentally? Is flavoured water any good for you at all? What about fizzy water? What about filtered?

We have recently acquired a terracotta water cooler and filter. The water is filtered and purified through a ceramic filter. The terracotta container keeps the water 10 to 15 degrees lower than the external temperature. There is no plumbing or electrical supply required. The only problem is that the water has an acquired taste, which most of the family have yet to acquire. The little tap is a novelty that entices the younger members of the family to help themselves, fortunately with as yet no disastrous consequences (one day, the tap will be left on, I’m sure of it). On top of that, it looks cool and draws the attention of visitors to the house - great publicity for a great product. So water is being introduced as the new wonder drink to my very sceptical family. (it looks like nothing, tastes like nothing - how can the effect be anything other than nothing?)

Other drinks are good on occasions. Ubuntu cola uses fair trade sugar from Malawi, a country with a special place in our hearts. Fruit Passion goes down well (too well). Other organic squashes and fruit juices have been tried with varying responses.

Maybe I should just be brutal (cruel to be kind) and offer nothing but water for a few weeks, until the habit has been broken. Unfortunately, I am just seen as the mum who wants to spoil everyone’s fun. Cool water only becomes cool when the teacher keeps suggesting it to the class. Fizzy drinks are only seen for what they are when the dentist armed with drill tells my son that they are causing the holes in his teeth. Water only becomes the drink of choice when my husband and I become good role models.

Please share your suggestions with me as to how to encourage healthy drinking in my family. My children might listen to you.

I have been a regular consumer for many years. I have faced the supermarket weekly for well over twenty years. I have bought all the food and household products for seven people for over five years. I have been swayed by some ad campaigns and special offers. I have seen through others. I thought I had seen it all.

But what I saw last week in the supermarket in-store magazine topped it all. The news that 17-24 May was officially National Watercress Week filled me with horror, ridicule and despair. Not that I have anything particularly against watercress - but why have a week formally designated to it?

Flicking through the magazine, I was also made aware of other such ‘Weeks’. Did you know that 10-16 May was British Sandwich Week and National Breastfeeding Awareness Week? Sorry if you are disappointed that those have passed you by. The bad news is you also missed National Bread Week from the 4-10 May, so you may now have to wait a while for another bread-related week. The 18-22 May is also Walk to School Week and National Allergy Week. I guess for some, those two may be related.

Why do we do it? To raise awareness? As an advertising opportunity? To promote healthy living? As a chance for real fans to celebrate? Will National Watercress Week really have made some quantifiable difference?

Who comes up with these ’Weeks’ anyway? How do they become official? Can anyone have a go? I would like to propose 23-30 May as National Muesli Week and this is my pitch.

We all know the importance of eating a healthy breakfast. It’s a great start to the day, activating your brain and giving you the energy to give your best until lunch. And what better than muesli, the healthiest of all healthy breakfasts? Muesli was developed for just that reason. In around 1900, a Swiss physician saw muesli as a great way to boost the health of patients in his hospital. It became popular in western countries in the 1960s as people became increasingly interested in healthy eating and recognised the combination of beneficial ingredients found in a bowl of muesli. Fresh fruit, oats, nuts…..ingredients high in fibre and omega-3 fatty acids, with a low glycaemic index, shown to reduce high cholesterol and the risk of cancer…all served up with either fresh or soya milk. Perfect.

The only way to make it more perfect would be to buy Fair Trade or organic muesli. Then the benefit would not only be yours, but also the environment, and the growers and the producers of the ingredients. I’m a fan of Traidcraft muesli, especially now they have released an Apricot and Cranberry variety. I like to be able to read the information about the farmers on the back of the box. I like to know that what is improving the quality of my life is improving the quality of life for others as well. I like to be able to offer my family a choice of varieties to suit all tastes and with brands like Traidcraft, Rude Health and Alara; we’re spoilt for choice!

So are you with me on this? Will you join me in making 23-30 May National Muesli Week? Let me know your thoughts.

Happy munching!

Like all couples, we have our differences. We argue about the kids, money, whose turn it is to load the dishwasher, all the usual stuff. But sometimes the argument focuses on something a little less ordinary and today, we invite you to eavesdrop on our issue of the moment and join our great debate.

Is it better to buy supermarket own label fair trade goods or to support fairtrade pioneer brands like Cafedirect and Divine.

My argument for supermarket own label fair trade goods:-

Since my husband rarely visits a supermarket (daggers drawn early on!) and I frequent the same supermarket at the same time on the same day every week, I feel I am in more of a position to comment on what actually appears on and disappears off the supermarket shelves from a consumer perspective.

In our early days as fair trade supporters, we could never have envisaged being able to buy fair trade products in a local supermarket, let alone the advent of own label fair trade goods. I therefore feel the need to support any steps in the right direction taken by the supermarket chains. I take pride in buying own label fairly traded coffee, chocolate spread, honey, fresh fruit and veg, and the latest new addition to their range, banana cake and chocolate cake.

As I have discovered with the own label organic products, these items are launched with a great deal of hype but removed very quietly and without comment. If the consumers do not buy them, then the lines will be withdrawn. Simple as that. Surely the ethical consumer needs to buy these products to ensure their place on the shelves.

Read the rest of Supermarket own label fair trade V Fairtrade pioneers »

Bottled water attracts its fair share of bad press, maybe even more than its fair share.

One such example of this was when a government minister claimed that drinking bottled water should be made as unfashionable as smoking;

“We have to make people think that it’s unfashionable just as we have with smoking. We need a similar campaign to convince people that this is wrong,”

said Tim Lang, the Government’s natural resources commissioner.

And all of this negativity surrounding bottled beverages seems to be having an impact with recent figures from market research company TNS suggesting that last year bottled water sales fell by 9% (this on the back of approx 10 years of year on year increases in sales).

However, is the bottled water industry really so bad?

Read the rest of Bottled Water Doesn’t Have to Cost the Earth »

So Easter gets ever closer – just 10 days left in the Ethical Superstore diet (regular readers will recall I have been challenged to only eat food and drink that can be purchased from ESS for the whole of lent).

I guess the biggest change for me is that I have ended up cooking virtually all of my meals for the last few weeks. Helen (my long suffering wife and fellow blogger) has put up with cooking me a vegetarian option for years, but the idea of then having to cook my option separately using Ethical Superstore ingredients was a step too far! So most evenings I’ve come home and cooked a meal for myself. Previously, this would have been getting a veggie ready meal out of the freezer, popping in the microwave and 4 minutes later sitting down to a portion of vegetable (plus salt, sugar and fat) goodness. For the last five weeks I’ve been looking at a pile of ingredients and waiting for inspiration.

I suspect this will be the biggest change when this little project comes to an end. Ready meals just don’t do it for me having now cooked for myself for the last 5 weeks. Even with my cooking and slap-dash approach to quantities, the taste and the freshness is way better than the average pack of freezer fodder.

So what have been my highlights?

Read the rest of 10 Days to Go! »

Whether it’s simply an ‘urban myth’ or simply a popular but unsubstantiated statistic, the fact remains there are numerous claims that over 2500 left handed people are killed each year from using products designed for right handed people.

These same sources claim that it’s fairly common knowledge that left handed people do not live as long as right handed people, mostly due to accidents. Even if you look at a simple tool, like scissors, they have to be used in a less than efficient way in order to make them work. So a task that might be usually considered safe may become extremely unsafe.

Here at Ethical Superstore we’re passionately committed to providing the widest range of ethical products to the widest range of consumers.  So we’re proud to announce that we have worked with all our chocolate producers to compile a ‘safe list’ of chocolate products which not only meet strict ethical criteria such as Fairtrade, Organic and Vegan criteria but are completely ambidextrous.

Click here to view our full range of ambidextrous chocolate bars.

I was thinking of enrolling my two youngest children on a Drama course in the Easter holidays until I checked the dates on the calendar - the course took place on Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday. There must be some mistake. I checked again. No, definitely those days. Would people really send their kids on a course on those days? Don’t they have better things to do as a family on Easter Sunday? Has it really become just like any other day?
It reminded me of last football season when I wrongly assumed there would be no game for my son’s team on Easter Sunday morning. I was made to feel a fool, but was I really the fool? Do we really believe that just buying all that is on offer will make for a proper celebration?

Easter, like all our annual festivals, has become a great marketing opportunity - Easter bonnets, bunnies, gifts and of course, chocolate eggs. Not that any of this is in itself  wrong, but it focuses our attention on what we buy and away from the actual significance of the event.

Whether as individuals we share in the Christian celebration of the Easter weekend or not, we can all participate in celebrating new life -

Read the rest of Celebrating Life At Easter »

Our friends at Divine Chocolate have come up with a fantastically novel way to encourage people to send an email to politicians to keep fair trade on the agenda at next week’s G20. It’s a simple game – Egg a Politician. You get to throw a chocolate egg at one of  five world leaders — Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Gordon Brown, Manmohan Singh or Wen Jiabao — who are all attending the G20 summit, where finance ministers and central bank governors of 19 countries and the European Union will meet to discuss “key issues related to global economic stability”.

As well as the therapy of hurling the egg at your leader of choice, you then get the opportunity to send an email to that leader – direct from the page – just as soon as they’ve devoured the chocolate.

When I first read about this idea I had visions similar to the incident that saw the

Read the rest of Have You ever Wanted to Egg a Politician? »

So just 2 weeks to go until Easter and the “eat only stuff I can buy at EthicalSuperestore.com” has been going pretty well. I am now a total convert to having a vegetable box delivered every week. I love the serendipity of opening the box to see what we are going to be eating this week – healthy soups, stir frys and casseroles are now the order of the day.

However, my unblemished record has been a bit tarnished in the last 10 days. Ethical Superstore was nominated in the Emerging Retailer category at the Retail Week Awards. I had to go down for the plush event with 2000 guests in my bow tie and dress suit. Having paid £400 (how can that be justified???) I decided I’d better eat the food and as far as I know the Grosvenor House hotel doesn’t buy its food from us. The event was pretty good fun – Jimmy Carr was very entertaining . . .

Read the rest of Two Weeks to Go »