Honey I Love Your Buns (Gorgeous Cakes from Dorset)

Yesterday we covered a product which I thought had a great start (Juice Republic) and then fell short when it came to execution – especially with it’s on-line presence.

Today, we’ll examine the opposite.  Honeybuns were sweet little cakes/brownies sold in a small tin like one would carry for lunch: 

Honeybuns, Gorgeous Cakes from Dorset

The website is not all polish – no flash, some clip art, but it’s functional, lets us know where we might look to find the product and offers sales on-line.  It is not polished but rather charming, and more importantly, consistent with the brand message.  I feel like I know the product better after visiting – Juice Republic made me questions their brand (I’ll still try the juice though!).

 I love them and want to cheer them on – I just don’t eat a lot of cake…

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Juice Republic – It’s a Cold World War in the Fridge

Day 13 of being in the UK – 5 hours of sleep lie ahead before 5-6 hours of work and by 12 noon I’ll be in a car on the way to the airport for a 3.30PM flight.  It’s been a rewarding and challenging trip all at once.  I haven’t had nearly the amount of time or ability to explore as I intended or desired and much of the time not working has been in the hotel room.  It has been a great trip and I’ll have some items to share on my return – not nearly as many a I wished.

Today’s highlight (and low light, explained below) is Juice Republic.  I found this at Heathrow and adore the logo.  A cold war-influenced star on each product that is created by a different piece of citrus, such as the lime below:

Notice the cans of San Pellegrino with foil to keep the drinking surface clean - almost worthy of a separate post!

 I love that they have a manifesto– or at least the idea of it.  I don’t think they quite went far enough with the copy but the principle behind reinventing the fruit juice industry, insisting on fresh and refusing additives is fantastic.  The execution of the statement and the overall website that is slow, sterile and partially executed (an incomplete link section that links only back to itself, copy that appears to be written with haste and a real lack of substance) actually takes away from my love of what I saw on the shelf.  For a company that launched with such intent, good design, aggressive offering of 23 products and radical vision – the website leaves one with the feeling of a stale corporate owner claiming to be a little brother – or simply a well-intended start-up that either lost the importance of delivering it’s clear message or ran out of focus/resources to accomplish it.

Love the product, find the message lacking.

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YELLOW TREEHOUSE

In Newzealand, Yellow (pages) sponsored a project to design and build a Treehouse Restaurant. They hired a TV presenter/project manager. Her job was to find all the people she needed to build and promote the restaurant using Yellow Mobile. The team included: land surveyers, wineries, branding consultants, electricians, builders, wood suppliers, scaffolding, caterers…etc. etc. A very cool promotion, also interesting to see the process and people involved to create a unique idea.check out the site: http://www.yellowtreehouse.co.nz

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Why Are Thin People Not Fat? I love the BBC

Ahhhh, the British.  I love them.  I thought they took the cake on weight loss shows when they came out with the bizarre concept called, Fat Teens Can’t Hunt.  I couldn’t make this up if I tried.

Why are Thin People Not Fat?  I thought it was because they are less calories or perhaps were more active.  Maybe they were allergic to poutine (I, most certainly, am not).  The concept is just as it seems – 10 people have 30 days to consume as much as they possibly can to get as fat as they can and see what we learn.  There are limits – it is declared that gaining more than 15% would simply be unethical.

It is eerily chilly as they refer to this as an overeating experiment and create rules such as insisting they restrict their walking to less than 5,000 steps.  I suppose it’s not that far off Supersize Me and there may be some validity here and we learn that this type of thing has been going on quietly for years.  A study conducted in a Vermont State Prison offered an incentive of an early release to those who willingly gained 25% of their body weight in a controlled experiment.  Several were not able to, leading to a theory (that is very, very disputed) that we all have a natural weight that we can exhibit limited control over. 

They also start to claim that obesity could be an infection/virus that can be spread.  It becomes similar to a Michael Moore flick – you hope it’s not true, you feel like they are trying too hard to sell you, you doubt yourself for even considering the possibility but recognize it might just be true.  A single Doctor claiming he has proven this by studying 1,000 obese people is not necessarily a strong pool (i.e. where’s the proof that the thin people don’t have it) – but I clearly have not idea what is a scientific proof.  When he claims that being near fat people could give you the disease for only 3 months and people indeed get obese for other reasons…well my eyebrow started to raise.

Further bad news?  Chocolate is a great way to gain weight – you can eat a giant amount of calories without feeling full.  I think cheese might be related to chocolate for me…

At the heart of the concept is a fascinating study and some possible discouraging news in understanding we might have less control than others over our weight (the Law of Thermodynamics).  Don’t dispair – ultimately this is saying it may be more difficult for some of us to lose weight than others – you can choose that as validation for your state (and mine) or accept that life is not fair and we have certain odds stacked against them. 

The disadvantage of the skinny is that they have a very difficult time eating things they don’t need.  In other words, they could have the most wonderful bite of a lovely thing and get stuck – want more but feel not able to consume.  Like people trying to lose weight, they can force themselves to eat more but the effort is conscious and uncomfortable.

I suppose we all have our own challenges – I really think I’d struggle with keeping weight off and anjoying more when I find a great thing than the inverse.

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Southern Alps – Beautiful Packaging

Awesome packaging and cool product – Southern Alps slow dried fruit was a wonderful discovery inside Heathrow Airport. 

The product is all natural, ethical, beautiful and lacks added sugar/ preservatives.  Fruit dried the way our forefathers (and mums) would have done it.

Their website made it a little difficult to find their products (the fruit on the right is a meny) – for direct access to their products (and more of this packaging), click here.  Check out this company, they look fabulous to me!

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Cadbury UK

I am sure Dana will post on the virtues of Cadbury in the UK compared to what we receive in North America.  Good Chocolate is a passion of hers – I love a bit in my chili!

Cadbury has a series of commericals that I’ve seen on my visit to the UK that have to be seen to be believed:

They claim to be part of A Glass and a Half Productions.  Check them out – and the website.  I love it!

******

(from Dana). I had to add to this post. These spots are fantastic, they hold your attention all the way through wondering what the heck they are advertising…and when they finally reveal it, you realize you’ve known all along. Talk about an “ah-ha!” moment, and a great example of the power of having a strong colour associated with your brand. Purple has long been associated with royalty and nobility, initially because purple dyes were so expensive that only the ‘upper class’ elites could afford anything of that colour, so it’s fitting that a chocolate endorsed by the queen herself (more on that later) has appointed the regal colour to it’s brand. I love how they’ve used it in the airport vehicle spot, subtly but consistently throughout…underlighting! haha. The spots are also a great example of having a broad, all encompassing tagline. “A glass and a half of Joy” can apply to any number of things…drumming gorillas, odd eybrow breakdancing tweens and airport vehicle drag racing….but the tagline and the colour are the thread holding it all together. 

now i’m craving chocolate, thanx.

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Rabbie Burns Day!!! Haggis and Scotland on a Sunday

Sunday was my only day off during this 12 day trip to the UK – I’m scheduled 10-12 hours per day and it’s a fairly busy trip.  I woke up early and lazed about until noon when my associate, pal and host brought me out for a tour.

A typical Scottish winters day – cool, rainy, damp followed by sun and back again.  The straight cold of home is frigid but less chilling if that makes any sense.  It was raining at first and Kenny brought me to a place that he is very passionate about: the Glasgow Museum of Transport.  It was fascinating (including a sample of what looked like a trolley/streetcar that was actually pulled by horses).  There were a few food-related items, including a truck from Robert Wiseman Dairies which is one of the oldest dairies in Great Britain.  The truck had some wonderful hand-lettering that I paused to admire:

From there we were off to beautiful Loch Lomond and the Duck Bay Marina for lunch:

I had asked Kenny to go for lunch and wanted Haggis as it was Rabbie Burns day (today would have been his 250th birthday).  At home we spell it Robbie – they spell and say it with a heavy A as opposed to our version.  I’m changing my pronunciation from now on!

My first experience with Haggis was in Edinburgh with Dana.  We went to a small (“wee”) restaurant that was also a butcher shop.  This family restaurant had been in the same family for 3 generations.  We ordered it to share as an appetizer, scared of all this talk of heart, lung and other organs cooked inside the stomach of a sheep.  Ugh.  We thought we’d try – the whole “when in Rome…” thing.

Our biggest disappointment was that we hadn’t ordered it as a main.  It was fabulous!  A Haggis dinner is so close to what I grew up as Sheppard’s Pie that I’m not sure I’d know the difference after enough beer.  The scariest thing is the description – a proper Haggis Dinner with Neeps and Tatties (mashed turnip and mashed potato) is a very easy-eating dish.  I believe that even those with conservative tastes would enjoy this meal if they didn’t know the contents.  The tastes are anything but offensive and the entire dish is usually accompanied with a lovely gravy.  Here’s my lunch from today:

This was a lovely restaurant, overlooking a fantastic Loch and great service.  The Guinness was a nice touch and the company was great.  My only disappointment?  Kenny confirmed that Loch Ness is really just for tourists and no one (well, no one sensible) actually believes it could exist.

Burns day celebrations continue through town – television shows highlighting local talent, folk music and stories, dinners and festivities abound.  It’s not as rowdy (so far) as we turn St Patrick’s day into – more similar to Canada Day; a day where this country is even more proud than it typically is to simply be itself.  I am thrilled I was here to see it!

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How to make your own Jam – Step-By-Step Case Study (Step 4)

Many visitors to WellPreserved start by looking for how to make jam.  Clicking on the Preserving tab will lead you to some quick articles on this topic as well as further articles in this case study.

Time to fill the jars and seal!  Your jam is hot, jars are boiling away in hot water, seals and rings are mulling in hot water (it shouldn’t be boiling – you only needed to boil it for a minute), you have the pressure cooker boiling with a few inches of water (2 or 3 will do), you have some clean counter space, your tongs are out and food funnel clean.  Let’s go!

Your jam will likely have a bit of foam on the top from the cooking process – skim this off before jarring.  It’s easy to separate it from the rest – I scoop it in to a bowl that I clean immediately.  Cleaning as you go is a big help when making jam – cleaning cold jam is kind of like chipping dried concrete splatters off a new car – it’s a lot of work and just not fun.

I remove a few jars at a time from the water.  Use care not to touch the lip of the jar and empty as much water as you can.  Place empty jars on your cooling rack and place the funnel in the top.  Fill the jar leaving about 3/4 of a cm headspace (a third of an inch of air) at the top.  The funnel makes this so much easier and practically eliminates the need of cleaning the rims (a must if you spill jam on them as this can interfere with the seal).

Use care not to crowd your surface – a lot of jars mean that you are more likely to drip jam on other jars and have to clean more rims – not the end of the world but it’s a pain.

Once you have the hot jam in hot jars, remove seals from their hot water bath and place on the jars.  Take care not to touch the seal – it wont ruin it but doesn’t help.  I have a special technique that I use for placing seals in the water.  These lids have two separate sides – the “outside” which is where many will place their label and the “inside” which has the physical seal and sterile liner that will face the jam.  Place them in a pile with alternating sides contacting the next seal (top to bottom to top to bottom etc).  This will save frustration – failure to do so will result in the odd seal temporarily getting stuck to another through suction caused by small amounts of water between the two.  If you forget, you may need to use your hands to separate and immerse in the water again.

Place the lids on the jars, turn the rings hand tight.  You may need oven mitts for this as it can be awfully hot.  By the time I’ve done 5 or 6 batches of jam I’ve usually par boiled my hands enough for the rest of jarring season that I can do this comfortably without the use of gloves.

Place all of your sealed jars back in to the pressure cooker.  As mentioned previously, a rack on the bottom is important to help avoid broken jars and a sticky mess.  Place your jars in the pressure cooker, seal with the lid and bring to a boil.  Let the pressure cooker boil for 10 minutes with the lid on before adding a 10-pound regulator for 10 minutes and you are complete.  Release pressure, wait patiently and the lid will be able to open in 15-20 minutes.

Place your sealed jars on cooling racks.  The racks are very important – failure to use racks can result in further breakage – dangerous and messy!  The racks allow any excess water from the jars to drip below as opposed to pooling around your hot jars.  The water will cool faster than the jars and as this happens the possibility of breakage increases – hot glass with cool liquid can create shock.

The jars will cool – 6 to 12 hours is often needed.  During this time you should hear some lovely pops – this is the jars sealing and is one of the best sounds in the world.  You should check the seals once cool – undo the rings and ensure they don’t fall off.  Many will store the jars with the seals removed.  I have to use a bottle opener to open many of my jars because the seals are that tight (I use it just to pry the seal off).  Unsealed jam should be stored in the fridge.

Your jam may still appear to be liquid – don’t panic (I often do!).  It can take several days to complete the final set.

Many people don’t use a pressure cooker to seal jam.  They simply boil the jars in a hot water bath.  I am not a scientist – I have read and researched a lot and while I will eat jam that hasn’t been made with a pressure cooker, I insist it’s very important to use the pressure cooker method.  The sealing process essentially pulls the air out of your jars – boiling water does not get how enough to do this consistently.  I’ll add more posts about this (and the science behind it) in the future.

For quick access to all of the artciles in this case study, click the link to the preserving tab above or click here.

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Saturday Night Laughter (and not); Glasgow

Had a lovely evening last night (damn, starting to speak like them).    This is a short post because it is very loosely tied to our focus here – food and drink.

I got taken out by a colleague and friend named Martin.  He took me to a comedy club named The Stand.  I was somewhat nervous – comedy is so often based in cultural subtleties and colloquialisms that it can leave an outside behind.  At home there’s comedy based on Hockey, Toronto being uptight, the west coast being high, people drinking beer, “rednecks” and so forth.  An outsider can be left behind very quickly.

I was surprised by how passionate people are here about their stand up. I spoke to many people through the day about it and they were naming off comedians like we go through hockey players.

I understand there are two places to see it – a fancy place that is part of a chain and this one which is more the hole-in-wall variety.  It’s a small place and designed for drinking.  Half the crowd gets seats and the rest of us didn’t.  For those who stand, the wall has a small shelf that people line their drinks up on.  You are asked not to speak and the bar closes during the comedy.  As Dana and I observed 2 years ago, it’s truly amazing that Scottish People (and particularly women) can carry 4-5 drinks at a time without a tray.  I am not speaking of the staff – it seems like every patron has such talent!

The comedy was very accessible – I understood about 80% of it.  Many of the jokes would have worked at home – jokes about the Scotts liking to drink beer, about the evil big city Edinburgh, the hicks in Fife – remove the Scottish town names and insert ones from Canada and you’d be off to the races.

One of the 4 comedians came out really flat.  He came out with a short pink mohawk, covered in tattoos – kind of looked like the stereotype of the British Hooligan hanging around a football match.  His jokes about tattoos, being a non-racist skin head, living a hardcore life and now growing older and slower were very funny to me – however most of the audience did  not understand them.  He was from England – apparently comedy is generational as much as it is regional.

A great night, good fun and lots of beer consumed.  More about that and an in intriguing beer story coming soon!

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Friday night in Glasgow

A quick post before heading to work this morning (after just writing a considerably long one for the ongoing series in making your own jam).

I have learned that, especially on weekends, good food in Scotland often requires a reservation.  Without a reservation you will be limiting your options significantly.  I did not have reservations.

I started by heading to the West End and a very popular cobblestone street named Ashton Lane.  It’s a small, romantic street with about 10 or 12 restaurants and pubs.  It can’t be much more and 100-200 feet in length and is a pedestrian only area.  It was crawling with people.  It was too busy for a single bloke without a reservation though I tried to get in a few places.  I almost waited 90 minutes to get into Ashoka– an Indian restaurant featuring haggis pakoras!

I had difficulty finding a place that would take me that didn’t cook everything with a deep fryer.  I do love my fried food; tonight wasn’t the nigh.

I settled on an Australian owned restaurant named North of Bondi – it offered a fusion of Australian and Asian food.  The decor is fabulous and the building has a whole charm unto itself.  Staff was super friendly and I was impressed with my first impressions.

I started with an order of shrimp chips which I wished were lighter as opposed to dense – however I ate an entire small steamer of them so my overall impression was not overly negative.  From there I moved to dumplings and was pleasantly surprised that they appeared to be made by hand with fresh ingredients.  They were light, tasty and fabulous.  From there I moved to a red curry with beef and found it contained peas and a flat bread much closer to a roti wrap than what I would have associated as Naan.  It was warm, hearty and full flavoured.  In short, a real quality meal that showed an authenticity to ingredients and a confidence of innovation.  It was enjoyable.

My waiter turned out to be the owner and the usual chef.  Helluva nice guy and he sent me on my merry way with a few recommendations for pubs.

He sent me to Cottiers– and old converted church which is now a drinking hole.  It’s in the middle of a quiet neighborhood and appears to have an unbelievable patio for the summer time.  It was like stepping back into time and was a great place to have a Guinness.

From there it was time to come home, head to bed and now it’s off to work!

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