Category: Delicious

Avatar Pump up the jam (in your face)

Do you like jams?

Do you like plums?

Do you like plummy jams? Then we’ve got the product for you!

‘KEV’S PLUM PRESERVE’ is a brand new treat that you and your family can enjoy all day, every day. We’ve taken the sweet, tempting taste of jam and slathered that (using a spoon) all over the best kind of fruit you can imagine, plums!

Spread it on parsnips, spread it on shepherd’s pie. Spread it on Bird’s Eye Potato Waffles, frozen pineapple chunks or a spicy and fragrant Nepalese Kukhurko Masu curry. You can even spread it on your hands.

Put a party on your tastebuds. Slam your plums on the table. Bring your miserable life to life with ‘KEV’S PLUM PRESERVE’!

(From Kev Inc., a subsidiary of Kevindo Menendez Food Conglomerate Holdings Plc).

Avatar Kick out the jam (into your mouth)

Do you like plums?

Do you like jam?

Do you like jammy plums? Then we’ve got the product for you!

‘Kev’s Plums’ is a brand new treat that you and your family can enjoy all day, every day. We’ve taken the rich, tangy taste of plums and mapped that (using a computer) into the best kind of food you could ever have; jam!

Spread it on apples, spread it on potatoes, sponges, pizza and ice cream. You can even spread it on toast.

‘Kev’s Plums’ contains half the sugar you’d expect from other inferior james but with twice the taste. Experts agree with an overwhelming 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and 8.9 score on IMDB.

Bring life back to the party. Bring your life to life with ‘Kev’s Plums’!

(From Kev Inc., a subsiduary of the Kevindo Menendez food dynasty).

Avatar Clompotition time

Gather round, gather round everyone. It’s time for a fun competition that we can all take part in. Grab your friends, grab your relatives, even grab your doggo! Come one and all to start the new year the right way.

The right way being… over two weeks after it’s already started. Yes, I’m finally awake again and can form sentences that moderately make sense some of the time (and that’s all you can hope for when you’re me).

When I was at me mum’s house over Christmas, she had started the usual clear out of cupboards and tidying but sadly more pressing matters got in the way. She has a habit of forgetting about and then not using things before their sell-by date. These then get pushed near the back of the cupboard and are usually removed around December. Occasionally things get pushed to the very VERY back and are lost to time and space. How big are these cupboards? Not very, although you’d think they were the size of the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford when we move to the next part.

I fished out a couple of food items that were well past their best. Using state-of-the-art technology, I have removed the date and it’s up to YOU to guess when it expired. You get one point for the month and one point for the year. If you get both right you’ll receive a bonus point meaning there are three points up for grab each time. There are four games to play over the next four months and with minimal participation (for some of us, wink wink) you could win a superb prize (to be chosen at a later date, and not an imaginary prize like those jelly babies Christopher was jabbering about some months back).

First up – Mint and dark chocolate fondant thins from Sainsburgers. Choose your month and year, gentlemen.

Avatar The Shoe and the Bin

Welcome to the Shoe and the Bin, Carnforth’s leading example of prime pub bistro patisserie and winner of four ‘Confusing pub but great grub’ awards since 2015.

We pride ourselves on the concoction of food available from our three leading chefs participating in everything from Chinese to Thai to Brazilian and traditional English fare. If you’re after something in particular we can guarantee that we will have cooked it at least once in our 35 years of trading.

With the Christmas period approaching, it would be best to book a table now, even if you don’t need it. We get fully booked within a few hours of December and we would hate for you to miss out on all the fun. Chef Boswick is cooking up a storm with his mango and hazelnut chutney stuffing balls and chef Annalise can’t wait for you to try her steaming mincemeat gravy cake trays.

This is but a small sample menu of the delights that you can expect to see over the festive period, subject to availability and whether or not we can be bothered to dust off the extra kitchen equipment required to make it.

December Menu

Starters

  • Home cured tin roof salmon, horseradish cauliflower umbrellas, picked Gorbachev, snout oil (GF)
  • Mixed balcony terrine, feta mousse sharks, disgusting leek with a fresh jus (V, GF?)
  • Smoked bollok baraccas, sauce uncommon gribble, apple underarm spin, sourdough shat (DF)
  • Cajun pork snubbles, caramelised orange dandruff, picked mooli, fractured booli (GF, possibly DF)
  • Singing mackerel herblets, bromance potato salad, “laughing” croutons, citrus gel, Tale of Two Cities
  • Seasonal salad, seasonal purée, seasonable backwash, seasonal roasted barley with a seasonal fresh jus (VG, yes, very good)

Mains

  • Acrid cod, saffron undercarriage, stained broccoli, split butter opera fund (GF…)
  • Hasty beef feather blade, caramelised fondant jacket, mash ‘n’ a half, wander carrot, criminal leek, red wine jus (GF?)
  • Ravished sea bream, blimey purée, dilapidated Jersey royals, curious tenderstem with nutty forecast fennel slaw
  • Tempura eagle tofu, distinct absence of potato, pak choi, pineapple choi, Chris Choi, waffle and spring onion salsa
  • “Bing Bling” chicken breast, telephone purée, hot potato mingers, creamed dialect, with a fresh jus (GF!)
  • Paranoid risotto, herb space, toucan cheese (V)

Desserts

  • Unruly salted caramel chocolate and leisure centre tart, mango flange
  • Brigadier red wine poached pear, flaked docile crumb, arresting cream, taxi home (GF)
  • Angry lemon posset, chuckle crumbles, raspberry mullet
  • Mincemeat gravy cake tray, meringue parapets, upskill crust, shot of Pepto-Bismol
  • Chocolate mousse, tear-stained cinnamon dome, passionfruit bookmark with a banana bichon frise sauce
  • Vanilla crème brûlée, black olive amaretto, with a daunting fresh jus (GF)

The Shoe and the Bin: come for the food, stay for the food.

Avatar Greasy spoon restaurant review

This weekend, we decided to finally visit Café Zeynep, five minutes away from home, that has been open for a year without us even looking inside. It’s the latest creation from daring café owner Zeynep, who has been frying pork products and cooking eggs five different ways for twenty years in other nearby parts of Hampshire; now her extraordinary vision has been set free in this bold new cafeteria experience. From the moment we stepped inside, the all-Turkish staff and fully brown leather furniture set the perfect tone for a memorable fry-up.

Since it was breakfast time, we both opted for breakfast. I chose Zeynep’s Big Breakfast, while my partner went for the Mediterranean Breakfast. The Big Breakfast had local butcher’s sausages infused with well-seasoned porky notes that elevated each bite. The hash browns had real crunch while the egg yolks were runny. It was clear that the chef had taken care to source high-quality beans. My partner’s fried halloumi was perfectly cooked, a delightful contrast to the spicy Turkish sausage. The accompanying toast added a refreshing crunch that brightened the dish.

To drink, I selected the White Americano, while my partner indulged in the Mars milkshake. The coffee was a revelation — smooth and well-rounded, it was served in a mug of plain brown ceramic and garnished with semi-skimmed milk. The flavours melded beautifully, with bitter Arabica bringing out the sweetness of the thick-cut bacon as I swilled down my fried feast. My partner’s shake was equally impressive, sweet but not overpowering; we suspect the Snickers milkshake would offer a more rounded palate.

Throughout our meal, the service was attentive without being intrusive. Our server was knowledgeable about the menu and offered great recommendations for wine pairings, which we ignored because we were having breakfast.

Overall, Café Zeynep exceeded our expectations. The atmosphere, impeccable service, and feeling of extraordinary fullness stayed with us for the rest of the day. It’s basically next door and we’ve never been. We are idiots for not trying it sooner. Next time I’m going to have a go on their brunch menu.

★★★★☆

Avatar The jelly baby quiz

Would you like to win a massive prize? Of course you would.

And would you still like to win that massive prize if it was actually not very massive and was just a fairly large pack of jelly babies? Well, yes, obviously; if anything that would be even better. Everyone likes jelly babies. You are now, understandably, physically clawing at the screen in an attempt to take part. Don’t worry. I will explain how it works.

How it works

The prize is a fairly large pack of jelly babies. The winner gets not just the jelly babies but also the opportunity to specify the brand. Are you a Bassetts fan or a Haribo acolyte? All tastes are catered for here. To win it, you just need to achieve the highest score in the jelly baby quiz, which is a quiz about jelly and babies.

Good luck! It’s time for the questions.

The questions

  1. Jelly is made using which animal product?
  2. Babies are born without which bones?
  3. In a classic red-yellow-green multicoloured jelly scenario, what flavour is the green one?
  4. To the nearest 400, how many babies were born in the UK in 2023?
  5. Which is the correct part of a jelly baby to eat first?

Get your answers in now. One of you lucky entrants will win this not-very-massive massive prize.

Good luck again! And now, in addition, good bye.

Avatar Bit of a fail

I had big plans, huge plans. These plans were colossal and they were monstrous.

If you tried to eat them then you’d either break your jaw trying to fit them in your mouth or you’d have to stop maybe halfway through because you couldn’t have anymore, you were stuffed to the max. They were gigantic.

My marvellous post will have to wait for another time. Until then, feast your eyes on this quiche that my brother served us the last time we were in Leeds. He kept bigging it up (no pun intended), saying how epic it was, how it dwarfed a regular sized quiche and…

Well, it is slightly larger than your average quiche and that’s about it. When you compare it to the Duplo brick though it looks humongous.