Description: “A chunky blend of tender pork and beef meatballs, tomatoes, kidney beans and rice.” Yep, except the tomato soup base was deliciously passata-esque in texture.
Health: Heavy on the carbs, but OK protein and good fibre, and a mangeable amount of fat and not too bad on the sodium front. 420 calories in all, for the pot, which is OK.
Taste: Wow. The best of M&S’s soups by a long way, so far. Deliciously thick and tasty, well-seasoned with a good amount of spice, you can feel the cayenne and the cumin giving it a little edge whilst the creamy tomatoes and burger-licious meatballs square off on your taste budes.
Full-o-meter: Not too bad at all. Good amount of fibre in there, and the thickness of the soup will keep you going for a while.
Verdict: 4.5/5. With this soup, M&S, you redeem yourself for some of your previous efforts…
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Posted in Food.
Tagged with Food, marks and spencer, meatball, review, soup, tomato.
By Armand
– February 6, 2010
Description: “Smoked bacon, green lentils, tomato, celery, onion, garlic, organic vegetable bouillon, parsley, basil, oregano and thyme.” Yep – essentially salty chunky tomato and lentil soup with a good amount of bacon in there for additional umami.
Health: 272 cals for the pot, but decent protein, low sat fat, OK fibre. Bad on salt, as you’d expect…
Taste: Moreish; good level of gentle spices, tasty bacon… maybe a little too salty. Pretty well headache inducing, actually.
Full-o-meter: Good. Good lentil/protein kick. Eaten with artisan roll, taking overall calorie count to about 440.
Verdict: 4/5. Oversaltiness lets it down, but would have it again nonetheless.
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Posted in Food.
Tagged with Bacon, Food, lentil, pret, review, soup.
By Armand
– February 2, 2010
Description: “A warmly spiced soup of choi sum, British chicken and coconut with ginger, lemon grass and chilli.” Hells yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.
Health: Erm, not great. 460 calories for the pot, loads of fat and sat fat, quite a bit of sodium. On the plus side, reasonable amount of fibre and protein.
Taste: Awesome! You can smell the lemongrass from across the room even as it microwaves, and whilst the texture seems a little weak on initial pouring it thickens as the soup cools from boiling (the all important “let stand” period). This soup is tasty, well textured, spicy, meaty and full of useful chunks of veg – deliciously soft and tasty choi sum and still-crunchy water chestnut that actually serves a purpose in this context!
Full-o-meter: Good, as you’d expect from a more substantial soup.
Verdict: 4/5. It loses a point for health. Otherwise this soup is outstanding.
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Posted in Food.
Tagged with chicken, Food, review, soup, thai green curry, waitrose.
By Armand
– February 1, 2010
Description: Ham, savoy cabbage and lentils in a crushed tomato soup base with plenty of other root vegetables in there – carrot, swede, celeriac etc. Full tasting notes from the manufacturers are here :-).
Health: 245 calories for the pot, with a pretty good amount of protein, relatively low on the carbs and fat, and a decent score on fibre. A fair amount of salt but not bad by Eat standards! In essence: pretty good! It’s also gluten, wheat and dairy free for people who care about those things, and organic too!
Taste: Impressive meatiness from the ham, great texture from the lentils and cabbage, satisfyingly fresh and crunchy. A really good flavour combination for savoury lovers. Only criticism, and its minor, is that the soup is a little brothy… could use a bit more thickening… but a very minor complaint!
Full-o-meter: Not bad. Whilst a relatively low calorie count and a slightly smaller pot than your typical supermarket soup pot (500 vs 600g) the decent amount of fibre and protein should keep you going.
Verdict: 4.5/5. Will look out for other tasty soups from the YP folk, although they do seem to be focussed on organic veg-only options which I’m not a huge fan of…
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Posted in Food.
Tagged with Food, ham, lentils, organic, review, savoy cabbage, soup, yorkshire provender.
By Armand
– January 28, 2010
I don’t need it. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but I’m confident that all my communications, entertainment and computing needs are currently met, perfectly happily. If anything, I have a surplus of communications and entertainment tools and media. Too many ways to get in touch. Too many ways to watch TV, film, see photos, listen to music, read books, email, call, Skype etc., on the move.
But damnit, I’ll bet that whatever Apple release tomorrow I’ll want. Because smug and self-satisfied as Mr Jobs is, his company is awesome at design and fantastic at getting us to ‘need’ things for no reason other than they’re beautiful and elegant. I’m not a Mac, though… that’s one thing I’ve managed to hold firm to.
Cross posted at Chivalry House.
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Posted in Technology.
Tagged with apple, ipad, islate, itablet, Technology.
By Armand
– January 26, 2010
Description: “A creany soup of tomatoes, minced beef, potatoes & rice.” Hrm, ‘cream’ is slightly misleading as cream isn’t in evidence from a flavour perspective, but the single cream does give a smooth texture to the soup as a whole… I didn’t notice the rice, either, but that’s not a complaint.
Health: 398 calories for the pot, which is OK, but reasonably carb heavy – relatively low protein and fibre – and a decent score for sodium.
Taste: Wow. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this that much, having only barely liked Eat’s Goulash… but this is really nice, bolognaise esque (well, the way I make it – which is tomato intensive), with tasty morsels of beef and good quality tomatoes making up the majority of the flavour with the occasional lump of potato for the occasional dose of bland (not a massive fan of the potato when it hasn’t been fried or roasted).
Full-o-meter: OK. Not great. The texture and consistency fills you up on eating, but I have a feeling the nutritional content will mean it doesn’t last the afternoon.
Verdict: 4/5. It’d get a 4.5 if they had a way to get more fibre and protein in there without substantially upping the calorie score. Good on you, Waitrose.
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Posted in Food.
Tagged with beef, Food, goulash, review, soup, waitrose.
By Armand
– January 26, 2010
If, like me, you have 3-4 browser tabs you like to have open all the time (Gmail, Greader etc), then the Permatab and Faviconize add-ons are for you… unless you use Firefox 3.6, out a couple of days ago, which breaks the former.
A little Googling this morning found me App Tabs, a great alternative. Recommend it.
Whilst I was searching, I also found this info on how to turn on the CTRL-TAB tab preview feature in FF 3.6 – which is pretty awesome.
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Posted in Internet, Software.
Tagged with add-ons, apptabs, faviconize, firefox, firefox 3.6, lifehack, permatab, Software, tab preview.
By Armand
– January 26, 2010
Description: “A hearty and warming soup of carrots, swede, green beans and parsnip with red lentils and pearl barley.”
Health: OK – only 236 calories for the pot so additional sustenance required, but good on all key vital indicators.
Taste: Meh. No interesting spice, no meat for texture – nothing wrong with it for what it is but just totally uninspiring. If they’d swapped out sweet potato or butternut squash for the regular potatoes in there that would have been something.
Full-o-meter: OK. Not great. Too low-cal, not enough protein to really carry you.
Verdict: 2/5. I’m sure it’d rate higher for someone that liked plain vegetable soup, but for me it was a bit dull.
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Posted in Food.
Tagged with chunky vegetable, Food, review, soup, waitrose.
By Armand
– January 24, 2010
Description: “A hearty broth of haricot beans and sautéed Toulouse sausage, finished with vegetables and herbs. GLORIOUS.” Actually, this one is fair enough.
Health: Not bad – 394 calories for the pot, good amount of fibre. Could have more protein…
Taste: Better than the other two MPW’s I’ve tried recently – good texture, flavourful, tomato-based soup, delicious morsels of sausage and the beans are nice too. I know Rick Stein loves a good cassoulet and suspect he’d struggle to recognise this as one, but it is nonetheless good and hearty as a fresh soup pot.
Full-o-meter: Not bad. Better with more meat…
Verdict: 4/5. The first MPW soup properly worthy of the name. Suggest Mr White has a chat with the people at Glorious Foods swiftly…
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Posted in Food.
Tagged with bean, Food, glorious, marco pierre white, review, soup, toulouse sausage.
By Armand
– January 21, 2010
Chris Hasting at The Sunday Times writes about The Infidel and another film, weighing up humour against the risk of causing offence to the Jewish and Muslim communities.
Over at the Independent, Arifa Akbar interviews David Baddiel giving him the opportunity to explain some of what he was trying to achieve with the film:
“I wasn’t interested in writing about Muslims and Jews per se, but I am always interested in tackling subjects that aren’t being tackled, just for the sake of newness,” he told The Independent. “Because people have become terrified of giving offence, religion and race are now rather left out of comedy.
“For me, it becomes fertile ground. It’s very much about race and culture and ethnicity, in a very gloves-off way. But it’s not trying to cause offence: I’m very uninterested in that as a writer.”
Sideways News and The Daily Telegraph talks through similar issues, whilst George Pitcher, The paper’s Religion Editor, calls it “…almost the most important film of the year,” in a blog post.
I’m totally excited. For those who haven’t been keeping up, this is my brother’s latest film, starring Omid Djalili and Richard Schiff, written by David Baddiel. It’s out in April and should be awesome. My review, such as it is, lives here.
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Posted in Film.
Tagged with david baddiel, Film, omid djalili, reviews, richard schiff, the daily telegraph, the independent, the infidel, the sunday times.
By Armand
– January 20, 2010
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