Description: From Eat website: ”Minced beef in a chunky tomato, garlic, oregano, red chilli and fresh basil sauce with Gnocco Sardo pasta. Garnished with Gremolata (Fresh Parsley and Lemon Zest).” No arguments.

Health: 364 calories, for the super-sized edition. Awesome on most counts but ludicrous on salt (3.1g salt, 1.3g of sodium, just over half your daily allowance), not massively high on fibre. Fat and saturated fat levels satisfyingly low for the immense portion.

Taste: Not a vast world away from the old Eat Italian Ragu and Pasta soup, which I liked a lot, but slightly lower on calories and without the nice cheesey top, which is substituted with a satisfying spice from the red chilli and a fresh, zingy crunch from the gremolata – occasionally with a bit too much parsley stalk for my liking. Although I do now know what gremolata is, which is awesome. But it’s pretty much what you’d expect; a zingy, tasty, sweet-but-savoury combo. The pasta shells, as I experienced when I tried to make a variant on this soup at home, do get a bit soggy from the long simmering the soups must get. Not sure it’s as good as rice as a carb staple for soup.

Full-o-meter: Pretty good short term, although imagine the low fibre score will mean the full feeling will wear off sooner rather than later.

Make it yourself?: Totally doable. I’d fry up some onion and chilli in oil, throw in the mince beef to brown, add diced carrots, salt, pepper, oregano, basil and chopped tomatoes, stew for a while before adding veg stock and rice/pasta to taste, and the gremolata stuff. Easy-peasy.

Verdict: 4/5. Recommended, if not inspired like their pot-pie soups, and without the cheesey top its not as moreish IMHO as the old IT&P soup.

Absolutely loving this stage of the season. Slightly concerned that the two apples on our tree will not survive but really hoping they do – they look enormous and delicious – as my judgement of on-tree ripeness is not great. I’m pretty much just wiggling the fruit around and seeing if it drops off the branch of its own accord, and using that as a measure of its desire to be eaten.

As someone removed from Malaysia by nearly two decades, the Singaporeans were a little stunned at my rejection of two things – first, the convenience of house-staff, and second – coping without Malaysian food.

The latter was probably a greater shock to them and, indeed, it’s the bit I struggle with more. I don’t so much reject Malaysian food as have a lack of options for it from my Hampshire home.

For an excellent whistlestop tour of what makes Malaysian food so awesome, I point you at this excellent feature from Serious Eats, based on a trip sponsored by a Malaysian promotional agency.

It doesn’t go into any great deal on the Food of the Gods – Roti Canai – but I understand there will be follow ups. If they don’t pay sufficient attention to Roti, I will know that they have failed to properly investigate Malaysian food.

The calorie counting has restarted in more approximate terms than when I accomplished the first lot of weight loss; I’m not sticking everything in Dailyburn although I’m leaving the tab pinned in Chrome as a fearful reminder on snack time. It’s been more than two weeks since I touched the office biscuit tin and lunchtime soups and salads have resumed.

It has made me once again look at tasty food with a sort of jealous loathing. I hate you, KFC, for being so wrong and delicious, I thought as the waft passed me in Victoria station last night. Curse you, Papa Johns, for the delicious looking flyers you put through my door. And the food blogs I read…. Damn, double and triple damn all the deliciousness you send my way.

I remember, the first time around all of these stood as incentives; as I progressed on my weight loss campaign (on a diet that’s purely calorie counting, you can eat anything – just not very much of it!) – I’d decide I was going to have Papa Johns for dinner and so not eat much of anything else for the rest of the day. But I’d forgotten how difficult it is to be hungry, and faced with temptation.

That said, two weeks in it is getting easier. The habit of having a decaff coffee every time hunger strikes instead of a biscuit; drinking more water, eating more soups and high-fibre foods, the low-fat alternatives…. all are becoming as familiar to me as once they were.

Wish me luck. If I get back within my BMI I will force myself to run the half marathon – but that means losing 7kg in the next two months, so might be a stretch!

The pots, which were targeted at me following my Moma review, are a slightly different portable breakfast proposition. They’re essentially a pot of granola with a separate live yoghurt pot which you shake up and pour over. Whilst it may be a bit wasteful on the packaging front, soggy granola is no granola worth eating, so I’m in favour of the innovation. They are “oatally delicious”, and as you all know, I love a good pun.

Tastewise, I was braced for the sourness of bio-live yoghurt, but the sweetness of the granola and the accompanying fillings (I’ve been sent Belgian chocolate and a variety of berry flavours) totally take the edge of this and leave you with a breakfast that has a satisfying crunch but a good amount of yoghurt goodness too. In short, very yummy. Of the two I’ve tasted so far, Belgian choc is my favourite – large chunks of believably Belgian chocolate – although the strawberry one is pretty delicious too.

Healthwise, there are all sorts of fantastic claims on the Rumblers website:

…are packed full of wholemeal fibre, cholesterol reducing oats and the natural goodness of low-fat probiotic yogurt. With no artificial colours or flavourings and no added salt or vegetable fat, these pots of nutritional goodness not only pack an energy boosting punch but they taste like a little bit of heaven.

By my principle measure – a caloric one – they are better than Moma but still on the high side for a not-that-substantial breakfast bowl – about 280KCal per pot. Given that we’re dealing with granola (oat flakes sugared or honeyed into crunchy clumps) and yoghurt instead of milk, I guess its unsurprising that its a bit more dense in calories than a bigger bowl of cereal. But I’m not entirely convinced that it works to keep you full for quite as long as a couple of Weetabix, for example (although it tastes a damn sight better).

I have struggled to find these pots in shops. You see them every now and then in a service station, but their official retail distribution partners in the UK – Asda and Morissons – don’t have them listed on their websites, so I guess you’d need to find them in store. I have no idea on the RRP – I’m guessing they’ll be around the £2 mark, although I’d be happier paying £1.50 for a pot. (Update: Wow, it’s £1.35 per pot. Awesome value)

In short, recommended if you’re not starving and fancy a sweet, crunchy breakfast on the move. Just make sure you have space to chuck all the spare packaging as you construct your meal.

The strawberry plant gives of itself daily – more sweet tiny strawberries keep materialising. The courgettes are starting to come in thick and fast, although cucumber production seems to have slowed – we might need to add a bit more feed.

I’ve finally got around to bug spraying the plum tree, which seemed to be suffering some kin of minor infestation. Will have to see how it pans out. The two remaining apples on our apple tree are perfectly formed. Quite exciting.

The tomatoes are ripening fast – there seem to be a lot of them. Emily’s slight allergic reactions to both tomatoes and potatoes has taken some of the fun out of these, but Amanda and I will enjoy them!!

The burger is described as a 1/3lb Angus Beef Burger with hickory-smoked bacon, white cheddar, American cheese, steak sauce, Dijon mustard, grilled onions.

The blogger adds:

I also got a kick out of the placemat advertisement for it, which gives a one-paragraph description of the burger including popular English buzz words like “fancy”, “smashing”, and “gobsmacked.” For the average McDonald’s customer, who may not be cultured enough to know these terms, McDonald’s provides a handy glossary at the bottom of the placemat

The whole thing reminds me of that episode of Friends where Ross puts on a fake British accent to cope with his nervousness with teaching a new class. It’s a slightly ludicrous interpretation of Britishness, both from a gustatory (I had to look this one up, does it make sense?) and linguistic perspective.

"Angus" burger suggests Scottish to me, "hickory-smoked" bacon sounds American ("thick-cut back bacon" might be more British), steak sauce is a straight out mystery – try relish or mayo, or if you’re going for a gastropub, hit up the aioli. White cheddar – ok, but American cheese? Seriously, the clue’s in the name on that one, guys. Also with the Dijon mustard – a little Francais in there, but English mustard might have more kick than you’d like, and grilled onions – maybe. I think the English would prefer a sweet, crisp slice of red onion.

There you go, McDs – I’ve just refined your "English pub burger". You want your 1/3rd lb British beef burger to be topped with thick-cut back bacon, white cheddar, relish and aioli, a dab of English mustard and a slice of crisp red onion. And a slightly limp lettuce leaf, probably, if we’re going for something resembling authenticity. I’m not sure I can be bothered to help you with the marketing because the laughably cheesey interpretations of "British English" will probably work on the ignorant and amuse the informed. So it might actually work.

I’ll take my payment in breakfast.

Armand David: Britishness consultant to American mega-corporates.

Absolute, blind luck.

Surely no kind of measured, quantitative testing can make sense for baby foods? The little monkeys seem to have arbitrary and fast-changing standards by which the enjoyment of any given flavour is gauged. Heaven one day can be hell the next.

I suspect that somewhere, there’s a random flavour generator adding odd combinations of protein, carb and veg together in the hope that small people will find those pots of blended mush tasty….

Weber family, complete with pig

In Denmark, in addition to banning marmite (!!!), they seem to be pretty passionate about barbecuing – at least as far as Amanda’s family is a benchmark.

However, there – as in here – the hugely convenient gas barbeque is looked on as something of a second class citizen. An important part of the BBQ-ing game, to be sure, but definitely not the preference if time and weather allows.

And so when they want to ‘grill’ proper, they get out the charcoal Weber – the kettle BBQ’s so popular there (and here) practically synonymous with excellence in barbecuing. And after three years with a gas Weber, I finally bit the bullet and got a proper kettle one.

It gets trialled soon, weather permitting. My little Weber family is growing.

So I looked into it.

By my estimations – natural sugars or otherwise – there is the equivalent of a can of coke’s sugar in the same volume of strawberry and banana smoothie – around 8 teaspoons. Of course the smoothie bottle is marginally smaller than a coke can – but it’s still pretty high! Innocent describes this as:

The amount of sugars in a 250ml serving of our smoothies averages at 29g or a third of your daily requirement. Or, put more simply, the same amount of sugars that you’d find in a banana and another portion of fruit (which makes sense, as smoothies are two of your 5-a-day portions).

Which makes it sound much better, but this is one of those things we in the trade call ‘positioning’. Not sure it helps that much here, or if there’s anything they can do about it given that they pulp fruit straight into the bottle (apparently).

So chalk this one up to one of those occasions when Damo is bang on about something, and take a care when next you hit up Innocent for a smoothie. Those things are sugar-tastic, and probably not great for diabetics.

It struck me that online delivery services free you from the supermarket lottery of life. Whilst proximity to good groceries was an important factor in us choosing our home, we weren’t specific about the grocer, and as it happens we’re in a Tesco catchment area – the nearest Waitrose is 15 miles away, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s about twice the distance of the local Tesco. This means you get accustomed to a certain level of mediocrity from your shopping after a while, and you get constrained by the choices Tesco imposes on you. One massive bonus of the village we’re in is we have two local butchers, so at least for meat we have some extra choice… and of course our garden will hopefully soon provide some veg.

That said, the delivery charges on Ocado are steep and we’re not sure yet if we’re going to set up a recurring shop (which gives you free delivery) as there is a certain joy and satisfaction in actually going to a shop and getting inspiration for meals that way. OK, it’s not Rick Stein wandering through the markets of a Mediterranean town, but it’s less sterile than hitting a virtual checkout…

* is this how the kids are talking these days? I’m getting old.

Using a sourdough starter, a set of instructions guided Amanda through the process of making a very tasty sourdough fruitcake. And given that Herman is based on a ‘live’ mix, it is designed to be expanded and shared. It was, however, as you’ll see from the recipe, a considerable amount of work for Amanda, so she was a little reticent about spreading its offspring…

It however, was delicious, and is a crazy way of spreading baked goodness amongst your friends, if you happen to know some passionate bakers… According to Lucy it’s good with apple and cinammon and a thing to be expected in the Home Counties.

I’m wondering if my baking colleague at caketakesthebiscuit has experienced this one…

I read a lot of American food blogs – as you may have gathered from my Kenji tribute. But one of the things that grates slightly is the fact that we have slightly different vocabularies for a number of common (and some not-so-common) cooking ingredients. I asked my friends on Twitter and Facebook to help me come up with some key points of contention and here’s what everyone came up with…

• American – British
• Cilantro – coriander
• Rutabaga – swede – wtf???
• ‘erbs – herbs
• frosting – icing
• Zucchini – courgette
• Maize – corn
• Eggplant – aubergine
• Soda – soft drinks
• Tomayto – tomato
• Chips – crisps
• Fries – chips
• Jelly – jam
• Jello – jelly
• Baysil – basil
• Arugala – rocket (seriously wtf?)
• Scallions – spring onions
• Baking soda – baking powder

Contentious

• Noodles – Pasta (I thought they just called it paaaasta)
• Entree – main course (Isn’t this a French thing?)
• Corned beef – salt beef (I thought American corned beef was tinned, processed beef hash)

Can anyone clarify?

and also…

• Budweiser – beer (not sure these are synonymous)
• Potato – potato
• American cheese – wtf? (via @qwghlm, I actually think there’s a time and a place for American cheese)

Thanks to friends on Facebook – Farrah, Mary, Kate, Caroline, Lucy, James, Graham and on Twitter – qwghlm, AndreLabadie, jogblog and gateauchateau for the suggestions.

Any more for any more? I think we have the Spanish influence to thank for some of these (cilantro I think is Spanish for coriander, for example) but absolutely no idea where some of the others come from and my curiousity doesn’t extend far enough to investigate.

It’s amazing how much difference a few short centuries can make to linguistic divergence. In another few months, we probably won’t understand anything the Americans say!

In a side note, that’s the single most successful crowdsourcing request I’ve ever made. I guess you have to ask the right questions for your network!

The posts that inspired this one were two fold; first, Kenji’s efforts at improving the Big Mac – genius! The scientific method here – rather than the letter of the process that our friends Messrs Blumenthal and Myrhvold espouse, provides a wonderful, iterative, Macgyvery feel to the way he reverse engineers a food classic.

Secondly – Pizzagna. So wrong, and yet so right. Almost something that should appear on Epic Meal Time – but because it comes from Kenji I actually kind of want to eat it.

Be assured, however, the majority of his posts are on more everyday helpful things, including avocado knife skills and general basic cooking principles, so he’s a resource for the world, not just fast food aficionados.

Anyway, if you’re interested in food you should follow Kenji’s work across the Serious Eats blogs. Despite the moderately US-centric nature of it, a lot of the content is fascinating and useful wherever you are – and he seems a pretty global-outlook-kind-of-guy, so there’s some International content too.

Coming soon: a dictionary to help interpret American food names for Brits. And vice-versa.

Crowdsourced and 100% delicious.