It’s been a good week for ... food
The BBC whipped up a storm when it decided to remove more than 11,000 recipes from its website as part of a plan to cut £15 million from its online budget.
While BBC Food is to go, the commercial site, BBC Good Food, will continue. But recipes on the BBC Food website won't be searchable, making them hard to find. Cue online petition with more than 125,000 people signing up to save the recipe archive.
This seems a peculiarly 21st-century predicament. While it’s nice to browse online recipes, getting your smartphone spattered in red wine reduction or your iPad dusted with flour isn’t quite the same as having the pages of your favourite cookery book infused with hints of memorable meals past.
I always know where to look for my favourite chutney recipe because it’s on the pages of an old Good Housekeeping book that are welded together by molten sugar. This prompts me to reach for this care-worn volume from the Library Of Cooking range. Entitled Jams, Preserves And Homemade Sweets, it boasts a “supplement on home freezing”.
Inside is the message: “With thanks, Bessie, 3.8.70.” The book was a gift to my mother who has in turn passed it to me. Bessie is long since gone, but I have no problem searching the archive she has left behind.
It’s been a bad week for ... food
Bessie will be spinning in her grave. According to a study published in the British Medical Journal, eating four or more servings of baked, boiled or mashed potatoes increases the risk of high blood pressure in women.
The Boston-based also found that men and women who ate four or more servings a week of chips had a 17 per cent higher risk of high blood pressure. Strangely, the study found that eating crisps had no effect.
It seems no food is safe from these studies, and it’s tempting to take them with a pinch of salt (except, em, that’s bad for you too). How could such a long-standing staple as the tattie, which has fed generations, be bad for you?
I consult Bessie’s book for a recipe which might offer a safer alternative for spud consumption. Page 186. Potato wine. I wonder what that does to your blood pressure?
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