Edible/Usable

English Food

 

I just came back from a week-long trip to England to visit friends.  I spent a few days in Brighton and Hove, then went up to London for the rest of the trip.  England has always gotten a bad rap for having bad food.  But I personally think that British food can be great.  Baked beans, fish and chips, sticky toffee pudding, while not exactly healthy, if made with quality ingredients are all delicious.   I actually think the quality of the milk, meat and cheese there is much better than what you normally find here in the states.  Maybe it’s because statistically they still have more farms than we do in the states (67.8% of all land is farmland in the UK vs. 40.1% in the US.)  And they have adopted organic farming more than farmers in the states have (UK has 4.39% of farmland organic, the US only .22%).  And ‘local’ in the UK is much easier to achieve there since as a smaller country.  Food has to travel less to get to a destination.

Two other things about British food that I found better than in the US:

1. Several of their big grocery chains have really good prepared food.  Tesco, Sainsburys and Marks & Spencer all have their own lines of prepared, refrigerated food.  The stuff I had – Indian Curry and pasta and sauces were excellent.  (It’s already seeming like prepared food is going to be a theme on this blog…)

2.  Labeling.  Though it isn’t consistent across brands, products or stores, in general I found the nutrition labeling to be much more informative and easier to understand.  Use of icons, pie charts and colored indicators help explain nutrition values in much simpler terms than the simple black & white Nutrition Data lable that you find in the states (how often do you see people - especially older people - in grocery isles digging around for their reading glasses just to read a food lable?).  If they could find the best and most informative labeling system, and make it standard, it would be even better.

 And there is a third:  Crisps.  The ubiquitous Walker’s crisps have come up with a contest for the best new flavor (or flavour if you prefer):  My favorite?  Cajun Squirrel.

Soup. Specifically Trader Joe's Indian Fare Soups

I'm home this week, waiting for my next project to begin next week, and using the time to paint my apartment and hopefully do some other home improvement stuff before the week is over.  Sometimes when I get involved in projects at home, I become totally engrossed in what I'm doing, and I forget to eat.  My stomach started growling at around 3pm, so I figured I should eat something, but I wanted something quick and easy.  Quick and easy generally means soup.

I have kind of a love/disgust relationship with prepared foods.   One favorite treat when I was a kid was mom and dad going out at night, us getting a baby sitter and Swanson Chicken Pot Pies for dinner as a treat.  The memory of these meals is way better than the actuality (at least the last time I had a frozen chicken pot pie, probably 5 or 6 years ago).  At most grocery stores now, prepared foods are full of preservatives, salt, fat and look and taste pretty bad.  This is especially true with soup.  Canned soup can be really horrible, or just mediocre. 

The last time I was at Trader Joe's (the one in Brooklyn, more on Trader Joe's in some other post...) I picked up two 'bags' of Trader Joe's Indian Fare soups.  They were on the end of an isle, I was standing in line, I figured why not.

 

I'm not a big microwave user.  Even things that are microwaveable, I usually plop them in a pan and put them on the stove top or in the oven - they just seem to taste better.  But I was in a hurry (the paint was drying!) and this soup seemed really easy to heat in the microwave:  Just open the top of the package a little bit, and because of the shape of the packaging, it's easy to stand it up in the microwave.  No bowl, no plastic wrap to cover it, no stirring required.

The best part, it was actually really delicious soup!  It didn't need salt, had a nice Indian flavor that wasn't overwhelming, big pieces of vegetables that weren't too mushy and it tasted close to homemade.  With a piece of wholegrain toast with butter, it was an excellent quick lunch.

One issue is that the packaging is not recyclable like a can of soup would be. But then it may take less energy to create this packaging and less energy to ship it from India where the soup is made.  The 'Eco-ness' of all prepared foods is open to debate.

Overall Evaluation:

1. Aesthetics - Only thing of note here is that Trader Joe's has started using icons to indicate whether their foods are vegetarian, vegan, low sodium, etc.  I think this is very helpful for people who are on restricted diets.
2. Value - Great value.  I don't remember how much I paid for this, but I think it was under $2.00.  With the toast and butter, the entire lunch was under $3.00.
3. Reliability - I tried another flavor of this soup the next day (Spinach Lentil).  It wasn't quite as good as the Carrot Lentil, but was still good.  Very reliable.
4. Task Completion - One of the best things about this soup, was how simple it was to prepare.  Heating it up in the package makes it a great option for work or other places where you don't have a full kitchen.
5. Discovery - This was definitely a happenstance discovery (and a tribute to the practice of aisle-end display marketing).
6. Satisfaction  - Very satisfying.   I would definitely get this soup again.