Fringe Food & Drink

Stuck indoors with illness. Found an interesting site EatMyToronto a blog about dining out in the Canadian city where Mancunians emigrate to. Essentially a different entry for each place visited - from chip shops to juice bars. This is what Manchester needs. Somebody want to help me get it together, or I'll help you.

Confined to the couch I also found some new ways with vegetables - you can make them into musical instruments Vegetable Orchestra. In Wien [a.k.a. Vienna, Austria] with concerts, cd's, and mp3 downloads. I used to do vegetable impresions after three pints of Guinness but this is entertainment.

In the current issue of Kitchen Garden (March 2003) magazine details there is an article on making paper from scrap or surplus vegetables. A messy kitchen activity but that could produce some colourful artistic results.

Got back from Barcelona - a lively old place, much more lively and touristy than when I last went ten years ago. Go to the Museum of Chocolate / Museu de la Xocolata if you can read Catalan, the actual museum can handle Spanish & English speakers. No shortage of vegetarian food eateries...Spain is pretty much pig leg eating country.

Coming soon here - pictures with my Lomo camera. Got nearly all the Lomo cameras but only recently bought the original - it's brilliant.
If you're awake next Tuesday this has been a good series to watch Posh Nosh on Tuesdays at 2150h GMT BBC2 TV...amusing ten minutes of sideswipes at snobbery.

It's all coming soon, except perhaps the second coming.

There used to be a cafe-cum-flowershop called Moo on Barlow Moor Road. It closed recently. What's opening is a new cafe, the builders are in there, the windows are getting some lettering. Will a new cafe succeed where the last one failed? Who knows? A good cafe is a treasure, will it be that? Too many questions here. Meanwhile I was back in Diamond Dogs on Beech Road. Great cafe, well for me anyway. Spicy tofu and mushrooms with fresh chilli on toast, and a good lemon-ginger juice. Must write about this place I've been often enough to recommend it.

Geared up for a BBC Manchester video nation - make your own streaming video for their website. You shoot, they edit. Wrote some storyboards on food issues. Can't write much more yet. Haven't made them yet, haven't been accepted yet. When the BBC offer you a camera and some web space you say yes.

Went back to Woolies only two "pancake making kits" left. Do i buy one. No, would Delia, Nigella or Worrell-Thompson been seen with them. No, I'll stick to my pans and I'll use a big spoon to put the batter in. As for the non-dairy ricotta - there is no substitute for the real thing. TVP will never be meat, egg replacer will never be hens egg yolks & albumen. It's not the way forward - make the food as a food in it's own style not as a pretend. Pizza is great but Pizza Hut isn't.

Whilst in my local Woolworth stores - it's great to have a Woolies in the older style I found myself mesmerised by this telly showing an endless video with no sound (v.good), showing the benefits of buying a "pancake making kit" for ten quid. A non-stick pan with a lid on a spring, and a batter dispenser, and other bits. Wooooh, came to my wits and left. Still on my mind, I'll have to go back and watch it again.

The best thing I did today was make a non-dairy riccota out of tofu & rough ground almonds. Needs a little product development like an oil, salt with the mustard powder. It's a winner.

Couldn't post anything last night, and couldn't get to many sites to browse them. Suspected the government was tampering with the internet. Went to an alternative arts fair cum exhibition after work. Put a bid in for some "West Bank Oilves in a big Cola Bottle with Arabic writing". It wasn't called that, it was that, and it wasn't money bid to win but a reason or a pathetic excuse in my case.

Went in Carringtons. So I said nothing has changed. The owner didn't burst a blood vessel but did explain it had been cleaned and there was new lighting. Bought a couple of bottles of wine. So the two of us proceeded to neck the reds at a rapid rate watching mind sapping telly. Back on the hamster wheel in an hour or so.

Fair Trade Fayre - promotional market, speakers & workshops organised by the Co-op to celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight on Saturday 8 March 2003 at Mechanics Institute Princess Street, Manchester 1100-1500h GMT/ UTC

Meanwhile Tesco are planning big screen telly in their stores. If you think it's going to be entertainment or sport it won't be. All the press releases are talking about the marvellous opportunities for corporates to advertise to millions of shoppers. Oh, I've just seen a advert telling me about the wonderful added-value breakfast cereal with added calcium & minerals. Must trolly down to aisle three and get a family size fun pack now. Is that what they think? Yes they do - and who pays for adverts everybody who buys an advertised product. You think it's all free no it's in the price.

I've told Carringtons in Chorlton has re-opened. I'll have to see this for myself.

Rice for Peace yes rice for peace - don't attack Iraq. Like this one. Send some oil corporate puppet Pres some grains & he stops talking war. Apparently it worked last time. I remember his dad before the last war said he didn't like brocolli. They are from Texas - great weather but they can't grow rhubarb.

Forty winter nights and forty hot meals - a photograph of every dinner is now showing in Unicorn Grocery, Albany Road, Chorlton. However my fellow co-operator Kellie thought it would be better displayed vertically on a table cloth background. So she went to a charity shop to get one. It's already invited loads of questions. Probably becuase I didn't put text next to it. Have a dislike of text next to pictures - people spend too much effort reading the blurb and not enough looking at the pictures in galleries. People are always trying to understand what they are seeing. Just see the shapes, the colours and spaces. An online version is being developed here. Unicorn website is here

Channel4.com - news this is the transcript of Tony Benn former mp for chesterfield meeting Saddam Hussein. The other tv channels don't mention much of this, except for Sky. News gets very interesting when a war is on. It takes a hawk eye to see thru the propaganda. Top tip get news from as many sources as possible and make your own landscape. A lesson from history is anything in the Daily Mail or Private Eye is MI5 briefings. Now is it the real Saddam and not an imposter - well if you look carefully Saddam has distinctive brown moles on his left hand and two lumpy bits on his left side face in this interview. Will the real Saddam brutal dictator stand up, please stand up.

There's been a bus stop on Chorlton Green since the horse drawn days. So when those quarter of a million pound hutches or desirable homes as estate agents call them get built the suckers who bought them want the bus stop moved. Wooooaah, you bought the house with a bus stop outside so what's the problem. What if everybody wanted the bus stop outside their home moving then there would be few bus stops in Manchester.

Went to a working windmill the other day - it's the one in Nottingham. Bought some organic spelt flour made by the mill. Some of my friends weren't impressed with all the open sacks of flour lying around. To me it was very hygenic but then again I've worked in food factories and they are better than restaurants. Don't worry drink alcohol.