Food and a Wild Goose Chase

Question: What can you do with some scabby old freezer burnt pork?
Answer: smother it in hoisin sauce, chuck it in the slow cooker or in the oven at 100°C for hours and hours (at least 5). Boil down the juice and Bob's yer uncle.

Tasty shredded in wraps, used in lasagne or simply with the sauce and some fried potatoes. Three French boys including two visitors have just declared it 'delicious' so it must be good!

Still on food, I've had to resort to making fresh fruit salad every day. My boys are too lazy to get up, take a kiwi, peel it or cut it in half and eat it. They are too lazy to take a nectarine, wash it and eat it. They are not too lazy to tuck into a bowl of prepared for them nectarine, apricot, melon and kiwi... with that essential squirty cream.

My youngest and his friends are also not too lazy to light a bonfire in the barbecue having hunted for sticks in the pinede opposite (I'm too lazy to buy charcoal), ask for sausages (having already eaten a hearty dinner) and cook them whilst they toast marshmallows. I'm not interfering except to give them fondue forks so I don't have to make a trip to the emergency department later because someone burnt his fingers, and forbid a towering inferno.

I've had a fascinating day going on a wild goose chase to Nimes in search of the skatepark. It did not auger well as there were two addresses given online, in two different places. They were quite near each other so I supposed one should be good. We stopped off first at TamTam, an all things skate/BMX/VTT/roller shop where my youngest got his scooter seen to by a lovely young man who was toasted by the sun to a gorgeous golden colour.

He gave us vague directions to the skatepark and off we set. We never found it and in the end, as we saw no pedestrians to ask, I said we'd give up and go home. For a large place I don't know where they hid it, but hide it they did, very successfully. There wasn't a single signpost to help out either.

On the up side, when we were on the motorway coming home, at the Montpellier péage we avoided all the queues by following the far right lane which took us to 4 extra booths, all empty. We sailed through in no time at all.

In other food news, Mondial Market, my nearest purveyor of foreign foods, has started stocking Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire Puddings (microwavable), frozen back bacon, sausages, vegetarian sausages and other delights. I bought a packet of the Yorkshires, not because I like them - I think they taste of cardboard - but my boys love them. My eldest was ecstatic when I got them home and showed him. I also bought a packet of back bacon as well as Yorkshire Tea.

And finally, I've noticed that Carrouf Discount does a milk chocolate fruit and nut. As the only other brand to make this here is Nestlé, and I don't buy Nestlé products (and it's rubbish anyway the time I succumbed to desperation and gave it a try), I was curious to know what it tasted like. Normally I wouldn't touch discount chocolate, but it's actually very nice, especially fresh from the fridge. It's not Cadbury's but it's pleasantly similar. Oh happy day!

Hearts Love Laughter and Chocolate

Do you ever ask yourself important questions? I don't mean questions such as 'What shall I have for dinner tonight?', 'Red,white or rosé?', 'Crisp or peanut?' which are important but not Important. Important questions are 'OMG what shall I do about my pension when the Euro has gone belly-up?', 'How can I help my kids grow up to be happy, decent, non-looting adults?', 'How can I stay fit and healthy in mind and body (and do I want to?)?' and so on. There are other Ultimate Questions about the meaning of life and thinking Higher Thoughts (over a glass or two of red, white or rosé) but I'm talking about the ones that have a direct impact on quality of life.

One of these was discussed by a bunch of cardiologists living it up in Paris this week at a congress for the European Society of Cardiologists - the hot topic was how to avoid heart disease. This is important because failure to take note results in having to consume nasty chemicals in the shape of statins and other medication all of which have side effects of varying unpleasantness. Best take action, if possible, to avoid getting to this point, and the cardiologists have been working their little botties off to bring us the solution. After in-depth analysis of various studies, you can be sure of a healthy heart if you:

1. work, but not too hard. Too many hours at the pit face is not good for your heart, but being unemployed is not good either. Happily for me, I do my 35hours a week and am not expected to do more. The weekly grind is nicely limited.

2. avoid stress. Directly related to n°1 in the workplace. If you have a stressful job, cannot deal effectively with the stress, and work long hours you're an ideal candidate for heart problems. Happily for me (again), my job is not stressful at all. Okay, I might not be CEO of a CAC40 company, but I was never that ambitious anyway. I'll let others take the strain while I look after my heart. Of course, I do have an adolescent boy who challenges my stress levels on a regular basis, but if I tell him his behaviour might be having a terrible effect on my heart and he could be left with a doddery old bat on his hands do you think that would change anything? No, me neither.

3. laugh a lot. When you laugh, blood vessels expand. Statins have the same effect, but are less fun and have side effects, so if you can, have a joke with your mates and watch funny films, or comedy such as Blackadder. The ambiance at my work is pretty good and we often have a laugh, surrounded as we are by some Funny Characters. The boys come out with some classics too, so on the whole, I think I've got laughing taped.

4. pedal hard a lot. None of your gentle cycling along the flat here no, you have to pedal hard. The heart loves cycling apparently, but for it to serve any real purpose, you've got to do it with vigour. I keep saying I'd like to cycle to work (4.5km), but I'll be taking my life in my hands along certain stretches of road. If I'm ploughed into by an inattentive driver it would rather upset the health benefit of the hard exercise. So I'm sticking to my mini trampoline which I can enjoy in the comfort of my own home, in front of the tele, watching Midsomer Murders, Rosemary and Thyme, Agatha Christie mysteries or some other light entertainment. There's rarely anything funny on at the end of the day, so unfortunately I can't combine laughing and exercise unless I put on a DVD.

5. eat good chocolate. Choccie is well-known as a joyful source of anti-oxidants, just don't over-indulge. Eating chocolate gives me ulcers though, so eating it for my heart would have to be regarded as a duty...

No mention of nooky though from all those eminent profs. Odd, because nooky is supposed to do wonders for health. It helps reduce stress, gets the blood flowing, keeps you fit, and the boost in testosterone and oestrogen is good for the heart.

Frankly I think my heart can consider itself Pretty Lucky that I take such good care of it, and I just hope it shows its gratitude by working nicely, or there'll be all hell to pay!

Three Cheers for Chocolate!

The good news is that eating dark chocolate eases blood pressure a little bit. It contains those lovely polyphenols that certain red wines contain in quantity too. I can forsee a wonderful diet... For the moment, the dark chocolate I eat is revived Bourneville which, for some obscure reason was ditched by Cadbury's some years ago, and has been resurrected due to the increased demand for dark chocolate.

You can just imagine the brainstorming session at Cadbury's:
Youthful Keen Bean Manager: "Okay, today's task is to come up with a dark chocolate to add to the Cadbury's range. As you know, it's been proven to ease blood pressure... blah blah...".
5 minutes later...
Cynical Old Marketing Exec: "Well kid, you are too young to remember (sniggers from room)... but we had a dark chocolate."
YKBM: "Oh, really?"
COME: "Yeah. Bourneville."
YKBM: "Oh."
COME: "Great, meeting over. Back to work!"

The world's shortest product ideas meeting!

I used to love Bourneville, but, living in France, had not realised it had been withdrawn. I bought French or Swiss chocolate instead, as they were the ones on the shelves. Being quite rich though, it's difficult eating more than a very little, for me, anyway. Bourneville has a much smoother taste and this lends itself to pigging. Still, it's not available in the shops here so home stock levels depend very much on trips back to Blighty. This leads to rationing, which is probably a good thing, for la ligne...

Talking of which... as I'm off today. It's Independence Day in the US and while I might not give a shit at the origin of the holiday, it being a tad painful and all... I'm quite happy to benefit from the result. Having had my hair cut and dashed around buying artistic creative bits and bobs for the boys to enliven their summer holidays with, this afternoon I think I'll get my bike out and flex those thigh muscles.

I'd better take some chocolate just to keep my heart ticking over...