The Great Fresh Herb Rip-Off

I've banged on about this before and probably will again but I just wanted to have another moan about the extortionate price of fresh herbs in supermarkets. Witness this 25g bag of flat leaf parsley that was on sale at Waitrose yesterday for 89p. That's £35.60 a kilo, more than the cost of fillet steak. I can buy a bunch roughly 10 times that size from my local greengrocer for just over £1 and so, I'm sure, can you. It's really time supermarkets stopped ripping us off.That said I did find quite a useful product in the frozen cabinets as part of Waitrose's Cooks Ingredients series which was a pack...

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A weekend to buy whisky

With Burns Night coming up this week and many celebrating it this weekend, now's a good time to stock up on your favourite whisky brand. Almost all the supermarkets have got special offers. Here's my pick of the bunch (meaning the best deals, not necessarily the best whiskies - see comments!)Asda1 litre bottles of Famous Grouse for £16 instead of £18.97 - standard bottles for £13.47 (£16.50-17 elsewhere)Glenmorangie 10 y.o. for £21.97 (£33-£34 elsewhere) Isle of Jura 10 y.o. for £19 (£28-29 elsewhere)MorrisonsGrants £12.99 instead of £14.99Sainsbury'sHalves of Famous Grouse for £7.29 instead...

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How to make the best marmalade you’ve ever tasted

I’m not a great one for ‘the perfect this’ or ‘the perfect that’ in recipes but if you’re a marmalade aficionado I promise you this is as good as it gets. Intensely fruity, thick and sharply flavoured.OK, I’m biased. It was my mum’s recipe so it carries a bit of emotional baggage. I can remember the kitchen filling up with a warm, comforting marmaladey fug and sitting alongside her as a child slicing the oranges. She wasn’t a wonderful cook but this was her pièce de resistance. I still have the original written neatly in blue ink on a piece of Basildon Bond notepaper.I’d got out of the habit of...

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Waitrose Low Alcohol Cider

If you're finding it hard to give up booze for the month you might want to snap up a bottle or two of Waitrose's low alcohol cider which is only 1% ABV.Now I'm not saying it's the best-tasting cider ever - it's a little too thin and too sweet, for my palate at least* - but it does taste recognisably like cider in a way that apple juice doesn't and if you were drinking it with roast pork, a chicken casserole or even a nice hunk of cheddar it would rub along fine. It's actually made in Herefordshire in old oak vats so I'm guessing it probably comes from Weston's.The price is pretty attractive too....

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Change of domain name for Beyond Baked Beans

Following yesterday's post the good news is that my student cookery site Beyond Baked Beans is back up and running but at a new domain name www.beyondbakedbeans.org.If you link to the site please change your link. And if you don't, do link to it which will help students - and other first time cooks on a budget - find it more easi...

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What's happened to Beyond Baked Beans?

Some of you may have arrived at this blog looking for my student website beyondbakedbeans.com. I'm sad to say it no longer exists. (See update on my more recent post. There is a happy(ish) ending. It now has a new domain name www.beyondbakedbeans.org.)Due to my inattention and a mix-up on who should renew the domain name it's expired. Someone else has snapped up the name and is running ads on it. It was never a moneymaker so I can't afford to buy it back. The domain registration site GoDaddy even wants to charge me commission for finding the buyer (surely they know?) and negotiating a sale. On...

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