So Easter is almost upon us and Spring is in the air, although I must admit I wish it was a bit warmer here!
Easter can be a bit like Christmas in our family and in keeping with tradition we are having a family meal on Easter Sunday. Only this year I am the dedicated cook as everyone is coming to visit me! Cooking really isn’t my strong point and I am not quite sure how everyone is going to fit in my pokey flat.
I decided to search the internet for some Easter themed receipes and it got me thinking is there a traditional meal for Easter? I mean at Christmas a turkey roast dinner is a most for many of us, but it doesn’t seem to be the same for Easter?
After some research I discovered that it is traditional to eat fish on Good Friday and lamb on Easter Sunday. Well I have never come across that before in fact it seems few people have come across that before! Morrisons have recently found out that just 24% of people will be serving a traditional fish meal on Good Friday and just 21% will be cooking a traditional lamb meal.
So if it’s not the traditional fish or lamb what do people cook for their Easter meal? 62% opt for a beef roast dinner, although 2% to go for a ready meal/takeaway… that could be a much easier option for me, I can work a microwave! Ha ha
All this talk of food again… it makes you hungry. I have noticed a trend amongst my blogs, I love food. Maryland cookies, vegetables and romantic meals (which I never did get by the way). However, my love of food is not only reflected in my blogs but also it’s starting to show round my waistline, so I have decided it’s time to do something about it and I am going on a diet. It looks like I am not alone as 64% of people have been on a diet in the last five years.
It looks as though I might have ended up in the most unromantic place in the UK. Humph. According to Morrison’s
research this week, men in the South East are the least likely to try to keep the romance burning brightly. It seems that those in Wales or the North East are far keener to foster the spark at the beginning of the relationship. 90% of them intend to rekindle romance this Sunday.
Perhaps this is incidental though, as without a partner the idea of Valentine’s day romance and food is hopeless really. So maybe I should be consoled that this Sunday two-thirds (62%) of British couples will be staying in and cooking. But there seems to be no basmati rice and chilli sauce this time, instead replacing the fancy fodder with heart-warming classics. Over half (58%) will be choosing a classic soup over saucier scallops and two thirds (65%) opting for a homely lasagne over a fussy salmon en croute.
Maybe its safest to cater for myself on Sunday though, rather than endure the disappointment of a nice meal that doesn’t turn out quite as expected. After all I think I’d be a bit upset if I was at the receiving end of the valentines faux pas below, or they hadn’t heeded Sarah Coles’ Wallet PoP UK’s advice and checked whether I wanted to dine in or out.
Top five Valentine’s meal turn-offs:
1. Bad table manners
2. Mother cooking the meal
3. Being cooked unhealthy food
4. An ‘everyday’ meal such as a stir-fry
5. A takeaway meal
And Monday is another week and the talk of romance will soon be over:-)
I did go there with good intentions. The bright eye catching displays of juicy fruit and knobbly veg did get my attention, honest. But only for a short while….. Faced with all those choices in bewildering Technicolor I was stumped as to what to do with them. Peel or not to peel? Slice or dice? Chop or scrub? Grate of gobble whole? Argh!
With all these permutations whizzing around me head, I kind of stumbled past the healthy things into more familiar territory. Those cakes and biscuits signs just seem to have a homing mechanism in them, don’t they?
So there I was confronted with another array of bright colours, but this time the shapes and sizes were in sympathetic scale with each other. They even had instructions printed on them showing you exactly how to get into them. And bonus, no preparation needed before eating!
Yes, there were still choices to be made, but more with the heart than the head really. You could almost call it sentimental, but comfort eating is like that I suppose. So Maryland Chocolate Chip Cookies it was. And then that’s when I went off into another day dream spin.
So who is my yummiest celebrity? Who would I most like to take home to meet my family? Who would I most like to share a cup of tea and cookie with? Oh decisions, decisions. How about Zac Efron? No he’s already got his High School sweetheart. What about Robert Paterson? No too scary with all those fangs. Orlando Bloom? Not sure my Mam will be able to cope with a bloke in flouncy girly pirate clothing.
Thankfully my cookies put me out of my misery and told me that I’m most likely to take home Alan Carr (20%) and Jamie Oliver (18%). Result, as at least Jamie knows what to do with vegetables! It was also good to hear the Phil and Fern, my favourite day time telly couple are the most yummy couple. But on their own it it seems that Maryland’s top 10 ‘yummy celebrities’ are a little less homely, but just as nice and thankfully the Evening Standard has some photos to remind us.
Top five yummy female celebrities
- Emma Bunton
- Fern Britton
- Louise Redknapp
- Nigella Lawson
- Holly Willoughby
Top five yummy male celebrities
- Philip Schofield
- Vernon Kay
- Ronan Keating
- Ben Shepherd
- Declan Donnelly
So now I can chomp away contentedly.
Food, glorious food. Time to eat the cupboards bare while I wait for my first pay cheque. The food parcels my Mam dispatched me with are a long forgotten memory. My stomach rumbles at the thought of her lovely cakes, but all that fruit and veg she sent soon turned into a right mush.
How do you manage to eat your 5 a day when you are allergic to half of it and dislike the rest?
Mixing it with tomato sauce or piccalilli chutney? That probably won’t work well with grapes and plums though, will it.
I was reading the other day that store cupboard must-haves now include chilli sauce, basmati rice and balsamic vinegar. So that kicks my favourites such as pickle, long-grain rice and malt vinegar right into touch. It makes the UK sound very exotic though don’t you think?
Just before Christmas Morrisons, found that three fifths of people (60%) are more likely to add chilli sauce than pickle to the leftover turkey and a quarter will accompany it with hummus rather than coleslaw. Umm, not sure whether to go yum to that or not.
Maybe I need to check out the supermarket shelves and give it ago.
Food | Fifi | 
March 29, 2010 8:48 am | 
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