My saviour!

NaBloPoMo July 08 Day 31 – The END!

I made it! 31 days of food related photo blog posting, its been fun and, once I got into the rhythm, surprisingly easy to keep going each day. It has been interesting (mostly for me I’m sure) to see the variety of foods that I eat in a month, plus some recurring themes too 🙂

“What exactly is the story with today’s photo?” I’m glad you asked! This has been something I have eaten on more than half the days in July. I suppose I should have counted this too, for the sake of the project.

These are Ranitidine Hydrochloride tablets, and shown here under the Indian brand name Zinetac. I picked these up in India* the last time we were there. You might know this medicine by the UK brand name Zantac, an over the counter remedy in 75mg strength tablets.

The sharp-eyed among you will see that the pictured Zinetac are 150mg, so double-good right? You may also notice that these are Rupees 5.21 for a strip of 10 tablets which is like 6 or 7 pence, in the UK Zantac are more like 4 pounds for 12 tablets. Personally, for this sort of price difference I can cope with the box being made of un-bleached card, printed in only one colour. Who needs the glossy, over designed colourful boxes they use in the UK?

You’ll probably also notice that it says on there “To be sold by retail on the prescription of a Registered Medical Practiotioner only.” What a laugh, since in India, the the busiest shops in the resorts are usually the pharmacies! You just go in and ask for what you want, no questions asked. I’ved queued up behind all sorts in the past, blokes buying boxes of Viagra to sell back home. Women shouting over their shoulder back into the street, “Mam, did you want some Valium as well?”

So, that’s my little secret, I could choose to be a martyr to my stomach and the unbearable pain of heartburn. Instead, I choose to self medicate, I’m told its a very safe drug, and enjoy life, I want to eat nice interesting rich and spicy foods, not bland boring stuff!

Life is just too short, right?

* We also stock up on Colgate toothpaste and toothbrushes, mozzie sprays and sun creams. Its all so much cheaper than over here, less than half price usually.

Sour, sweet and hot salad

NaBloPoMo July 08 Day 30

My brunch snack yesterday, a salad of melon, garlic stuffed olives and spianata calabrese salami.

The super hot peppery salami against the sweet cool flavour of the melon edged by the sour garlicky olives was a sensational combination.

The salami was a surprise for me that Paul brought back from the supermarket the other day. It’s not one I’ve tried before but I’ll be having it again for sure. Here is what it looked like before I chopped it up. I’ve not seen a salami this shape before either!

You can see the peppercorns, I don’t have to tell you how hot it was 🙂

It’s Monday, it must be leftovers

NaBloPoMo July 08 Day 29

Monday’s lunch was was an early one, we were on late shift again so needing to eat before going to work. Paul made big fat chips (you may call them wedges) by frying up the leftover potatoes from Sunday dinner.

Add these to some re-heated chicken and gravy and you have got a satisfiying meal 🙂

You just can’t beat chips and gravy!

Chicken out!

NaBloPoMo July 08 Day 28

The Chicken Out! campaign – have you signed up yet?

The Chicken Out! campaign is demanding higher welfare conditions for chickens farmed in the UK, and fairer conditions for the farmers who rear them.

This was our Sunday dinner, a Devonshire Red free range corn fed chicken.

It’s pretty expensive for a chicken but do you know, it really does taste better, the texture of the meat is better too.

Friday menu – changeable

NaBloPoMo July 08 Day 26

Friday was an odd day menu-wise. On Thursday night we looked in the freezer to decide on Friday’s dinner. It was decided we would have the last portion of calamari we froze a while back. The plan was to put it in the fridge in the morning to defrosft during the day. During the day, when I asked Paul what we were haviing for dinner, “Oh, I forgot to get the squid out of the freezer.”

So I thought a while and came up with a naughty idea for Fun-Food-Friday. Burger, fried egg, chips and tinned spaghetti hoops. I know! it’s like my dream menu from when I was 10 years old 🙂

Later in the evening, after a couple of beers, Paul decided that he didnt want to cook and by that time I had gone off the idea.

So what happenend? The take-away menus came out of the drawer and Chinese was decided upon. I know, I’m sorry, it’s only a week since we last had Chinese, but hey, we were hungry!

So here is a shot of Paul, “cooking” Friday night’s dinner. This isnt my NaBloPoMo picture for today, that’s further down 🙂

In other news I tried another of those Polish Knorr soups, Barszcz Czerwony. This was a red beetroot soup, I suppose what I’d call Borscht. I was surprised when I opened the packet, the granules look like sherbet! I added some leftover fresh beetroot to give it a bit “extra” flavour. Sadly I had to leave half of it, even with salt and pepper added, it was just too sweet. I give it 5 out of 10.

I have another packet in the cupboard, do you want it?

Chickpea salad with a beetroot side

NaBloPoMo July 08 Day 25

Lunch on Thursday was a fantastic Chickpea salad, prepared for me by Paul, as you can see my lunchbox had 2 compartments and also included a side order of Beetroot 🙂

Shortly after taking the photo, I mixed the salad to coat it all with the mayo, then tossed in the (homemade) bread chunks to soak up the lovely, lovely juices. The beetroot was treated to a tossing in a mixture of black pepper, red wine vinegar and olive oil to create an improvised Vinaigrette.

Deee-li-cious 🙂

Can you see the sachets? I have a confession to make. I sometimes take more sachets than my fair share. Actually, to be truthful, I always grab a few extra to stick in my pocket. The three sachets in the picture are probably my favourites of all, red wine vinegar, (good) olive oil and mayonaise.

You will probably not be surprised to learn that these 3 are not from the UK. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the UK Heinz sachets you find in Weathersoons, after all I have a drawer full of them. It’s just you’ll be hard pressed to find olive oil or wine vinegar sachets anywhere but on the continent. In this case they are from the food court in Malaga airport. Thank you Spain 🙂

Barszcz Biaty

NaBloPoMo July 08 Day 24

I picked up a few of these packet soups from ASDA’s world foods section. I think I mentioned before how I like to try the stuff that is being offered to our EU migrant population. In this case they are Polish soups, stll made by Knorr, which is a familiar name at least.

The handy little sticker on the back gives a translation of the ingredients into English. This is probably a basic legal requirement of being sold here. A translation of the name and soup description would also have been nice, but I suppose its really aimed at those that can read Polish.

What I can make out from the ingredients and a bit of Wikipedia is that it is White Beetroot soup with Garlic. Here I am, following the Polish cooking instructions, rather helpfully these included a picture of a jug saying 750ml and a simmering pan next to a clock with 5 minutes marked on it 🙂

The soup was interesting, very fresh and zingy, not overly garlicky. It was full of flavour but, had I not know what it was, I would have been hard pressed to identify white Beetroot. Oh yes, and at 180 calories for the whole lot, it was certainly filling yet easy on the waistline!

I’m now definitley looking forward to trying the other varieties I bought 🙂

Bonus picture time.

Here is me at work on late shift, enjoying my soup with a couple of slices of home baked bread and The Sims 2: Castaway on DS 🙂

“Na zdrowie”