Archive for March 2010

Playing chicken

In Uncategorized on 28 March 2010 with no comments

My fence was not ideal. For a start it had holes through which the chick­ens could – and did – squeeze. I had the bright idea of tack­ing on chicken wire, but as I stood back to admire my handi­work, the chick­ens scrabbled up and over the top.

Fowl play: one man’s year keep­ing chickens

Making porridge more appealing

In Uncategorized on 13 March 2010 with no comments

From the Guard­ian, just what I needed to read at the end of a week without any sugar (well, almost):

Sugar, fat and salt make a food com­pel­ling. They stim­u­late neur­ons, cells that trig­ger the brain’s reward sys­tem and release dopam­ine, a chem­ical that motiv­ates our beha­viour and makes us want to eat more. Many of us have what’s called a “bliss point”, at which we get the greatest pleas­ure from sugar, fat or salt. Com­bined in the right way, they make a product indul­gent, high in “hedonic value”.

And yikes:

But it was think­ing cre­at­ively about how to attract more con­sumers that led Star­bucks to the Frap­puccino, the ven­ture cap­it­al­ist told me. Although its stores were crowded early in the day, by after­noon “they were so empty you could roll a bowl­ing ball through them”. The cre­ation of a rich, sweet and com­fort­ing milkshake-like con­coc­tion utterly trans­formed the busi­ness. A Star­bucks Straw­ber­ries & Crème Frap­puccino comes with whipped cream and 18 tea­spoons of sugar: all in all, this “drink” con­tains more cal­or­ies than a personal-size pep­p­er­oni pizza, and more sweet­ness than six scoops of ice-cream.

Com­ing up tomor­row: the chocol­ate chunk short­bread has crack in it.