Fresher's Food

Hi Everyone! Sorry for the absence of a post last week! There was a good reason though – 

It was Fresher's Week!

For those of you that haven't experienced Fresher's Week, it's an event that lasts through the first week of university in the UK (Not sure if they have Fresher's Week elsewhere). It's designed to introduce you to the university, familiarise yourself with the campus and to acquaint yourself with your fellow students.

In reality, this does just end up as one massive week of partying, where you meet hundreds of people that you're more than likely never going to see again, and generally have an amazing time. It's a very unusual experience, but also a fantastic one. But I'm not going to write up about my nights out (I did not go out every night), in part as a result of me not fully remembering most of them. Basically, I ended up here, here and here a lot!

So, student cuisine, delicious right?

Mmm... These are probably high on your list of ideas. I certainly had this idea too. There's definitely a stereotype surrounding the type of things students eat. Yes, we did eat some pizza. And there have been a few noodles being cooked in their pots from time to time. And yes, we have had a bit lot of vodka.

I ate many healthy and nutritious foods through Fresher's Week, but now that it's over we are actually cooking real meals. It's not something I expected if I'm honest. I had the view, like most people, that as students we would mostly live on noodles (or at least other items of questionable nutritional value). But this hasn't been my experience at all.

 

In the name of transparency, the cupboard on the left is mine. The cupboard on the right is that of one of my flatmates, and it pretty accurately represents the cupboards of our flat generally. Not a can of beans in sight! Of course, there is a range of ability when it comes to cooking (one of my flatmates makes dishes that are restaurant quality), and generally speaking, I'm in a minority within our flat in that I don't do proper cooking every night.

Perhaps this is an exceptional case, but perhaps it isn't. People that are in work (and people that aren't, of course) also eat rubbish, just as students cook proper meals. It's not true to catagorise students as being useless with food, because like with everything, it's all based on the individuals. Coming to university has changed my view of how we as student's generally eat. We don't just eat pizza and pot noodles – We eat more or less the same way as we do at home (maybe).

Anyway, that's it for now. New stuff next week!

Little Red Tractor

When I was at Thorpe Park a few weeks back, my friends and I ate a shamefully large quantity of fast food, amongst which was a lunch of KFC. Did you know that that delicious original recipe chicken (the kind with the bone in) came exclusively from British farms? And that they can trace the source of that chicken all the way back to the individual farm that it came from?

How do I know this? Because the packaging that KFC used to serve me my lunch displayed this logo:

This week (15^th to 21^st September) is Red Tractor Week – So in honour of that, I'm going to make a short post about the subject.

Firstly, let me start with a bit of background. Towards the end of the 90's, many farm assurance schemes had been set up. The idea of these schemes was to encourage confidence within the market that food was being produced to a consistent standard of quality. The problem was, that with such a large number of the schemes existing throughout the UK, it was hard to keep track of exactly what each of these schemes really meant.

So, in 2000, the National Farmers Union set up an organisation called 'Assured Food Standards' (AFS), comprising farmers and food industry experts, under which they launched the 'British Farm Standard'. The purpose of this was to create a single, recognisable stamp of approval, so that we as consumers could easily identify products that had been produced to good standards. And so the iconic Little Red Tractor was born.

It's encouraging to learn that a study this year, 14 years on, showed that almost 70% of children between the ages of 11 and 16 recognised the Red Tractor Logo and understood what it represented!

In the UK, our produce really is some of the best quality in the world, and it is in part as a result of the work that AFS and the Red Tractor do to ensure that traceability, hygiene and welfare standards are maintained. But buying British also means supporting hard working farmers and food producers in this country and helps in reducing our dependency on foreign importation.

You don't need to drive all the way out to your local farm shop (although that certainly isn't a bad idea if you can do it!) - Most major supermarkets stock Red Tractor certified produce. So, even if it's only this week, please buy something with a Red Tractor logo!

New post next week!

What do I mean by 'Cake of Apathy'?

Before I start, apologies for the delay in this post. I have been really busy preparing for my move to university next week, so I haven’t had a lot of time for writing. And I haven’t even started packing yet! Anyway:

Ok, so there is cake! To be specific, this blog is named after it (in a manner of speaking) so this post will briefly explain why I chose ‘Cake of Apathy’, what I mean by it, and throw in some interesting stuff about one of our favourite foods worldwide.

Derived from the Old Norse word kaka, cake has been around almost since the first agricultural civilisations started growing and milling wheat and baking it into bread. We know, for example, that the ancient Egyptians used to make sweet breads (not to be confused with the delicious animal product of the same name), by using dates and honey as a flavouring.

The origins of Cake in this country probably came from the medieval period, where the term would have referred to small, flat, round bread buns. At the time, sugar was an incredibly expensive import good, and so the lower classes would have been unable to make cakes with much resemblance to those we consume today.

However, those with wealth and power within the kingdom would have used sweet baked products as a display of their status at feasts and other celebrations. They would not only be able to afford the expensive raw ingredients (cocoa would also have been particularly choice), but also to afford the skills of bakers that would be able to make the cakes themselves. While ovens can now be temperature controlled with a simple turn of a dial, ovens in this period were powered using coal, which would have made perfect dessert baking a skill that only trained chefs would be able to pull off.

Nowadays, a simple sponge cake can be made using a recipe that can be learned in seconds, but the use of cakes as a celebration food remains part of our culture, and are often a celebration in their own right - So far as leading some crazy creative bakers to make cakes that look too good to eat.

So, what does this have to do with the title of my blog? Firstly, cake represents the subject of the blog: Food. But it’s more than that. It represents celebration. It represents children blowing out candles and wishing their dreams will come true. It represents a magical process that takes 4 simple ingredients and transforms them into a delicious, fluffy treat. Cakes represent all the good things in life.

But it also represents something else. It represents indulgence; excess; even greed. It represents an unhealthy desire to consume. Anyone who has been on any sort of diet knows that cake is a tempting devil, willing us to fail in the pursuit of our goals. And beneath the decorative topping and thick, luxurious icing, cake hides from the outside.

But when I was thinking about these things, it occurred to me that what cake also represents is apathy. Cake represents a supply chain that nobody thinks about. Wheat was grown from seed and ground into flour. Butter started life as milk, churned and set into blocks. Sugar, once a long cane or a root in the ground, carefully boiled, extracted and refined. Processes that we know occur, but seldom give a second thought to when we are consuming the finished product, or even when we are making it. And why should we?

But within the food supply chain, that rarely considered group of processes that makes the food magically appear on our supermarket shelves, hide a vast array of questions. Ethical, environmental and even legal questions are rarely thought about, let alone discussed.

I don't want to slice the cake into pieces, but delve in with a great big spoon and find out what is really inside.

Next week: New post, new topic. Thank you for reading :)

Value for money in restaurants

OK - there is no cake. I made it all up. This is a post though, so it's not all lies! This also isn't the post I was expecting to publish this week, but as it is fresh in my mind I feel like I should probably write about it now.

I also want to throw a curve ball in and say that a lot of what I write is not entirely my honest opinion on a variety of topics. In a similar way as I discuss topics in real life conversation, I like to play devil's advocate in order to promote stronger opinions than my own, which may be more centrist, and that's no fun, being the belligerent that I am.

Anyway...

Last week I spent 3 days at Thorpe Park (Where I had a generally fantastic time). The food establishment was dreadful, but this is not meant as a scathing review (although I suppose by it's nature it is one). My interest was the nature of the business itself, and in the fact that it was enabled to perform so poorly. The price of the food was high and the quality of the food was as basic as it could have been. The manager seemed to be disinterested with the atmosphere of total chaos displeasure, and with reasonable cause.

But I have eaten rubbish food before, and I have spent large amounts on meals in the past, and in both situations I have been perfectly content with the meal. What was particularly frustrating in this situation was the combination of the two. As a result of the lack of competition, the food provided only needed to accomplish the goal of feeding a person. Which it did...

It made me appreciate the importance of value for money within restaurants in a free market. We are fortunate, at least where I live, to have the opportunity to choose where we eat, whatever your budget. Supply and demand do the rest, and in that regard I think it is a very positive thing that the competition exists. If we experience poor value for money we are able to eat elsewhere; we can offer negative reviews to friends and family, and in the age of the internet, to almost everybody that wants to listen; and ultimately, whether this drives up quality, drives down prices, or forces underachievers to close down, it can only be a good thing for consumers. Right?

Agree? Disagree? Let me know via the medium of comments in the comments. All opinions welcome, no holds barred!

New completely random topic next week!

First post :)

Hi! I'm Kasi, a 22 years old business student who lives in Devon. 

We are surrounded on all sides by an incredible variety of breath-taking countryside: Dense woods, winding rivers, vast expanses of moorland. The West Country is one of the few places in the UK where we are known as much for our natural beauty as we are for our biggest industry, and It’s an industry it has existed since the dawn of civilisation.

The thing is - We take it all so much for granted! I am definitely guilty of rocking up at the supermarket and slinging things into my trolley without any thought for how it got there. Sure, we all know that steak comes from cows, and apples grow on trees (right?) but how much do we really know about our most essential industry? How much do we care?

My aim is to answer both of those questions. I want to explore what goes into getting food on our table; how this process is changing as we move deeper into the 21^st century; and what society's attitude towards the industry means for everybody involved.

I hope to have a new post out approximately once a week and may be about anything as long as it relates to the food industry, but there will be no recipes or food reviews. There are hundreds of food blogs on the internet that do a fantastic job of these things, and as I'm neither a fantastic cook or an esteemed food critic, this won't be one of them.

There will be cake though, so be sure to check back!

Please let me know your thoughts, I'm really keen to get everybody's views. Email me at kasijankowski@gmail.com and/or comment in the comments!