Life

I was without my vintage wooden Zassenhaus, so I rushed out and bought a new manual coffee grinder. The one I got is from Maison & White, and it is amazingly good. It is adjustable from very fine to coarse. Grinding is done with ceramic burrs, and the rest of the construction is made from solid glass, stainless steel, galvanised metal and silicon. They even provided an extra jar for bean storage. The best part is it only cost £10, including delivery.

For almost a year now I've been trying to minimise my intake of carbohydrates (carbs). Instead of getting my energy requirements from carbs, I get them from fats. Specifically, people refer to this as Low Carbohydrate, High Fat (LCHF). However, the terms lowcarb (low-carbohydrate) and keto (ketogenic) also get used for this eating regime, although they are slightly different. In practice, this means that I try to avoid high carb foods like pasta, rice, potato and bread. I haven't missed eating any of these foods in the last year, but it does create a problem if I want to eat certain styles of dishes. Take, for example, Bolognese sauce (ragù alla Bolognese), without spaghetti it is just fancy mince. There is a solution, and I call it courgetti. It is a compund word from "courgette" and "spaghetti". They are also frequently called zoodles, which is a compound of "zucchini" and "noodles". Whatever you call them, they work really well as a spaghetti or noodles replacement, and are easy to make. Of course, they are also low in carbs.

I've been meaning to make my own mustard condiment for years, but never got around to it for one reason or another. If I had realised how easy it is to get a really tasty result, I would have done it years ago, instead of prevaricating. The only (mildly) difficult part is sourcing the mustard seed. You can buy one of three mustard seed types: white/yellow, brown and black. The three seed types are increasingly hot in that order. If you live in a city you probably have access to a wholefoods supplier, and for everyone else you can probably get mustard seeds fairly cheaply via the Internet. Now that we have the difficult part out of the way, we can proceed to the easy part: making the mustard condiment (sometimes called prepared mustard).

This is an article on how to make sauerkraut at home. I'm not going to give you a precise recipe with measurements down to the gram, nor will I set out the exact equipment you should use. Instead, I will describe the process and the proportions of ingredients I use when making fermented cabbage. Armed with an understanding of the concepts, it is easier to adapt to using different quantities of cabbage, introducing new ingredients or dealing with changing ambient temperatures.

This is a great wee sketch, which pokes fun at the constant changes in advice for healthy eating over the decades. The illogicality, and the humour, becomes obvious because 35 years of advice is squeezed into less than five minutes.