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If you haven’t seen, our Wednesday night Daily Social is an elimination style tournament.
Replacing the European Championships that have been postponed this year.
Kinda.
Last week’s was for our favourite artist / band.
And was won by Queen.
The week before Friends took the title for favourite TV programme.
My pick, Fawlty Towers, went out to Phoenix Nights in the second round.
Loved Fawlty Towers as a kid I did.
Classic.
Who can forget Manuel with a Moose on his head.
The lady with the hearing aid she didn’t turn on.
Sybil walking in on Basil accidentally groping the Australian lady from the next room.
And Basil creeping up to who he felt were the Hotel Inspectors.
Part way through he decides that the previously infuriating Mr Hutchinson is actually an Inspector and immediately changes how he treats him.
Whilst ordering dinner, they have the following exchange:
— I’m going to have your Spanish omelette.
— Splendid.
— I assume that all the vegetables within the omelette are fresh?
— Oh, yes, yes.
— Including the peas?
— Oh, yes, they’re fresh, all right.
— They’re not frozen, are they?
— Well, they’re frozen, yes.
— Well, if they’re frozen, they’re not fresh, are they?
— Well, I assure you they were absolutely fresh when they were frozen.
Frozen food gets a bad rep, we find.
Seen as automatically “less good” than fresh stuff.
Whenever I bump into people in Tesco (not currently possible with social distancing) they always look in my trolley.
And often comment “I’m surprised to see you buying tinned food / frozen food / that”.
Frozen food makes up a good bulk of my intake.
Because it’s easy.
It often comes ready to cook with little to no ‘prep’ needed.
Ready chopped / diced veg, meat, fish, etc.
I can just chuck half a pack of this, half a pack of that in a pan, leave it for a number of minutes and return to a cooked meal that took under a minute of actual effort to make.
My breakfast is usually that as I normally have that alone before anyone else in the house is up.
Lunch usually something similar.
Tea a bit more of a “family meal” with more variety in.
I find that having a fair portion size of fairly low average calorie density food like that earlier in the day means I feel less need to snack and hit the evening with a reasonable number of calories left over in my ‘budget’.
Useful at the moment with the long evenings in (usually after a long day in).
When the temptation to eat more is higher than ever.
The nutrient profile of the same thing frozen versus fresh is either identical or close enough.
It can even be better – frozen veg will retain nutrients that week old fresh veg may have partially lost.
Basil knew.
If you want fresh, that’s cool.
But if you find frozen works better for you, that’s fine too – don’t let anyone tell you it’s “less healthy”.
Not without some sort of large, peer reviewed, published study to back their claim up.
More realistically, you might find some combination of fresh, frozen or tinned works best.
Each to their own.
But making it work is the key.
If we want to cook fresh and from scratch, that’s cool.
If we don’t want to do that, the next choice doesn’t have to be the opposite end of the spectrum.
They were fresh when they were frozen……………..
Much love,
Jon ‘Brush’ Hall
