I got into a discussion with some of my colleagues today about the quality of the food we eat. It stemmed from me declining a sweet. It was the most lurid shade of pink I can imagine and I’m a lover of most things pink. I really don’t like confectionery at all but this was in the worst category of confectionery you can imagine. It looked as though it had been manufactured from pure, unadulterated chemicals. I doubt there was a single ingredient in it that you might have in your kitchen cupboard. I’ll probably get flamed for this but I don’t understand how people think that sort of stuff is good for kids.

It led on to a discussion about what you eat – I’ll always believe you are what you eat. I said I look at the ingredients on packs and if they are things I have in my store cupboard then I might be inclined to buy the product. If not, then it only gets into our home if DM has a real weakness for it – Coke being a case in point. I think the stuff is below sewer sludge on the scale of things I’d like to drink but he has a fatal weakness for it for some reason. I try to avoid buying it but occasionally he sneaks a bottle in without me noticing.

This doesn’t mean I’m a complete food fascist, I do have something of a weakness for crisps – especially M&S hand cooked black pepper ones. They’re not good for me (and heaven knows my waistline bears testament to that) but the ingredients are potatoes, vegetable oil and black pepper so at least that’s a bonus.

On the way home I got to thinking about it again because I heard an article on the PM show about the BBC stopping allowing their children’s characters to be used to endorse sweet, sugary food. Amazingly the corporation allows its children’s characters to endorse more than a hundred food products. It never occurred to me that such stuff might be a revenue stream for my beloved BEEB.

My journey home is usually the time I have my internal debate about what we will have for our supper and today was no exception. This debate just fuelled my desire to have something simple and nutritious, made from as few ingredients as possible.

So I chose the simple pleasure (yet again) of home made pasta made with nothing more than fresh home-laid eggs and De Cecco's fantastic Duram Wheat flour. It’s right up there with the best of my list of simple pleasures. When I started it (and the made up pasta is in the fridge resting at the moment) it was a pile of flour and five eggs. Three from Terri (that little darling is laying like a good un at the moment), one from Sherri and the last from Molly.

Later this will become tagliatelle with a mushroom and white wine sauce. Everything will be fresh and aside from needing to set aside an hour between making a batch of pasta and starting to cook, the entire preparation time will be around ten minutes.

I’ve taken lots of ‘nearly’ pictures of eggs in the last couple of months while striving for the perfect egg shot to complete the photography for my foodie calendar that I finally got round to making after Jill nagged me for ages over doing one. (Thanks Jill, I need a bit of pushing sometimes.) Almost all of them were of a bit of black velvet that the egg had either just passed or not quite got to yet!!! I eventually got the perfect one (or at least I think so) here. I know today’s is tame by comparison but I still like the photograph.


A year ago today - Sarah!