Alternative uses for tins no.1

Take one small, empty food tin. Remove the bottom of the tin to create a shallow tube or ring.

So hungry I could eat a...small tin of pasta shapes

Just over a year on from the horsemeat scandal, when traces of horse were found to be present in low-grade meat products, including burgers, ready meals and even some tinned foods, there is a pleasing irony to the fact that you can still buy tins of My Little Pony pasta shapes in tomato sauce.

 

Some hae meat and CANna eat...

While I can't lay claim to any Scottish heritage (or at least am not aware of having any), I am partial to a bit of haggis, and have in the past served it up around the time of Burns Night with the traditional neeps and tatties - and whisky too, naturally. I might not have bothered again this year, had it not been for spotting some time ago that Waitrose actually stock Grant's tinned haggis all year round in most of their branches, in addition to the fresh haggises (or should that be haggai? Oh no, wait - that's a book from the Bible) which gain prominence in their chiller cabinets towards the end of January. A snip at just 99p for 220g, I couldn't resist giving the tinned version a whirl.

 

A tin fit for a queen?

Back in June last year, the Queen celebrated 60 years since her coronation - an altogether more low-key affair than her Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012, when even food manufacturers were producing limited edition versions of their packaging - but no less worthy of some kind of commemoration.

A limited edition 'Jubilee' tin of Lyle's Golden Syrup

Tinned Play-Doh Pope Portraits. No, really.

A link here to the excellent site Design Taxi, which looks at all things arty and design-y. This is a post from a while back about Berlin-based artist Miriam Jonas, who sculpts detailed portaits of popes out of Play-Doh in fish tin cans. Of course she does. You wonder why more people don't do the same.

Get Well Soup

Heinz are very up on their social media it seems - not only do they have a Facebook page for their Baked Beanz, as mentioned in my last post, but they have one for their tinned soups as well. Usually it's fairly mundane stuff that they post on the page, trying to drum up interest in products that are available all year round (one discussion topic they started recently was "What do you like to dunk in your soup the most - bread, or toast?". The replies were thrilling, as you can imagine.) But at the moment they're being a bit innovative, and jumping on the fact that at this time of year pretty much everyone knows someone who has a cold (or worse), you can currently buy a tin of either tomato or chicken soup (arguably the most comforting of flavours) with a personalised label saying "Get Well Soon, ... ", delivered directly to the door of your loved one. Admittedly it will set you back £3.99 (the RRP of a standard can is 75p), but that includes P&P and a £1 donation to the children's charity Starlight, "to help fund Starlight Storytellers, who spend time and read stories with poorly children in UK hospitals to make them feel better". 

Here's the link to the page.

And if you don't want to part with your hard-earned cash for a good cause/marketing gimmick, you can post a 'virtual tin' on a friend's Facebook page instead, which is what I suspect most people will opt for (if they bother at all). Souper.

Bake(d) Five

Heinz launched their new “Five Beanz” baked beans on 10th June 2012. I know this for a fact, as they proudly announced the product’s first birthday on their Facebook page in June 2013. Yes, Heinz Beanz really do have their own Facebook page. And I am almost embarrassed to say that I “like” it, to use the social network’s own terminology. It was this notification, as well as a resurgence in the company’s advertising of the product around the same time, which prompted me to give them a try.