Roll with it, Scotland!

It's more than a month now since the Scottish people, faced with their biggest political decision in living memory, decided not to turn their backs on 300 years of history and become independent, but to remain part of the UK.

What had seemed initially like an idea that would never take flight - no doubt why the government agreed to a referendum in the first place - ended up being nail-bitingly close, with the 'Yes' campaign gathering more and more momentum as the referendum approached, and the three main party leaders looking increasingly worried, decamping to Edinburgh to give pleading speeches to convince Scottish people not to leave them. But in the end they said no, Westminster breathed a sigh of relief, Salmond resigned, and the Queen purred. Allegedly.

What has this got to do with tins? Nothing really, but I myself was north of the border over the summer, both in Edinburgh for the festival and later on visiting relatives in the Highlands, so naturally during that time I spent a while perusing various shops for local tins of interest, and came home with a couple of corkers, including this one, which even has its own smart tartan label.

 

This week's big (tin) opening

A new 'pop-up' restaurant set up shop in Soho this week. Hardly the most exciting of news items, is it? With so many places to eat and drink either springing up or fizzling out around town, whether intentionally temporary or not, it's not really news at all. No sooner has one restaurant or bar opened and become so popular that the queues for a table stretch down the street and round the corner, than another opens round said corner, and those at the back of the queue for the first place find themselves at the front of the queue of the second. This week's opening probably won't attract such huge crowds, but as far as I'm concerned, it's the most important and exciting new venture of the year, if not the decade. The unique selling point of the place? It serves tinned fish. And nothing else.

Who knew the world of tinned food could be so topical?

While it might have been a better article if produced by the likes of Private Eye or The Onion, I was quite amused by the following spoof article, which featured in the Sunday Sport yesterday (or so Twitter informs me; I certainly don't read the paper myself!):

Pop down to The Cornershop

Some time ago I wrote about a project called The Cornershop, for which the artist Lucy Sparrow was seeking funding through Kickstarter to enable her to open an old-fashioned corner shop, of the kind which are sadly few and far between these days, but with all the items on sale made out of felt.

She managed to raise over £10,000 in donations, vastly exceeding her initial £2000 goal. I made a contribution myself, which entitled me to my very own soft tin in advance of the shop's opening. After getting in touch with Lucy and telling her all about my blog, and she very kindly offered to make me a special tin of corned beef - seen here in my kitchen, alongside a real tin. I like the fact that due to the stuffing inside it, it looks like it's bulging slightly, as if it's been languishing on the shelves of a corner shop for far too long.

Lucy spent seven months stitching together hundreds of items for the shop, which opened last Friday in a long-since closed premises just off Columbia Road in east London.

Kheer today...kheer tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that...

Last Monday was Eid al-Fitr, celebrated by Muslims around the world as the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting. The name literally translates as "festival of breaking of the fast", but it is also given other more informal names such as the Sugar Feast and the Sweet Festival, as traditionally desserts and sweet treats form an important part of the celebrations. I was suddenly reminded of the fact that it must therefore have been over a year since I bought this tin of kheer, an Indian style rice pudding, from Tesco, as it had been on offer during Ramadan last year. Or perhaps it was even two years ago - it had already passed its best-before date, which would be quite a short shelf life for a tin if only a year old. Not only that, but like the corned beef hash from a few weeks ago, the product is no longer stocked by Tesco at all. So, if you read this and fancy trying it yourself, I'm afraid you can't any more. Sorry. I really do need to get my skates on with regards to trying these tins and blogging about them, rather than just buying them and leaving them to gather dust in the cupboard.

SPAMabit more

I still had quite a bit of the tin of SPAM with Real Bacon left after the popcorn experiment, so was keen to try out some other recipes to use up the rest of it. I made a tea in my SPAM mug (which I bought a few years back from a car boot sale in Wimbledon for truly bargainous 20p), fired up the laptop and got Googling for ideas.

One of the places I frequently turn to first for inspiration is the fantastic blog Food Stories, whose author Helen Graves has a huge passion for cooking and experimenting with food, and an appetite that more than matches it in size. I love the jokey, irreverent style of her writing, and the fact that she tags quite a few of her recipes as 'guilty pleasures', yet you get the feeling she doesn't really feel that guilty about them at all, cooking, eating and writing about whatever she feels like.

I think I have yet to read one of her recipes that doesn't leave me wanting to try it myself, and I still have dreams about the epic Boston Baked Beans which I once made from her recipe. Equally, her photos and descriptions of the food she tries on her travels have added a quite a few previously unconsidered locations to my list of places I want to visit - Lebanon, Georgia and Ethiopia to name but three.

I was reminded of a post on the blog from some time ago, when Helen had been asked by Hormel, the makers of SPAM, to come up with a recipe using their prized pork product. She responded in typically innovative and witty fashion with the 'SPAM mi', her take on bánh mì, the classic Vietnamese baguette-style sandwich, replacing the usual minced or sliced pork, sausage or meat pate with SPAM. Genius.

And now for something largely the same...despite the added bacon

Fans of classic comedy will no doubt be aware that the five remaining members of Monty Python recently reunited for a series of live shows at the O2, the first time the team had performed together onstage for 30 years. Given that they have a combined age of 361, it seems likely that this will be the last occasion too (unless they are still short of money to pay for their various legal bills and divorce settlements, in which case the Monty Python cash cow might get another milking yet).

I wasn't at all surprised to learn that the shows sold out in a matter of minutes, but while it would have been a great experience to have been there, I wasn't hugely disappointed, given the crazy prices of the tickets, and the fact that the O2 is a cavernous hole of a venue. When it was later decided that the final show would be broadcast into cinemas across the world though, I jumped at the opportunity and bought a ticket straight away, feeling pleased with myself that I had only paid £15 as opposed to many times that amount, and would most likely get a better view than those seeing it live. And then of course it was announced that it would be being shown on television anyway on Gold, putting an end to my smugness.

Anyway, it was an enjoyable evening's entertainment; not exactly groundbreaking stuff, but I don't think anyone had expectations in terms of new material - the show was always going to be very much a final revisit of the most famous sketches, a little like going to see an ageing rock band do their last 'greatest hits' concert.

"Spam, spam, spam, spam..."

I feel an occasion like this demands recognition in some way though, and given that one of Python's best-loved routines features a certain brand of tinned meat product, it seems only right therefore that I write a post about...SPAM. You couldn't really say that the sketch champions SPAM as such, but it has certainly done much to seal it within the public's consciousness - indeed, it is the sketch's suggestion that SPAM is ubiquitous yet unwanted that years later led to it giving its name to the emails that clog up inboxes across the globe.