englandsword

Lusting after crisps? Unwrapping a mars bar ice cream with greed in your eyes? Licking the cream spoon and smiling with pleasure? You’re not alone, or unusual. Man is genetically coded to seek out, gorge and hoard these three fundamental building blocks for life - sugar, salt and fat. This is because they have, historically, been difficult to find, or costly to acquire/grow/nurture, or only very seasonally available. So we’re highly sensitive to their taste, their smell and their after effects…in short we’re sugar, salt and fat junkies.  Happily, for 99.9% of our time on this earth, humans have had to accept their lot, and work around these cravings within local, regional, seasonal and cultural circumstances, so as to build time-honoured healthy traditional diets based on generations of trial and error. However, of the holy trinity of desire let’s not forget that in the natural world, salt and fat are usually much easier to obtain than sugar. Which is why the craving for swee...

Last month I visited Biofach, the world's biggest organic food and wellness fair, in Nuremburg. It's my favourite trade show as I get to meet many old friends and suppliers and find new sources of inspiration from people who more often than not understand the value of growing and producing sustainable good energy food. Every year I go and every year I evolve my understanding of how to source, make and sell the right food, food that sustains us and sustains the planet. And I use this information to inform and guide decisions we make at Rude Health. My first train of thought is all about the value of organic and the meaning of organic: when we started the business it was relatively easy to create an organic food business in the UK, because consumers would pay a premium for what was seen as a worthwhile kite mark. Now, in the UK, they will not. In fact there's been a backlash against organic, and many retailers will actively select foods that are not organic, particularly if t...

Not all porridge is created equal. Yes oatmeal does take a little more time and effort than porridge flakes, but it's worth it. Once you've tasted the comforting, rich, oaty smoothness, and felt the generous, sustaining energy from a bowl of well-made oatmeal , you'll be hooked.  Why does it take longer to prepare? Because oatmeal is not a flaked grain. Unlike the steamed and rolled quick oat flakes - a late 19th Century invention - oatmeal is the oat groat (grain) cut into 3 (pinhead) or crushed (coarse/medium/fine grades). The Oatmeal has a blend of organic steel cut pinhead and medium oatmeal. Cooked with water and sea salt, oatmeal porridge is the original oat porridge and with a little help from traditional methods and some practice  it's easy and quick to make. 1. I begin in the time honoured way with an evening ritual, for which you'll need  oatmeal , water, kettle, a bowl and a measuring cup - this one is 100ml. Here I'm making enough for Max (7), me an...