This is a site I often use run by the NZ Food Safety Authority. Has a consumer section with lots of good information about ‘hot topics’ of the day. http://www.nzfsa.govt.nz/consumers/
Aunt Betty’s Rice Pudding – I made a difference!
I had a craving the other day for tinned rice pudding. On my British OE I used to eat a lot of it as it was really cheap and you can eat it right out of a tin without cooking it. I picked up a tin of Aunt Betty’s rice pudding at the supermarket to find it is made in Thailand from Thai rice and New Zealand milk. Aunt Betty’s is owned by The Old Fashioned Food Group who have product labels such as Hansells, VitaFresh, Real Yogurt etc. On their website it states it has three manufacturing sites – Penrose, New Lynn and Masterton. I don’t see Thailand on that list? So I emailed them to find out why they are implying that their products are made in New Zealand as opposed to overseas.
Today I promptly got a reply from The Old Fashioned Food Group saying that those three NZ sites were the sites they owned and their website would be adjusted in view of receiving my email. Sure enough their website now states “A majority of our products are manufactured at our 3 sites across NZ ……. and the remainder sourced from third parties throughout the world”.
OK it’s not exactly front page news but it’s my first triumph as an informed consumer!
Free range bacon
Well we’ve become a free range bacon household the last two weeks, buying Freedom Farms bacon. I’ve still volunteered to stay off bacon though as hubby has to buy a smaller pack for the same price as non free range bacon. Won’t do either of us any harm though. I hope we will be able to continue to buy free range at our Pak n Save as living in a fairly low income area there is the possibility that it won’t sell that well and won’t be stocked after a while. There is no way we can afford the free range pork chops and roasts that we’ve seen and we earn a reasonable salary – our solution is just not to eat these products if we can’t afford free range. I’ve also found another company online that sells free range pork products http://www.thebaconstation.co.nz/ but hubby says he’s not buying food off Trade Me! I have to admit in terms of packaging and gel packs keeping it cool etc while being posted I would rather buy my bacon from the supermarket.
Electricity Bill panic
Wow that’s a lot of money! I just got the electricity bill for the first two months of the cold season. This is the first ‘winter’ in our bigger house so we were not quite sure what to expect. I’ve realised that I’ve been stupid though by not keeping a closer eye on the meter. You don’t need to go out and buy a fancy electricity meter to read appliance electricity use etc. You can easily keep an eye on your electricity use just by recording what you are using each day from the meter reading and what this translates into in terms of money. That way I can start working out what we can do over the winter season to keep the power bill down a bit as we thought we were being fairly good!
Shop bought vs homemade
Just got home from work and have had a snack of pikelets and lemon curd, mmmmmm. Sunday evening I noticed that the lemons had been there for a while so they needed to be used up. Found a recipe in my recipe scrap book for lemon curd and decided to give it a go. So there I am 8:45pm in the evening making lemon curd for the first time! Have to admit though it beats shop bought hands down and was a lot cheaper, especially seeing as the lemons were free. It also goes in a recycled jar.
Lemon Curd
Half a cup of sugar
50g butter
Finely grated rind and juice of 2 lemons
2 eggs, lightly whisked
Place sugar, butter, lemon rind and juice in a small saucepan over medium heat and stir, until butter is melted and sugar dissolved, Add the eggs and stir continuously over a low heat, until the mixture thickens. Pour into a sterilized jar – makes about 1 cup.
There are lots of lemon curd recipes but I kept this one in my recipe file because it only makes one jar full which is just right for us.
Source: Foodtown magazine