But can you eat it?

The text for today’s lesson comes from the late great Edmundo Ros, whose sepulchral tones ring in my ear as I type: "It’s illegal, it’s immoral or it makes you fat!"

Healthy eating – OK, the advice from "experts varies daily, but is there someone who can help us eat healthily (and maybe enjoy our food as well)?

A picture of health

In current UK use, the word "agency" can make the blood run cold. Government agencies run amok through our society, with politicians running behind them whining "not my responsibility". So why bother with the website of the Food Standards Agency?

The FSA seems to have received some good advice on how to run a website which informs without hysteria or too much gobbledegoop. OK, they always have line-up of warnings about who’s trying to poison us this week, but even these steer well clear of raging headlines and overblown prose. But let’s leave the poxy peanuts and the rest, and have a look at what they say about nutrition (there’s a link in the left hand column).

In terms of eating well myself (I try, I try) I was attracted by the section entitled "Using the eatwell plate". Now the eatwell plate is an attempt to make a balanced diet possible for people who nod off during well-intended lectures on nutrition. There’s a lovely picture of a plate, divided in proportion to the amounts of food types you should be eating – meat and fish, fruit and veg, rice and spuds, and so on. I was going to liken it to a pie-chart, but somehow that doesn’t seem appropriate!

You can read some rather careful words about using the eatwell plate concept, but the picture itself, along with some useful external links, makes a good start on its own – you can get a larger-sized picture to print off and tape to the side of your deep-fat fryer.

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Home & garden". The Food Standards Agency is under "Food and drink".)

Oh, you know, I just threw it off!

You know how it is: you look in the kitchen, you find a few bananas, and a bit of old chicken in the fridge, and you need to rustle up a little something in about half an hour. What to do? Turn to the Recipe Search, that’s what. And thirty minutes later you impress your guests with Chicken Maryland with fried Banana.

The Recipe Search comes from Sainsbury’s, who obviously want you to toddle down to the nearest branch and buy any of the ingredients you don’t have to hand. But the website is freely available, so you can buy the stuff wherever you like.

Mind you, for the chicken and banana concoction you need an oven. So I’m not sure what I’ll be able to do with them using a microwave and a toaster. Bearing in mind that "Mama Don’Wan’No Peas An’ Rice An’Coconut Oil" (Count Basie).

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Home & garden". Recipe Search is under "Food and drink".)

Picture credit: ostephy/morguefile.com