Flaming Nora

I like Marks & Spencer and I like vegetarian food.  So you'd think that the two things combined - buying vegetarian ready meals from Marks & Spencer - would work. But it doesn't. Some of their vegetarian ready meal range is great and I'm a big fan of their veggie kievs and veggie mousakka. They're gorgeous, they really are, and well worth paying for.  But, tempted after trying those two tasty ready meals, I ventured further and succumbed to buying their stuffed red peppers.  Unfortunately they ended up in the bin after a couple of mouthfuls. How can Marks &Spencer get veggie food so right at times and at others, so wrong? Undeterred, this week I bought their new Melting Moments Mushroom Bakes. They looked nice, smelled good but if there was mushroom in there, I'm yet to find it. All I could taste was potato and as for the melting moment in the middle, it was a gooey kind of butter that tasted of salt. These mushr...

Becoming vegetarian in the mid 1980s meant a heavy reliance on Sosmix and Knit Your Own Risottos from Holland & Barrett. I’ve liked the shop ever since and often pop in there for vitamins and bags of dried fruit every now and then. I was in there this week and along with the vitamins, bought my first ever copy of their Healthy magazine (the UK’s Best-Selling Health Magazine, only £1.50!) Well, it was on the counter and an impulse purchase, but what a right load of twaddle it was. It didn’t bode well when I saw a two page article by the (now legally) fake Dr Gillian McKeith and a one page ad for the Dr Gillian McKeith’s Love Bar (an organic, healthy snack!) but it got worse, much worse. Now, I know nothing about science but I know psycho-science-babble when I spot it. On the supposed benefits of eating walnuts (p.70) This humble nut is great for helping us stay true to ourselves and how about this If you’re getting peer pressure, two drops of walnut on your tongue can help you a...