Planet Veggie

Coveted by cord wearers it says on the packet. I like cord. I also like crisps, so I should love these.

Tyrrells Crinkly Veg Crisps are a new product from Tyrrells. Instead of putting potatoes through their crinkling machine, they had a go with root vegetables (according to the PR blurb, it’s ‘your favourite root vegetables’ but they didn’t ask me what my favourite root vegetables were, as had they had asked me, my favourite root vegetables would not include beetroot, parsnip and carrot).

My only experience of vegetable crisps have been of the ones they sell in Pret a Manger. I didn’t like those, so I wasn’t expecting to like these. However, these aren’t like dried up vegetables, these are like crisps; the same texture as proper potato crisps and everything. They’re crinkly and crispy and crunchy and have a slightly sweet, aromatic taste.

Apparently, a sample of Tyrrells Taste Testers agreed that the Rosemary and Wild Garlic flavouring was reminiscent of vegetables at a traditional Sunday Roast, but as our traditional Sunday Roast vegetables are frozen peas, you’ll just have to take their word for that.

I have no idea if these are better for you than potato crisps but if you want a tasty alternative and aren’t bothered about calories (these contain 199 calories per 40g bag), then give them a go.

Suitable for vegetarians and people who wear cord.

I haven’t made a Dutch pancake since I moved in with The Meat Eater, as he doesn’t like pancakes. I also missed out on the pancakes at Googies last Tuesday (Pancake Day) lunchtime with my uni mates, as I had a tutorial with my tutor. So, as The Meat Eater was out tonight, I thought I’d make myself one.

I made the batter the same way I made it on my previous blog post (whisk together 60g plain flour, 1/4 pint milk, 1 egg) and added spinach, mushrooms, yellow pepper, black olives, cherry tomatoes, cheese and chilli flakes.

Lovely.

The Meat Eater has been complaining that since I became a student, all I cook is oven chips. This is a little harsh, but not entirely untrue, so I made an effort and looked for some recipes to cook this week. Tonight’s effort was HFW’s version (called ‘Corner Shop Spanakopita’ because a friend challenged him to make something using only ingredients he could find in his local shop) of Spanakopita (taken from his River Cottage Veg Every Day! cookbook), a Greek dish usually made with filo pastry, onion, spinach, feta cheese and spices. Hugh’s version was near enough identical except it was made with puff pastry, not filo. The other ingredients were onion, frozen spinach, goat’s cheese, cumin, thyme and eggs (well, there would have been eggs in it if I’d remembered to add them).

I would type out the whole recipe but Hugh waffles on in his cookbook (which probably isn’t much of a surprise) so if you want the recipe, you’ll have to buy it.

In the meantime, here are a couple of pretty pictures.

Here’s a blog post from another Spanakopita recipe (and the full recipe is there), a recipe I prefer to this one.

Before going to the supermarket, I’d asked The Meat Eater if he needed anything. He asked for crisps. He usually buys the same McCoys multipack each week and so I thought, hurrah, I can force him to be carefree and adventurous and I’ll get him some Monster Munch or Square Crisps or Discos or something. But then I saw the multipacks of Walkers. I usually buy any other crisps than Walkers. Walkers make rubbish crisps. They’re too thin, not crunchy enough, lack substance and aren’t very tasty. One thing they do do well though is thinking up imaginative flavours that tempt me to buy them. I’ve been through the World Cup flavours, the Red Nose Day flavours and all the other ones they’ve brought out.

Their latest marketing campaign to get us eating their substandard crisps is to have us guess the flavour. Genius. There are three mystery flavours: a dairy flavour, a meaty flavour, and a spicy flavour. All are suitable for vegetarians (incidentally, back in 2003 when this blog was a general vegetarian website and not a blog, I had a campaign running protesting against Walkers Cheese & Onion Flavour Crisps not being vegetarian. I had a page encouraging people to write to Walkers and complain, and to copy me in on the email. I posted all the emails on the website. In the same year, The Vegetarian Society awarded Walkers their ‘Imperfect World’ prize for their non-vegetarian cheese and onion flavour crisps. Walkers, shortly after receiving this prize, changed the ingredients, thereby making them suitable for vegetarians. I like to think I had a small part to play in this).

Today I tasted Mystery Flavour A (dairy). It was cheesy. Very cheesy. In 1991, I used to buy Walkers Toasted Cheese Flavour Crisps and they reminded me of this. Despite what I said above about their crisps not being tasty, these were incredibly tasty. The texture is still rubbish though, far too thin and splintery. I kept thinking shards of crisp were going to puncture my tongue.

When you’ve guessed the flavour, to be in with a chance of winning £50,000 you can post your guess online at www.walkers.co.uk and facebook.com/walkers or text A (or whatever letter you’ve tried), then a space and your flavour guess to 51199. I’m sure my guess of ‘cheese’ isn’t going to win me £50,000 but I can’t think of anything more adventurous.

Walkers may not know how to make nice crisps, but they certainly know how to sell them.

Update

The Meat Eater has emailed me to say that he reckons his Meaty Mystery Flavour was Cumberland Pork Sausage.