Graze – Nature Delivered

Having been sent a promo code by a friend from work for Graze I couldn’t really say no. So I signed up for a free first box / half price second box. You can sign up for the same offer by tapping in this code in the right box – 6BK6HZY.

Essentially Graze is a service that delivers natural, healthy, snacks to your desk – in a range of formats. (Right up Cowie’s street I thought.) From the moment I logged onto the site I was impressed. It’s slick, with high production values and very impressive photography of a wide range of foodie nibbles. You are encouraged to choose your preference of healthy snacks to be delivered using a similar engine to Love Film. I ticked a few boxes at random and waited for the outcome. Cowie was far more judicious and no doubt will reap the rewards.

2 days later I was pleasantly surprised when a very smart brown cardboard box arrived with my goodies inside. All the girls in the office gathered round to see what was inside my Pandora’s box. My first parcel contained several juicy slices of pineapple, a handful of black pepper cashews and some black olive focaccia. The pineapple was delicious and put me in a very healthy mood. And the girls all loved the cashews. The bread was a bit flaccid but the olives concealed within it were tasty and of higher quality than you normally encounter.

I am looking forward to my second box arriving tomorrow. But will I continue my subscription? To be honest, I won’t. It’s not for me because I don’t like the idea of being bound into an expensive routine. But that’s just me. The quality of the food is high. The service itself is first class. And the introductory offer is hard to say no to.

The brains behind Graze have done a great job with the consumer experience… maybe they could take things a step further with a blogger relationship programme?

The Yorkie Bar of the Chilli World

This chilie is not for girls!!!

Hotter than Britney Spears in an underage pole dancing competition dressed in PVC. And then imagine that you were watching her perform this erotic showstopper in a sauna that had caught fire. Then imagine, if you can, that the fire brigade had turned up with no water and instead of them all being burly men they were all Jessica Rabbit clones. And if you can stretch your imagination any further… just remember the times that you have run a bath, tried to adjust the hot tap with your left foot and landed up scalding yourself to within an inch of skin catching fire.

This badger looks really innocent. Just don’t trust it. We only read the seed packet after we had got a bit too macho and popped a red chili in our mouthes at the same time. I almost blacked out, and hiccuped my way to the kitchen where I forced a shovel of ice into my mouth followed by 3 pints of chilled milk. I couln’t really see straight for about an hour, not to mention the fact that my lips swelled up and made it hard to speak.

They aren’t called Prairie Fire for nothing!

Man Eating Plant

Otherwise known as a “Sundew Plant” – which loves nothing better than a nice plate of aphids for lunch. And guess what… our chili plants are covered in green fly. So we’ve managed to set up an organic, biodynamic, symbitotic eco system on the east facing fourth floor of an advertising agency in the middle of London!

Our plant is very particular – its water (which it drinks like a fish) must be distilled, and preferably acidulated with lemon juice. Tap water would kill it. So I have bought it some beautfiully clean Tesco’s mineral water which it is loving so much that it has broken into flower.

We feed it around 6 aphids a day, which we think might well be too much. We’re worried it might just exploded like Mr Creosote! On one ocassion it caught hold of a centipede, curled up and digested it over night. I’m a bit concerned that it could be a man eater, like the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes…

Here it is in full glory…

We’ve just planted a herb pot with seeds and have harvested our third crop of chilies.

Sweet Chilli Sauce

Those of you who read at all regularly will remember the excitement of our chilli plantation in our office courtesy of Thomasina Miers winner of MasterChef and owner of Wahaca.

This is the post showing how our chilies have developed… and here is a post showing how we use a special technique, know as the Barry White technique, to pollinate our plants.

Now that we have chillies we are all cooking with them on a regular basis. I made a spaghetti ala amatrican the other night which was so tasty I didn’t have enough left over to feed the guys at work. But Oli was far more sensible and made a delicious sweet chilli sauce. It was so good we bought some spring rolls to take away from Royal China next door and ate them at our desks – whilst discarding the Royal China sauce!

Delicious sauce. Very garlicy. Quite mild chilli heat. Good consistency. Slightly like a chutney. Better than the stuff in the polystyrene cup from Royal China!

Ed is busy drying his chillies in order to make some mega hot chilli oil to slosh on our food at lunch time. As ever, thank you Wahaca for the chilli seeds. The best technique involves drying them in a sunny window on a length of thread as per the picture below. If you don’t dry your chillies apparently the chilli oil goes mouldy.

And I am thinking about making some spicy mexican sausages… or maybe something Italian… Any suggestions?