Recently I was on a roadtrip in Germany and stayed in the Ghotel in Frankfurt. I faced the challenge of cooking dinner with a hob, kettle and coffee maker at my disposal, but no pans.
I was quite pleased that the pasta worked out so well and that the outcome looked so appetising.
It reminded me of a chat I once had some friends over a pint in the pub. There was a lot of egg talk - frying one with an iron, poaching in the bath or the age-old boiling in a kettle. Simon came up with my favourite “toasties in the trouser press: cheese; cheese and beans; anything goes really”
We like vegetables. So we’re very excited to have the people from Riverford come along to our fete this year. What they don’t know about veg isn’t worth the forking manure, and we consider them to be a key partner in our quest to help people eat slightly fewer sausage rolls and a bit more fruit and veg.
As part of this quest, Riverford would like you to bring your strangely shaped veg to our fete. Wonky carrots, bulbous onions and courgettes that look like the Dalai Lama – all are welcome. The best ones will win a prize and be shown off in the Riverford tent. Or you can just post a photo of your weird veg here.
Also, we have a small competition for you. Just name the vegetables below (proper Latin names please, as well as their everyday names) and you can win one of three fancy boxes of Riverford fruit and veg. Post your answers as a comment, along with a tie-breaker – a maximum of 15 words completing the following phrase - "I love wonky veg because............"
Good luck (deadline is the end of this Friday 25th July).
We're having a new area at our fete this year, all about words, books and theatre. Along with live performance art, poetry slamming, Giant Boggle and storytelling, our friends at 4th Estate are also bringing along their book tombola.
The book tombola may not look like this in real life.
Instead of buying a ticket and praying to bag the bottle of gin over the collector’s set of King Charles Spaniel porcelain plates, you just need to bring an old book along to the fete. You then get to swap it for another book from the tombola. It might be better, it might not, but one thing’s for sure – you won’t be going home with a tin of beans or any commemorative canine crockery.
So please bring a book (or two) if you're coming to our fete.
If you're stuck for ideas on what reading matter to take on holiday with you this summer, then fret no more - the folk of Fruit Towers are here to help with a few well chosen book recommendations.
First up is Fordy, who has been engrossed in The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall.
According to the Iron Man himself, this book is 'brilliantly confusing, all about a man being chased by a conceptual shark, created by language, words and thoughts. I could not put it down.'
Meanwhile over in Hammock Corner, Mav is hooked on Jupiter's Travels by Ted Simon. Ted spent four years riding his motorbike around the world in the 1970s and met loads of fascinating people along the way.
It's a right good read apparently.
The lovely Sarah loved A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks so much that she keeps re-reading it whilst walking to work.
All that tripping up is worth it though as, according to Sarah, this book 'made me cry big, fat, happy tears, transported me away from the real world and made me daydream about romantical things.'
And finally, Dan is learning how to be the coolest dad on the block by reading Be the Coolest Dad on the Block by Simon Rose and Steve Caplin.
It contains all sort of useful information to impress the nippers, including why your fingers go wrinkly in the bath, how to build an anti-gravity escalator and how to make noises like a pigeon.
If you've just finished a right riveting read and fancy recommending it to all those in need of some riveting, just let us know your top tips for summer reading below.
When I was younger I firmly believed in the existence of Sasquatch, and the Yeti too. But as I got older, I stopped believing. Recently, whilst up late at night, I chanced upon an episode of Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World and relived the legendary Patterson-Gimlin footage.
I now believe again. Sasquatch is real.
And now back to the mysterious world of whole crushed fruit in a bottle.
If I had to choose one question I've been asked the most since working at innocent, it would have to be "Is there really a bananaphone?" The simple answer is yes. And although it's technically not the phone we speak into, it's what rings out to the whole of Fruit Towers. And it is shaped like a banana. In fact, this is what it looks like.
If novelty phones are your thing, you can see more here
Lots of people do ring us for a chat, and you get to speak to a real, live person too (as long as it's during office hours, we haven't quite reached a 24 hour hotline just yet). If you would like to get in touch, the number is on the bottle.
There's even a song all about it, by a nice man called Raffi. If you like your songs fairly repetitive, you'll love this one. You can listen and indeed watch a slightly strange video with a man who isn't Raffi above.
The sad news is, however, when we were having a bit of a move around in the office, the bananaphone was put somewhere "safe." You know, like the safe place you put your Bucks Fizz limited edition record to, and then can never remember where that safe place was. It's safe, but so safe you can't find it. We'll keep hunting and fingers crossed, we'll find it again.
Thank you Ted for last week’s blog about the innocent band. It got me thinking that the Madchester innocent music club has been a wee bit quiet of late. To make up for it, I’ll be sampling smoothies at Summer in the Park in Manchester this weekend. I’m really excited as the event combines my favourite things; music and food and drink. I’m even told there will be a few beards, delightful.
food and drink
On the food front, the region’s best producers will be making an appearance and there will be food from Manchester’s yummiest restaurants such as Marmalade. Visit Cup, a lovely new addition to Manchester’s Northern Quarter, if you want to quaff one of our smoothies. Or if you fancy a spot of tea and cake you can try the coolest brew in town, Mr Scruff’s Make us a Brew.
beards
The Travelling Band, winners of the Glastonbury New Talent 2008, will be making an appearance too.
So what are you waiting for? Bagsy your ticket and we’ll see you there. Just make sure you pop over to the innocent stand to say hello.
If you were watching Gordon Ramsay knocking up a vegetable curry last night (Channel 4, 9-10pm), you may also have noticed Janet Street-Porter talking about smoothies. She even made some alarming noises about smoothies not being that good for you, her argument being that if you drink too many smoothies you might end up with a big bottom.
She was talking about the fact that people might not realise how much sugar was in a smoothie. Our answer would be that it's the same amount of sugar you'd find in the equivalent amount of fruit. We've done lots of research and have worked out that the two portions of fruit in our drinks have exactly the same amount of sugar in them as if you were to eat two portions of fruit. Unsurprising really, seeing as all we do is squash lots of fruit into bottles.
Eating more fruit and veg is the second best thing you can do for your
health after quitting smoking (I think we've said this before, but it's
always worth repeating), so it seems slightly irresponsible to us to
scare people away from getting fruit in whatever form they choose. Not
enough people eat their five a day as it is, and seeing as our
smoothies are made from nothing but 100% fruit, they therefore contain good things that fruit itself contains – lots of amazing fibre, vitamins,
minerals, phytoprotectants and the sugar that occurs naturally within
fruit.
Our smoothies are designed to be part of a healthy balanced diet (not
necessarily an added extra on top of what you normally eat). So by all
means substitute a smoothie for unhealthy snacks like chocolate bars,
and don't get too spooked by Janet's big bottom scenario.
We'd like to introduce you to Fergus and Vish. They're our longest ever bananaphone callers (that's over a period of time as opposed to a really long phone call) and have been chatting to us since 2004. They travelled all the way from Newcastle to see us, albeit as part of an action-packed weekend, but they managed to fit in a visit, and have a natter over some tea, cake and smoothies.
Fergus and Vish model this season's smoothie fashions.
We've just finished updating the brand spanking new careers at innocent bit of this website. It seemed to be a sensible thing to do as the jobs pages always seem to be the most popular part of the site (other than the information on our drinks naturally).
We take careers stuff very seriously over here, so the new section contains a lot more in depth information on how we believe in doing business where you can watch a video of Rich talking turkey. Plus a section on life at innocent and your potential new career.
Oh, and all of the very latest career opportunities both in the UK and internationally (we update these pages very regularly so you can be sure all the roles you see are still available). We've even made it a lot easier to apply with a new online application form.
Why not have a look and see if there's anything that catches your eye. If not there might be something you could forward to a friend, or a friend of a friend. Or your second cousin Eddy, who's got a lot of get up and go and is pretty hot with all things career like.
There's nothing like settling down and having a good old read, which is quite apt as 2008 is the National Year of Reading, and this week, people all over Wales will be giving books out as part of their national Give a Book Week. We don't reckon it matters if you're in Wales or not, so give a thought to treating your loved ones to a new book. If you're looking for something for kids, anything by Oliver Jeffers is always a hit, even big kids like me enjoy them. If you like your books a little weird, I Lick My Cheese, is also a good buy. Or simply share your latest book with your mates, and make them promise not to fold the pages down. Feel free to share any page-turners you've read recently with us below.
We ran a little competition in our weekly email newsletter a couple of weeks ago to doodle on the label of June's smoothie of the month. Our Ben's just had a look over all the entries (you can see them all here) and decided on his three favourites. Which in no particular order are...
jomrpicklemolloy"Everyone went ‘ooo’ at this one. we think the birds make it, and the grass skirt."
sueappleton60's not so innocent desert island "Lots of brownie points here for pre-sketching in pencil. Preparation."
and creative_one"Nice use of felt tips, and we like milky joe too."
A box of smoothies goes to each of the winners. Keep an eye on your inbox for even more chances to win stuff.
Along with a few other thousand revellers, our Lucie went along to Glastonbury last weekend for a spot of festival living, falafel munching and Jay Z appreciating.
While she was there, she spotted this brilliant little tent/igloo structure in the Green Fields
It's made completely from used tetra cartons and some very bendy twigs.
On closer inspection, Lucie discovered a couple of rather familiar looking panels inside
Hats off to whoever made this ingenious recycled tetra tent. We salute you.
Every now and again we like to give you an on the ground update from our innocent foundation partners. Some of you may already know that 10% of innocent's profits go to charity each year, primarily to the innocent foundation, but it's individual stories like this one which really remind us of why we do this. The foundation is currently supporting work in South Sudan through FARM-Africa. The people of Sudan have had it really rough through being displaced through conflict, but they're working hard to rebuild their lives and reduce their reliance on food aid.
Amou Mariec Aweer (above) lost her husband in the conflict and her cows and goats were raided by her neighbours. She returned to her home village with nothing, but in 2007 she received training and 5 goats from her local FARM-Africa team. Now she has a flock of 8 goats and in time she will return 5 to the project to re-stock other families. She is now known as Mama Five Goats and this says it all:
“Now people are respecting me in their meetings because I also have goats like them. They no longer call me a poor woman. My life has changed, I am a woman now”.
Her newest goat kid is called Malith, which means spotted colour in Dinka, as animals are often named according to their colour. We wish luck to Mama Five Goats and all her goats.
Our Bronte (standing, far right) popped around yesterday to help us enjoy a Scandinavian themed cheese club. She's a bit of an expert on all things Scandinavian, being from Denmark herself, and also starting her very own Scandinavian Kitchen last year.
You can read all about yesterday's Scandinavian cheese club and the cheeses Bronte brought along for us on her own blog here.
We're hoping that you might be able to help spread the word about our village fete this summer in your local neighbourhood or place of work. All you need to do is download this post, print it out and stick it up somewhere where lots of people might see it.
Then you can take a photo of it and enter it into our flickr competition if you like. There'll be prizes for best placed poster, the strangest placed poster and the place where the most people are likely to see it.
A very kind drinker brought us a present last week when they popped into Fruit Towers
Speculoos is the spreadable version of those little biscuits you get with your coffee in posh coffee shops.
Those little biscuits are techincally known as speculaas and are a traditionally eaten on 5th December in Belgium and the Netherlands to celebrate St. Nicholas' Eve.
Seeing as biscuits last about 3 minutes in our kitchen, the biscuit spread has gone down a storm and has overtaken chocolate spread as the choice of topping for 3:30pm toast munchies.
Alternatively, it tastes just as good straight from the jar.
Yesterday, Fordy taught me how to fix a puncture properly and enlightened me as to how far puncture repair kits have advanced since I last got someone else to fix my bike.
No more glue, funny little rubber circles or scrubby bits of chalk.
Just a postage stamp sized patch that you peel off and stick over the offending hole.
Small enough to fit in your pocket yet strong enough to stop that air escaping from your tyres.
Laura from Sharnbrook Upper School got in contact to let us know that the Young Enterprise Group she's part of have made it through to the Young Enterprise National Finals with their company, Green Elephant.
They've published a little book for children, which is all about encouraging them to eat more healthily.
The book has some great healthy recipes in there and some nice illustrations, drawn by Michael who's also in the group.
The finals are today so fingers crossed for Green Elephant and Ollie the mouse coming up trumps.
Before you start writing in about the variation in shading, the bottle shadow or the hidden netball, there's actually only one difference, which all eagle eyed Dutch speakers will have clocked straightaway - namely, that our recipe book is now available in Dutch.
Hot off the press, it will make a lovely present for all your Dutch friends, neighbours, colleagues and football coaches and you can get it here, here, here, here and here.
Here's a very sneak preview of the innocent band who played for us here at Fruit Towers last Thursday lunch time. They'll be playing again at our village fete on both the Saturday and Sunday so keep your eye out for them on the programme.
Every single member works here Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm, so we're quite proud that they've managed to pull together a fully fledged 9 piece band in such a short space of time. In the blurry distance, you can probably just about make out Caroline, Cass, Ceri and Vic on vocals, Duncan on drums, Jamie M and Tim S on trombone and trumpet respectively, Ruvan on guitar, Malinna on bass and Ben T working his magic on the piano. Oh and there's a tambourine that gets passed around as well. We can't forget the tambourine.
And here's a chicken with his eye on some apples.
Unfortunately, he's already been booked for another engagement this summer.
Kirstie Simpson on mystery veg
Sarah on mystery veg
Sue on a thought for monday
Shelley Mason on mystery veg
Heather Knotts on mystery veg
Charlotte on mystery veg
Suti on catch them if you can
Marion Anslow on mystery veg
Janet on mystery veg