meemalee

One of the things I really appreciate about my job is I can take a full lunch hour - none of this dining al desko nonsense. Of course, this means I usually end up buying something stupid. My favourite place to buy stupid things is Leather Lane . There's the French Rasta who sells fab leather bags, the two pashminas for a fiver stall, the bookseller where I got Tender for a tenner, the snack stall where I found some Bible Bread , and the Age Concern which always throws up gems - last time I was there I found a tanuki. A tanuki ! Said tanuki There's also some great street food on Leather Lane, like the little Thai stand, the baked potato dealer and the Curry Hut. The most renowned of them all is of course Daddy Donkey , the burrito people. I've been aware of them since 2005 when I first started working in the area and they were still a baby Donkey - just a tiny stand run by a guy called Joel. Somehow though I never got round to partaking of their fare. So it was kinda weir...

So last week I was stuck at home for three days, because my "metro" train service into London is a big steaming pile of fail and couldn't cope if a pigeon farted in its general direction, let alone deal with the heavy snowfall we'd received. Cabin fever was setting in, not least because husband and I were unused to being at home at the same time without it being a holiday. Apart from working, we passed the time by yelling to each other to make a cup of tea. I invariably won because (a) I'm me and (b) he was nearer the kitchen. Anyway, as I've mentioned before , I'm a survivalist at heart, so being snowed in was kinda thrilling as it provided the perfect excuse to break out the ration packs I'd kept stockpiled under the stairs. Okay, not technically ration packs (though Lord knows I've tried to buy some genuine field rations off eBay), but camping meals made by Wayfayrer . Pasta and meatballs, and chicken casserole - so far, so blah, but here...

So hubby and I got back from Japan a week ago and whilst we mostly ate like kings, every so often we craved a bit of junk food. Nothing hits the spot quite like a juicy hamburger, so here's my round-up of the best burgers in Japan, where they call them hanbaga (or hanbaagaa depending on who you talk to). meemalee's Guide to Japanese Hamburgers 4. MonsterBurger At Number 4 is MonsterBurger, the creation of Muscle Park , a weird sports theme park in Odaiba , Tokyo. The meal is enough for two, costs about ¥ 1250 (about £8) and comes with a drink and a choice of either weird knobbly fries or potato smiley faces. Guess which one we chose? The point of MonsterBurger is The MonsterBurger - a ridiculous towering beast of a burger in a box shaped like the multi-coloured vaulting horse mascot of Muscle Park itself. The daunting concoction was actually three separate sandwiches skewered together by a wooden stick - the top one was breaded chicken fillet, the next cheese and bacon, and t...

The horror, the horror Wrong, wrong, wrong, I tells ya. A travesty of justice was unleashed yesterday when Builder's Breakfast won the Walkers Crisps Do Us a Flavour Election . The general public scandalously went against both my and Charlie Brooker's better judgement by voting for the mankiest potato creations ever. To recap our views quickly: Me: "... I was not put on this earth to eat eggy crisps. Just thinking about them makes me heave a little ..." Mr Brooker: "... the crisps themselves taste of stale fried egg and little else. It captures the feeling of sitting in a greasy spoon, being dumped via text while your food repeats on you. Depressing ." Builder’s Breakfast won with 232,336 votes - almost 22 % of the total . The six finalists Votes for the remaining finalist flavours were as follows: • Onion Bhaji - 221,032 votes • Fish & Chips - 218,270 votes • Crispy Duck & Hoisin - 176,184 votes • Cajun Squirrel - 116,777 votes • Chilli & Choc...

A finger of Fudge may have satisfied kids in the Eighties , but I like my fudge to come in slabs or chunks. Yum Yum Tree is a little fudge company which specialises in the latter. Yum Yum Tree was set up in 2008 by Lily Turner , when she began making home-made gourmet fudge as Christmas gifts for friends and family in the little village of Thurston, Suffolk (where a lot of our home-grown British sugar beet is produced). Overwhelmed by their positive response, she started selling her fudge at local farmers' markets and the village post office. Now Yum Yum Tree's roster of clients has expanded to include customers as illustrious as Jimmy's Farm and Farm Shop . I was lucky enough to receive a beautifully packaged, bumper Yum Yum Tree gift box of various fudgey flavours comprising Ginger, Chocolate, Vanilla, Cranberry & White Chocolate, Strawberry, Coconut and Mint Chocolate Chip . The first thing that struck me was the intense creaminess of the fudge - it's defin...

All my life, jug-eared Uncle Gary has been exhorting me to eat crisps and I have willingly heeded his call. I've seen good times ( Thai sweet chili Sensations ) and bad times ( vanilla ice cream Monster Munch ) and even in-between times ( hedgehog flavour . What was that?), but after many years of crispy adventure, my taste buds had begun to crave the simplicity of pure potato-ey goodness. These days, there was nothing I liked better than curling up with a packet of Salt & Shake sans blue packet, except perhaps for the sheer unadulterated joy of Tyrell's Naked Crisps . All this was to change however when Uncle Gary unveiled his latest abomination - six new flavours to tantalise those left unmoved by mere prawn cocktail and cheese & onion. How could I resist? The six flavours have already been whittled down from suggestions from the public and it's now up to those same people to judge which of these creations deserve to join the Walkers stable permanently. In al...