Attitudes to snacks.

Celebrity cook Jay Rayner described how he was vilified when he gave his recipe for cheese on toast on a radio programme. First of all, I didn't know you needed a recipe for cheese on toast but I suppose that if you are a celebrity chef and cookery writer you need to have a recipe for everything. The recipe that got him into trouble added bacon to his cheese on toast. Lots of listeners took exception to it and contacted the programme to say what a dreadful person Mr Rayner is. How weird is that? Yet another example of the immediate feedback effect that goes on in modern media. 

Personally I don't see anything wrong with adding bacon to cheese on toast. Provided, that is, that you like bacon in the first place. It works very nicely if you beat an egg and add that to grated cheese before putting it on the toast. The egg bubbles nicely and you get a tasty snack. Not that I make cheese on toast that often. Phil objects to cooked cheese in or on any dish except pizza. So there we are. If the grandchildren demand toasties of any kind I use some clever little bags I acquired recently. You put whatever filling you choose between two slices bread, put the whole thing in the bag and the bag in the toaster. Et voilà, a tasty toastie without any sticky mess! And the bags can be washed out and re-used. The wonders of modern technology! 

Secondly, what I fail to understand about the listeners who objected to Jay Rayner's cheese on toast recipe is why they felt the need to pour out the bile of ill-feeling towards him. Why did they not just ignore his suggestion? It's not as if he was obliging anyone to follow his idea. Surely it is possible to accept that we might all have tastes that others disagree with. 

Our eldest granddaughter likes nothing better as a snack than honey and banana sandwiches: no butter on the bread, just a smear of honey and a mashed up banana. Do it on brown bread and it's perfectly nutritious. Her younger sister pretends to vomit at the very idea but then she doesn't eat fruit at all except maybe blended into a smoothie. 

Now, the smoothies, that's a modern food invention that I regard as completely unnecessary. And yet the "Innocent" company has made millions selling people bottles of blended fruit combinations. Amazing! I once took a group of students to Paris to some kind of conference about Europe. One of the talks was about business models, given by a chap from Innocent. At the start of his talk he asked if anyone had never had an Innocent smoothie. I think I was one of only three to raise our hands in the whole hall. 

Just a little food for thought! No accounting for taste! 

Oh, and thirdly, what are celebrity cooks for?