waste not want not

Oh, I wish I wasn't as guilty of inefficient shopping as I am, but sadly I'm useless, always misjudging food quantities and either running out of stock almost immediately, or else opening my fridge and finding food which has passed its sell by date.

With Gordon Brown asking the nation to consider cutting back, the Guardian spend some time thinking about food wastage. Laura Barton writes:

"There is something slightly irritating about the prime minister's insistence that it is down to us consumers to cut our food waste. Less than half of the food thrown away each year comes from households. To suggest that the average householder is to blame for our colossal national wastage is to ignore the way that the food industry has been allowed to develop in this country, from the relentless rise of the supermarket to the flourishing of the fast-food outlet, the decline in farming and the death of the local shop. All of these affect why we buy the wrong things, and why we buy so much of what we do not need".

All of which is undoubtedly true - but the fact remains that a lot of people (including, for the most part, me) could do with developing stategies for efficient food consumption. So the article's tips, put together by Ms. Barton and John Henley, make sound advice and a surprisingly good read. I'll certainly be trying to think this stuff through more.

A few of their best tips:

Don't be afraid of an empty fridge

"I think that goes back to the rise of the big American fridge," notes Blythman. "It's an aspirational thing." You do not, therefore, need to buy acres of food each week to keep it chock-full.

Learn how to use leftovers

The lovefoodhatewaste.com site has a huge array of recipes contributed by celebrity chefs, nutritionists and members of the public, including a large number dubbed "rescue recipes" - in other words, how to put that bit of leftover chicken or half courgette to delicious use. There are also websites out there (leftoverchef.com and kitchen-scraps.com, to name but two) that, one you've typed in the primary and secondary ingredients you have spare, will go away and search their databases for recipes to use them up. Bit of fish left over, and some broccoli? Try, for example, Chinese steamed fish. And a couple of books may help: Second Time Around: Ideas and Recipes for Leftovers by Pamela Le Bailly, and The Use It Up Cookbook: Creative Recipes for the Frugal Cook, by Catherine Kitcho.

Take sell-by dates with a pinch of salt

As a general rule, only "use by" is worth taking seriously; "sell-by" and "display-until" dates are merely stock-control devices for food retailers, and "best before" is simply the producer's estimate of when the food will stop tasting good, which is fairly subjective anyway. Rather than slavishly observing these date labels, we'd be far better off understanding the kinds of foods that could actually be harmful if they go off, such as ready meals (including sandwiches), soft cheeses, pates and cooked, processed meats and seafood. Eggs with a Lion Quality stamp can be kept for weeks in the fridge; chicken, raw meats and fish will all look and smell unpleasant long before they're actively unsafe (as long as you cook it thoroughly, chicken, for example, is good for at least a week past its sell-by date). Apples last for months; potatoes are fine as long as you chop the green shoots off before cooking; tins and jars will last decades if not centuries; hard cheese is indestructible; and dry foods will last for years too. "Ignore sell-by dates," insists Swannell. "They're not relevant. And best before is just what it says on the tin; it doesn't mean the food is toxic the day after that date."

Elsewhere, over at B4L, Andrew asks an interesting question:

"Would the Government have been brave enough to suggest that people might save money by using less petrol, or that by borrowing less they might insulate themselves from rising interest rates? People inevitably realise this and adapt accordingly, but the reaction to a politician stating it would be furious."

lifted from the guardian

Flushed with the excitement that I now have two potential contacts at the Guardian through whom I can pursue my seduction-by-stealth of Ms. Barton (apart from Assistant Blog's very own Guardian Spy, Ali's about to move in with a Guardianista), I find a couple of articles worth linking to in today's paper:

First off, an interesting interview with Mike Scott of the Waterboys, who made the vain error of wading in and editing his own Wikipedia article without providing sources! What an idiot - except of course, surely he himself is the most assured source on the subject of Mike Scott. Well, I guess there have been enough self-serving, fact-erasing celebrity memoirs in recent years to crush that argument flat. Anyway, still uneasy with the circling motions of fame, he's a little reassured regardless, because they finally accepted his alterations.

Alexis Petridis, meanwhile has a little fun with Enter Shikari - or at least, with their fans. I particularly liked this extract, where Coops, a 17 year old fan, outlines his gig-going philosophy:

"The passion in the music, I think. Like, you're rocking out so hard and then you're raving out so hard, everyone's having such a good time and it gets too hot and you don't want to stop, because it's boring if you stop. You keep going and going and going and you can't hack it any more because it's brutal."

I love that teenage logic. Gigs are brilliant, right, but then sometimes, you stop rocking, and then it's, like, boring. Teenagers are like sharks, they have to keep moving forward, or else they die.

Oh, and here's an interesting aside from the same article. "The Times illustrated a story about the band winning an NME award with a picture of Shakira".

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to 'Rough Crossings' on the BBC tonight - Simon Schama's film about the journey from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone undertaken by the black slaves who escaped the plantations to fight on Britain's side in the American War of Independence. I've read the book, and it's fascinating and beautifully written. Today's TV page highlight's Schama's adroitness with descriptions, noting his "the wind-chipped edge of eastern Canada".

Today's Hail Hail Rock and Roll is no less lyrical, Laura Barton painting a picture of the love for a band resembling a tree you feel compelled to climb as it puts down root below you. "You place your weight on each branch with trepidation, in case it cannot carry you; you try to discern if it is a sapling love or a true, oakish thing".

Each of Barton's fine-tuned articles is like an acorn planted, recalling the Mountain Goats song she quotes, "Coming up through the cracks / Pale green things", which stay with you and grow.

the sharpening of knives

Another successful week for Laura Barton as she continues her bid to be mentioned here every Friday; another beautifully calibrated 'Hail Hail Rock and Roll' piece today:

"There is a small yet glorious moment in which a band sits before you perfect as a poached egg; hopeful, and unpunctured. This is the morning of your relationship, full of promise, and miles to go before you sleep. Then slowly the knives come out, and your bright yellow bubble is burst by the opinions of your friends, by the snoots in newspapers and magazines, by the snarls and sniffles of bloggers and radio commentators, by the fact that a song is commandeered by a car commercial and played relentlessly on prime-time television. On and on it runs, until you feel the soft flush of embarrassment whenever you are reminded of how much you liked that band, that song, and the embryonic hope that you once felt so keenly trickles away and grows tired and sticky."

True.

bedroom discos

More lovely writing from Laura Barton in the Guardian today:

"By the age of 16, I knew it took precisely four seconds to hop from my bed to the tape player. I knew just how long it took to rewind the Pixies' Hey. And I would make this little journey, back and forth, back and forth, the way a sparrow collects twigs, as if I were building a nest up there on my eiderdown".

Brilliant as ever.

a hiccup in time

I was going to introduce the following exerpt from Laura Barton's Guardian article today with some glib remark about how one day I will marry her and won't look for her articles with the same attention I do now, but then I thought that was really creepy, so perhaps I shouldn't say anything. Course, I have now, so sorry, Laura, if you're reading. Your article about 'Never Ever' by the All Saints was, however, typically brilliant. Here's a bit of it for the rest of you.

"We arrive at Smile too early, when they're still Blu-Tacking posters to the wall: Jules et Jim, A Bout de Souffle, Blow Up, Penelope Tree, Tretchikoff's Chinese Girl. And so we find a dark corner, stash our coats on the window ledge and watch the hepcats trickle in. This night is the hippest thing I have ever encountered in my young life. People wear neckerchiefs and chelsea boots. They play northern soul, Belle & Sebastian, a bit of Motown, 60s girl groups, plenty of Smiths. They dance with impassive faces and downcast eyes. They drink whisky. And then, shortly after midnight, amid all this heady coolness, the DJ plays Never Ever by All Saints.

Now, I never liked All Saints, I never bought their toggled-up combat panting. I loathed Pure Shores, hated Bootie Call, despised their sexless rendition of Lady Marmalade. But for those of you who do not recall, Never Ever was a quite magnificent confection that curtseyed to the Shangri-Las and the Dixie Cups, and began with the spoken lines: "A few questions that I need to know/ How you could ever hurt me so/ I need to know what I've done wrong/ And how long it's been going on ..." It was one of those songs that surprised you the first time you heard it and weathered repeated playing. But however great a song it was, it did not belong here, tonight. It was a chart song, and amid all the Martha Reeves and the Pastels and the Jimmy Radcliffe, it sat like a midwich cuckoo. I thought there'd be a revolt, I thought they'd hang the DJ, but instead there was a hiccup in time; a beautiful moment in which the whole room seemed to hold its breath. And then everyone cheered.

I don't really know why Never Ever worked that particular night. Maybe it was something to do with a certain seasonal bonhomie, with those festive weeks when we all wear our emotions like an endoskeleton, vulnerable to cheap TV and soft-centred ballads. But I suspect really it had to do with the power of a single song to take a sedimented familiarity and shake it up.

They are misfits, these songs, they ride in from the wrong side of town like the leader of the pack and sweep us into their arms. We fall for them not through some smirking irony but because, standing there in the candy store, they simply turn around and smile at us. And that's impossible to resist."

Here's the link to the rest of the article. Merry Christmas, by the way!

daniel johnston, laura barton

A lovely article on Daniel Johnston appears in today's Guardian, enlivened as ever by Laura Barton's lovely writing.

There is certainly something naive about Johnston as he sits here this afternoon, thumb rasping at his cigarette lighter, and reminiscing about the time he bought every kind of pen Wal-Mart had to offer "just to try 'em out". He avoids my gaze, staring intently at the coffee table, unless I volunteer enthusiasm for his music, or Feuerzeig's film, at which point his eyes dash up to meet mine, round and glad and unblinking: "What did you think?" he'll demand. "Have you seen it? Did you think it was funny? Did you like the record? You did? How much?" I stretch my arms out to the size of a large trout. "Alright, alright," he smiles and nods. "That's good," and resumes gazing at the coffee table.

Everytime I see Johnston he looks more like one of his own drawings, or Everett True, or a character in a sad Harvey Pekar comic. I hope Everett True never googles his own name - I'm exaggerating, Everett, if you do.

You can listen to some of Daniel's songs here.

laura barton on JT LeRoy

Despite the best efforts of the singular Lucy Mangan, Laura Barton has been the best feature writer on the Guardian for some time, and her interview with JT LeRoy in today's Guardian is brilliant even by her standards, especially when you consider the fact that she's dealing with such facetious people as the withdrawn writer and his entourage. I think that LeRoy is a decent bordering on brilliant writer, athough I couldn't be less interested in his subject matter, but I've never understood the excitement roused in people by his strange behaviour and secretive personality. He evokes a uniquely self-absorbed and American take on the cult of celebrity, and something about him depresses me; I'd far rather take the conceptual myth-making of, say, Tracy Emin or Sarah Lucas than I would his or someone like Vincent Gallo or Courtney Love. Predictably, he gives Barton the runaround, but gives her in the process an interesting angle, enabling her to embark, like Nick Broomfield, on a fruitless but entertaining quest for identity. Doubtless exactly what he intended, but the intrigue drives Barton to some really great writing.

"I am confused by their sudden desire to be candid, and baffled by the late-night telephone calls and the accents and the giggling celebrity entourage. I am perplexed by the fact that when I left them, Emily handed me a packet of organic chocolate chip cookie mix. I could not tell you if I liked them or they liked me. The facts remain as clouded and uncertain as when I left London. But in some curious way, I am rather pleased to be left clinging to a solitary yet buoyant fact: somebody has written those books, and really, I don't much think it matters who."

The best feature-writing leaves you with an appetite for the writer's work, and while I read without particular enthusiasm some of LeRoy's work previously, Barton makes me keen to do so again. I fear, however, that I won't enjoy it as much as I did Barton's closing paragraphs.

"It is all a matter of authenticity. Is it because if JT LeRoy is not a drug-addled hobo hooker made good, we feel embarrassed because we've been conned, as if we paid full price for a Louis Vuitton purse only to find it was a fake? But nothing has been taken from us. The books remain: as startling and disturbingly beautiful as they ever were. There is nothing that has sullied the New York Times's assertion that "his language is always fresh, his soul never corrupt". And what strikes me more than anything is that in this age of overblown celebrity, where people such as Paris Hilton can be famous purely for being Paris Hilton, mightn't JT LeRoy represent the precise inversion of this? The work is all. The identity is irrelevant.

The words that surface most frequently in my head are those of the writer Peter Murphy, who contacted LeRoy after the New York Magazine piece to show his support: "It all boils down to this," he wrote: "I can't prove the existence of god, but I sure do love the Bible"."

Razorlight; hmm

One of the downsides of allowing yourself to be interviewed by someone who isn't a music journalist, and is thus not cravenly beholden to the 'rock star' myth, is that you open yourself to be stitched up and exposed as a fool, as Johnny Borrell no doubt discovered when he opened up Laura Barton's hilarious interview with him in the Guardian this morning. Not that it isn't his own fault.

For those who have somehow missed Mr. Borrell, lead singer of insipid indie hopefuls Razerlight, he has recently encountered some success with his band's debut album, and has let it go to his head somewhat, proclaiming himself a kind of Charles Dickens-Bob Dylan for the twenty-first century. Well, for those of us who still pick up a copy of the NME in the library every now and again and are inured to the silly, hyperbolic things that 'rock stars' say, this isn't too shocking - grand declarations of genius are all too common in the world of conservative indie rock, and the quotes are normally accompanied by the kind of journalism that is just impossible to take seriously - witness the recent fawning over Pete Doherty and this beloved (coughs violently) 'Albion'. For example, has anyone ever heard a Libertines record which is anywhere near as enjoyable as reading one of their ridiculous, self-aggrandising interviews?

Yet having somehow captured the attention of a large group of people (I wonder why no-one else noticed that their was a Richey Manic shaped hole in modern pop), Doherty does at least have some claim to influence. Borrell is stumbling in his wake. And he may be a nice looking chap, but that doesn't make the following statements any cleverer.

"Y'know, I could've been a poet," he swaggers, "but I've never seen anyone perform poetry and been anything other than bored out of my head. Cos it's a dead art form, you know? The whole point of Razorlight is to get something that means something and has some artistic merit coming out of your speakers in three minutes. That's why movies work. It's a shame theatre can't do that, but it can't."

Before I continue, I'll just take a moment to reproduce a little verse; I'll leave it up to you to work out whether this is from the pen of Johnny Borrell or Philip Larkin. See if you can work it out...

"Six in the morning and you rise and you fall, you got to
You got to grab what you can
Here comes your man, baby, he's a winner, yeah
He's a gunslinger"

Right.

An excellent writer (and rather a better poet than Borrell, I'd hazard a guess) like Laura Barton could rip this chap to shreds. Instead, she lets him do the talking while slyly poking a little fun at him along the way. The newfound pin-up status rests awkwardly on his bony shoulders, she writes, moments before allowing him to observe that "If I saw me I'd want to speak to me, too - I'd think, 'That guy looks like he's from Mars, he's somehow strangely compelling. I don't even look human". Borrell, needless to say, looks exactly like the lead singer of every post-Strokes indie band in the Western world.

Like the Libertines, Razorlight trade heavily on faux-romantic london imagery. He spies London's charm in some unlikely corners, however, waxing about "the dirt on the streets, King's Cross, the feeling of having no money, waiting for the night bus and not getting on the night bus, arguing with the driver and having to walk home." Sigh. How is this different to Brett Anderson's vision of early 90s London? Clue - it isn't. And it's a lot less thrilling, too. If the likes of Razorlight and The Libertines' boring rhetoric has a like-minded antescedent it isn't Charles Dickens or The Clash (some hope) it's the pissy, cliche-ridden period of mid-Britpop mod revivalists, it's Thurman's "Oh, wouldn't it be nice / To drink some English Tea?" And musically, of course, Razorlight are just anaemic, sub-Strokes tosh.

Of course, that's not why I wrote this - I could single out any number of dreary, unimaginative indie boy-bands for abuse, but rarely do so; whatever. But it takes an idiot like Burrell, proclaiming loudly that rock music is a 'valid art form' (uh, where have you been for the last forty years, we all agreed on that decades ago!), recycling all that tired crap about driving a motorbike "as fast as I can", tapping into "your mojo", and then having the ignorance to say of your songwriting process: "It's like Borges ... when he wrote The Zahir and I." Ahem.

So. That got my goat.

I feel better now.