free food

london 7.02pm 18.7C (high 23.7C ) sunny wednesday 2018

we are still having warm weather, even though they keep telling us rain will come. but nothing like that so far. the weather website does not forecast rain either for the next 7days. ah well, nevermind.

i got two emails from steve, telling me of free food given out today. steve is the guy who goes to all the free food events.

one of the events i know about, that was the slim chicken, a new usa company opening a new branch in london. they do fried chicken breasts and the selling point is the sauces they accompany it with. so this one is a freebie with the chicken breast and all the sauces … they are very generous, let us have 2nd helpings. each time it is two long chicken breast pieces, very tender, that we can use to dip into the sauces. i did not go back for a 3rd helping… though i think they would give it to me if i did. then afterwards i wondered off to another freebie that steve told me about, one that i did not know. it was a van giving away free bacon burgers in smithfield market, that is near liverpool st station. i went around lunch time, so everyone was out of their offices, sitting around eating their takeaway lunches. so i did the same, and pretend to be a office worker on my lunch break. haha. all of them were eating bought lunches… no one was bringing home -made lunches. those lunch boxes must cost something, at least £5, and even then i saw a woman throwing away her salad box into the waste bin, with food still inside, not eaten.

salads are the easiest things to eat, i mean you can eat a lot without feeling full, but here she was could not finish it. when i was at the slim chicken place, a man came to sweep the 3 sauces that i picked and threw them into a waste bag. i could not help saying are you throwing them away? what a waste! and he said, afraid so. i had thought of recapping them and taking them with me. but they are very salty those sauces, one was sweet (has honey )  one is siracha hot, and the other is mayonnaise like. all salty though.

but anyway i had a enjoyable time eating the food, and wandering around looking at the other people. all were no older than 30s.

first time i am in the area when they are having their lunch time, and could see the kind of people who work there. no chinese people, and only one or two black people. perhaps there are plenty of them around but i did not see them, i have to admit i was not looking specially for them. hey, wait, the woman throwing away her half eaten salad was dark looking , indian or south american maybe. i cannot tell. 

there was a guy giving away free ribena drinks in a bottle at the entrance to liverpool st station, when i went there to get back after the freebie. i think the office workers there must be so used to these free drinks, because that guy was not crowded with people wanting it. i took one, and drank it, and thought it was nice because it was not as sweet as it used to be. but it was not fizzy, and is just like someone making a drink out of concentrated ribena by adding ordinary water. as a kid i love that taste of ribena but now as an adult i have stopped drinking it. maybe it was just as well we were too poor to have it in the house, so i dont get to drink it all the time when growing up. perhaps that might explain why i find it so easy to give up sweet drinks. i did not get that habit when young. 

added. 10.5.18 i had a look at the suger content of that drink, and it is 4.6mg /100mg. quite a reduction when the ordinary bottle usually contains 11.6mg/100mg. but better to just drink water really. these bottles usually cost £1.25 for 500ml, and there is all that plastic to process. 

the bueno theme

london 2014, friday

I have noticed that there is no year printed on my posts. only the date and month, so i am wondering how anyone would know what year it is if they were to pick an old post at random.  even i wont know.

the theme of the pages is called bueno, and i picked it just because it was the first one that came up when i first started this blog.

 that is why u see me writing the day and year next to the ‘london’ heading. this tells me where in the world i am blogging from.

in the past i used to travel a lot, and so the london part makes sense but now of course i stay in london a lot and dont travel away. but i am sure the day and the year will be useful when i go back to this post years from now.

I see from the wordpress blog that they talk about their new themes quite often, telling us of this or that new feature. but i dont really know what they mean and tend to ignore it. i dont know how to change my theme, but also some themes are not for free blogs, u have to pay and i dont really want to bother with that. so i tend to ignore all that.

 this theme has 3 sections, and i only use the middle section for the posts. it does seem very awkward to only have the words running down the middle of the screen and have all that blank space on either side.

it might be useful for people to view it on a mobile or tablet, as they are such small screens and they can enlarge the font and not have the whole thing run out of the edges of their phone. 

so what have i been up to today?

i redeemed a free voucher i cut out of the daily mirror yesterday of a free bacon 6in subway sandwich.

i have never tried it, and was looking forward to crisp bacon.

but it was not like that at all. instead it was raw bacon and cheese,  which was microwaved and 3 toppings added with a sauce.

pity it was not crisp bacon. it is easy to microwave bacon by itself to get the crispness, but i guess it would take too much time. as it is with everyone ordering their made to order sandwich, it takes a long time to make up a sandwich, and the queue can be long. and since the whole bread is microwaved with the bacon, it makes the bread not as crisp as it should be.

this one is only valid before 11am, as it is a breakfast meal. it normally costs £2 and includes free coffee.  though the branch in the upper floor of victoria station has no hot drinks today. of course i dont mind it had no hot drinks as i only intend to redeem the voucher and that gives me only a 6″ bacon sandwich. 

There is a subway halal branch near the queen mother’s sport centre, where they substitute a turkey sandwich for the bacon. maybe that might have more turkey and the bread might be crisper as it does not need to be microwaved. anyway i have no more vouchers so i shall never find out. haha.

It’s a nice experience to eat these things as i dont do it normally.

makes me get to find out what people are eating when they order these things, and now i know what it is whenever i pass a subway outlet.

i can feel i am not missing out on anything, but of course i know that allready, but it is in theory, so it  is nice to have it confirmed.

when you look at the pictures in the store, depicting the food, it looks so appetising doesn’t it? but it is not like it at all when u actually get it in your hands.

It’s the same when i ate that double cheeseburger from burgerking some time ago. it was nothing like what it looks like in the picture. the bread and fillings look so plump and raised in the picture, but when u get the real thing, everything is flattened and collapsed.

 

 

how to spot a bargain

london

In the study, 1,000 shoppers were shown a bacon promotion and asked to pick the best deal. There were four choices: A) three 175g packs with six rashers in each for £4, B) a 250g pack with eight rashers for £1.98, C) three sets of option A for £10 or D) three sets of option B for £5.

Can you work it out? Only a third of shoppers got it right, with option C, which works out at 18.52p a rasher. Option A was 22p, option B was 24.75p and option D was 20.83p.

this is a article in the telegraph about how supermarkets get you to spend more. 

At first i thought the answer was wrong. surely option D must be the right answer. this is because i compare the weights. 750mg for £5 option D, compared to 525mg for £10, option C. 

But then i have another think. what if the more expensive bacon A, has less water, less fat, unlike the B , which is half as cheap, but maybe has lots of added water or fat. 

in the end, i was just glad i dont buy bacon anymore, unless it has been reduced to 20p. Now u know why i dont buy these things at their normal prices. 

added. i confess i failed to read the question properly. A is 3x175g of bacon. so the answer C is correct, but only by very little. and if they have added water to the bacon, as they often do, then comparing weight only will not get u the best value for money. I guess by not buying bacon at all, i sidestep the whole question and makes my life easier without having to calculate the whole mess.