Editor’s Note:Last November we had the pleasure of spending 10 captivating days in Scotland.Below is but one adventure of many from our stay. We hope the joy we experienced comes through in all our posts and missives from our adventure, which no doubt read better with a wee dram in hand.
Editor’s Note:Last November we had the pleasure of spending 10 captivating days in Scotland.Below is but one adventure of many from our stay. We hope the joy we experienced comes through in all our posts and missives from our adventure, which no doubt read better with a wee dram in hand.“In 2014 we decided to add our carefully crafted chutney range to our Mackays product family,” explained Martin Grant, Managing Director.
On our whirlwind tour of Scotland, one of our stops was at Mackays Preserves. While a preserves factory may not sound very riveting, it was indeed quite a thrill. Not only did we dress in hair (and beard!) nets along with white lab coats, but we got to see and smell the glorious process of making marmalade, preserves, and curds. Imagine numerous vats of boiling strawberries, peaches and oranges. The fragrance was extreme and delicious.
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Halfway through our tour, our wonderful guide, Rochelle, stopped to show us Mackays’ chutney selection. We Americans were rather silent during this presentation, until I finally said, “What the hell is Chutney?”
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After everyone gave us a good case of poker face, we had a nearly existential discussion about the product and how it just isn’t something that is popular in America.
But I am getting ahead of myself. Located in Arbroath, part of the Dundee area of Scotland; Mackays has built a reputation for taste, provenance, and tradition. Since 1938, the heart of their product has been the soft fruits grown in the east of Scotland, which they use in every jar of their strawberry, raspberry, and blackcurrant preserve. We love that they work directly with their Scottish fruit farmers who have decades of experience producing the finest soft fruits in the world.
The Dundee area is also the home of marmalade and Mackays is proud to be the custodian of this world-renowned icon (it all started with a Spanish ship in the 18th century. Read more about it here). The secret to their award-winning marmalades is that they source all their bitter oranges from Seville, Spain.
Mackays products are ‘made the authentic way’ and they take pride in cooking their delectable jams and marmalades in traditional open copper pans. They use copper because it’s the best metal for conducting heat and it gives the most even temperature. This slow cooking method allows the flavors of the fruits to be released slowly. Producing quality products in traditional copper pans, Mackays has grown to be sold in over 85 countries. While nearly every British person would be familiar with the brand, it isn’t well known in America, although you can buy the products around the nation (check out where to buy right here).
But back to Chutney. Originating in India, the authentic chutni or chatni of India were usually relishes made from fresh fruits and spices. During the colonial era, the British took this concept home, but this was not the cooked preparation that we are familiar with today. With there being no mangoes, tamarind, or limes in Blighty, British cooks did their best with apples, onions, and vinegar, adding dried fruit such as sultanas, raisins, and dates, to mimic ginger preserves. And so the British welcomed the spiced fruit chutneys to their culinary culture.
“In 2014 we decided to add our carefully crafted chutney range to our Mackays product family,” explained Martin Grant, Managing Director. “There is an ever-growing chutney culture in the UK, and over the years we have taken the opportunity to educate our distributors about the same”.
As we were told by our friends at Mackays, “Here in the UK, we will eat chutney with just about anything – a sandwich isn’t considered a sandwich without a dollop of chutney on the top!” On that note, here are our favourite ways to use Chutney:
- Use a fruit chutney on a cheeseboard or on a chicken sandwich
- Mint & Rosemary Chutney goes well will lamb
- Serve Red Onion Chutney with steak or on BBQ (it’s awesome in meatloaf!)
- Mix in some beetroot chutney into your favorite salad
- Chutney and turkey? Hell yes! Serve some up at Thanksgiving
- And of course it’s awesome with any curry dish
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This recipe finder will give you dinner ideas using what’s in your fridge
Tired of food waste? This site will tell you what to make for dinner using leftover ingredients
We've all been there. It's 6:30, you've just gotten home from work, and you stand in front of an open refrigerator, clueless and frustrated. You have no idea what to do with the random ingredients staring back at you. You've been using that beautiful brain all day long and now you have to put on an apron and come up with dinner ideas for you and your family? No thanks.
If you've ever found yourself in this situation, there's now a site for that very problem. It's called Gumbo, and it's a total game-changer. Gumbo takes what you already have in your fridge, and generates tons of recipes using exactly those ingredients. No need for a last-minute trip to the grocery store.
Let's say you open your fridge and see, for example, raw chicken breast, oranges, soy sauce, honey, and green onions. Simply open the Gumbo app and select those items. With one click, dozens of recipes will pop up that feature those ingredients - Healthy Orange Chicken, Zesty Instant Pot Chicken Breasts, Whole Lemon and Honey Chicken Skewers — to name just a few.
No matter how random your assortment of refrigerator finds, Gumbo has a recipe for you. It also can offer recipes that only require one or two additional (yet common) ingredients. Let's say you don't include salt in your search. Chances are, youprobably have salt at home. So, if there are recipes that call for everything you selectedplus salt, Gumbo will offer that up as an option.
In addition to taking the burden of recipe creation off your plate, Gumbo will also save you money by keeping your food waste in check. A 2020 study from the American Journal of Agricultural Economics found that the average household in the United States wastes 31.9% of its food, or about $1,866 annually. That's an absolutely shocking statistic. But by knowing exactly what to do with the seemingly useless items in our fridge, Gumbo can greatly help cut back on such an enormously wasteful problem.
News of the new app has been spreading over Reddit like wildfire, and people are ecstatic, exclaiming, "Ok this is amazing! I have DREAMT of a site like this and am excited to give it a go! Here's to (hopefully) less food waste!" and "This is freaking amazing! Thank you!!!"
Users of Reddit, we couldn't agree more.
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Here’s what drinks pros have learned from Dry January
How do you extend Dry January all year long? We got some advice from the pros
A new year is upon us and for a lot of people, that means new healthy habits. It might mean a new diet, pre-bedtime sleep ritual, or cutting back on the booze. Often, the plusses of these lifestyle changes are so significant that you hope to continue them well beyond just January.
There are lots of sober curious people looking to take the merits of Dry January all the way through 2023. But it's not easy, especially with our favorite bars back open, friends always looking for an excuse to get out, and some really good co*cktails in the mix. So we solicited some advice from drinks industry pros who've done the Dry January thing and learned from it. Here's some of that valuable wisdom, passed on to the new, 2023 version of you.
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Study: Most grocery shoppers don’t know what makes food products sustainable
Do you know what makes food sustainable?
It's hard to walk into a grocery store and not be bombarded by brands competing for the most environmentally friendly product. The problem is, as consumers, for the most part, we don't actually understand what that entails. Sure, we know enough to understand that global warming is a real and present danger, and that our carbon footprint must change or serious consequences will continue to arise. We're even taking small, individual steps in our personal lives to do better for our planet.
But as the crisis continues, we've started to realize that, while admirable, things like growing our own home gardens just won't cut it when it comes to making any real impact on environmental health overall. We want to be optimistic, cheerfully saying things like, "every little bit helps!", and while that's true to an extent, it's just not enough. So we've started to look to bigger companies, holding them accountable for their growing practices, because theirs are the footprints with real impact. But what exactly are we asking of them? Do we even know?
A recent study conducted by Morning Consult shows that sadly, we're quite a bit more ignorant as consumers than we should be. It shouldn't come as a surprise that one of the study's biggest finds revealed that knowledge of sustainability doesn't often equate to understanding. This appears to be a theme in important issues for Americans, doesn't it? We'll go round and round all day debating, fighting, tearing each other to shreds about topics that matter immensely, when at the end of the day, most have no idea what the hell we're talking about.
Morning Consult found that people love to toss around terms like "sustainable food," "energy conservation," "renewable resources," and "greenwashing," but can't define what they mean in terms of what we're putting in our grocery carts. We need to do better in terms of mending that disconnect.
There is hope, though. Even with the overall lack of understanding, the study revealed that consumers are truly concerned about environmental impact, even if it isn't fully understood. And of the industries inquired about, people ranked food and beverage companies as the most important in terms of sustainability practices. Food waste created by restaurants, grocery stores, and manufacturers was among the top list of concerns. 64% of those polled had concerns about food manufacturing impact, and almost 70% expressed concern about industrial food waste.
Morning Consult paints a silver lining by concluding that the gap between awareness and knowledge of these issues will shrink as climate change and its impact continues to draw much-needed attention. While the progress is slow, it is happening, and at least that's something to be glad of. They anticipate that brands with transparency and true effort behind their sustainability plans — including the reduction of their carbon footprint, energy consumption, waste practices, etc. — will thrive and stand head and shoulders above those brands that do not.
In the meantime, we should take this study as a wake-up call and check in with ourselves on our own knowledge of what we're tossing into our grocery baskets. What is the company advertising, apart from a delicious product? Are they sourcing their ingredients and materials ethically? Check the packaging: is it recyclable? Do a quick google search on how they divert landfill waste, and what their alternative practices are.
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