At around this time of year we start to see a LOT of sweetcorn in the shops. A great deal of the stuff is grown locally so there’s no wonder the supermarkets are stuffed with it. It is really cheap too. In our local supermarket they display the sweetcorn in its husks in something that looks a bit like a large, raised sandpit. This area is usually packed with people who are busy removing the husks and those silky, stringy bits and putting the discarded bits into little bins that are there just for that purpose. People will stand there for ages removing every last piece of husk from mountains of corn.

I think that’s odd. Why? Because everything else that people buy is overwrapped in one way or another. Just look at toothpaste which comes in a tube, in a box, wrapped in cellophane. I know that even 20 years ago it was completely acceptable in German supermarkets to leave unwanted packaging at the shop, but in the US people still seem to like the many layers of wrapping. I’m not a big fan – it makes everything a bit like pass the parcel.

So when there are no issues with the packing on most things – what on Earth is wrong with sweetcorn husks? Personally I like having the husks as they are perfect to BBQ the corn in – I just peel it all back, remove the strings, add some butter and put it all back togethter. Yum.

I remember when I was little, one of the best things at school fairs and the like was the cake stall where you could buy all sorts of scrummy cakes that legions of little old ladies and girl guides had baked to raise money. There’s just nothing to match a home made Victoria sponge…Yum.  Well, things have moved on, at least in the good old US of A. The sale of girl scout cookies, which I am sure had similar humble beginnings to those school fairs I attended, has become and seriously commercial, soulless and frankly, nutritionally dubious activity.

Rather than the charmingly misshapen scones and biscuits of one upon a time, you can now buy boxes of blandly identical shapes. There are however many different flavours to choose from – all with nauseatingly saccharine names such as: Do-si-dos, Thank you berry munch and Tagalongs. You can even buy online.

The good thing is that the intention of the sale of the cookies is still good – helping children to gain ‘hands-on entrepreneurial’ experience and to raise money for local good causes.  It’s just a shame that they don’t take the opportunity to add a lesson on cooking from actual ingredients.

This doesn’t sound like the tastiest option on a breakfast menu and I can assure you that it isn’t. Also, to make matters worse it doesn’t appear to consist of either biscuits OR gravy as you might know them. The biscuit is effectively a raisin-less scone and the gravy is a beige opaque slime that I think is be based on some sort of béchamel. Sometimes it has chunks in it which may or may not be some sort of sausage meat. Separately bad and together truly awful. It doesn’t even look like something you’d want to put in your mouth.