Should bloggers accept freebies in exchange for reviews?
This is question being discussed on many a UK food blog at the moment and it looks like most of us are in agreement - yes to freebies with a number of provisos:-
* Free products or services do not guarantee a positive review; this should be made clear to the person/ organisation providing the freebie.
* The blogger should disclose that they received the product or service for free in the resulting blog post.
* The blogger should do their best to assess and write about the product or service as objectively as possible.
To that, I add the following:-
My chicken!
As it happened, the contents of the last week's medium mixed organic fruit & veg box corresponded with a number of items on my dislike list so there were a few swap outs.
Altogether we have: apples, carrots, green cabbage, jersey royal potatoes, a punnet of nectarines, spring onions, a mango, mushrooms and two large bags of spinach.
The fruit seems to be in good condition, assuming the mango and the nectarines ripen properly. The apples feel a touch softer than I'd like, but at least they aren't wrinkly, as occured in the past.
For some reason, I got two huge portions of spinach, which, given the aged yellowing appearance of a few of the leaves, is probably going to lead to wastage. The leaves are picked much larger than I prefer too - to the extent that I didn't even recognise them as spinach until I checked the contents list on the side of the box!
The potatoes, mushrooms and spring onions looked fine.
The worst items in the box were the carrots. These were so old they were rubbery. One was already broken in half and the rest I could bend almost double without snapping! Comparing this with a carrot we pulled up from our garden the same day, these were clearly not remotely fresh, nor had they been well stored.
Slow Cooker Chicken
I posted about borrowing my mum's slow cooker before deciding whether to buy our own. Our greatest success came with cooking a whole chicken over several hours. What I particularly liked, as well as the succulence of the meat, was the large quantity of excellent stock and leftover meat, which we used for a number of additional meals. As mum's slow cooker has long since been returned, we finally bought our own on Saturday, ready to cook the chicken on Sunday.
As the carrots were so unappealing, I decided to relegate them to stock making duties - scrubbed and chopped, with manky bits discarded, they went into the bottom of the pot. With them I threw in a small onion, peeled and quartered, a few bay leaves and then the chicken itself. (Giblets put aside in the fridge). Over this I poured water and half a bottle of white wine. After an hour and a half on high, I turned the slow cooker down to low for the next 5 hours.
In the slow cooker
Cooked this way, the chicken becomes so incredibly soft and tender that, no matter how careful you are, it disintegrates as you lift it out of the pot. Pete plonked the resulting pieces into a large dish and I picked and pulled every last scrap of meat away from the carcass while he sieved the utterly delicious stock into a container for the freezer. The meat was enough for four portions (for the two of us) of which one was set aside for dinner that evening, another for the next evening and the rest into the freezer as well.
Given the heat of the day (not to mention a large lunch at our local Italian) we decided to keep it light. For dinner we made a simple salad, similar to one I posted about last week. Chopped raw sugarsnaps, thinly sliced red onion, halved cherry tomatoes and coriander leaves with the addition of the soft, shredded chicken meat. All mixed with a simple dressing of olive oil, cider vinegar and honey. Delicious!
The finished chicken salad
And for dessert, while Pete had some fresh fruit, I went for a savoury of fried chicken heart and chicken liver. Absolutely delicious!
Using the same carrots and onions, I threw in the chicken carcass and skin plus the bird's neck and covered with more water and the rest of the bottle of white wine. Left to cook overnight, a second stock was produced. Before I tried this, I would have been convinced that the second stock would be weak and insipid but, having done this three times now, I can assure you that it's still full of flavour.
We'll be using this second stock, some of the chicken meat and the spring onions from the box to make a simple, delicious and filling risotto for our Monday night dinner.
Thoughts
So far, it's top marks on the quality of their meat, but a detention for the quality of some of the fruit and veg. I'll report on the risotto later in the week and let you know how the rest of the fruit and veg are soon.
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