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February 08, 2006
Hot Cross Buns.
Michelle Malkin picks up on a story about a school banning hot cross buns. From my all to patchy memory I’d have to say that this is not unusual in the UK. There’s always some damn fool proposing such stupidities somewhere. Very little or even nothing to do with the current cartoon affair.
However:
Well, it's only a matter of time now before the mullahs start burning them.
Actually, given the stunning quality of British food, that cuisine for which we are world famed, we have plenty of bakers who manage that already.
February 8, 2006 in Food and Drink | Permalink
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Tracked on Feb 8, 2006 8:52:51 PM
Comments
You're right, for example, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
news/main.jhtml?xml=/
news/2003/03/16/nbuns16.xml
though I think most that particularly story was shown to be untrue with a bit of investigating.
Posted by: Matthew | Feb 8, 2006 1:20:33 PM
It happens that I'm especially partial to hot-cross buns - because I like the spicing and fruit. It also happens that I live in hugely cosmopolitan London wherein resides forty something per cent of Britain's ethnic minorities according to the 2001 census and where ethnic minorities comprise about 30 per cent of the resident population. It also happens that I shop often at local superstores with familar names where I buy my groceries, including regular supplies of said hot-cross buns. To all appearances, ethnic minorities regularly comprise average proportions of both the visiting customers and the staff at the stores. My only regret is that the superstore I'm inclined to visit more often is rather apt to sell out of hot-cross buns just as it tends to sell out of other popular product lines. I maintain the deepest suspicions that said ethnic minorities buy them - indeed, I've actually watched some doing so. Are new laws necessary?
Posted by: Bob B | Feb 8, 2006 2:07:09 PM
Bob B,
I'd allmost guarantee you are talking about Sainsburys woeful "stock control" system.
Posted by: Rob Read | Feb 8, 2006 3:57:40 PM
Sorry to disappoint but I gave up on Sainsburys about a year and a half ago and haven't been back since.
I'm fortunate in that with good local bus services I can easily get to stores of the top five or six market leaders among the supermarkets. What really intrigues me about my new favourite store - which happens to be the current market leader by a margin but then so was Sainsburys at the beginning of the 1990s - is that I notice staff from other supermarket brand names doing their shopping there. You can hardly have better testimonials than that.
The decision to abandon Sainsburys to its fate was the culmination of a series of negative experiences - among them being overcharged against displayed prices, on one occasion being charged for something I'd not actually bought, and being kept waiting at checkouts because something had gone wrong with the tills again and the floor management was too busy chatting to worry about tiresome customers.
Besides, I was none too impressed when Tim Sainsbury, who had been a Conservative minister in the DTI during the Major government, decided to switch to Labour shortly after the 1997 election because - wait for it - the Conservatives were so opposed to joining the Euro! How I laughed in June 2003 when HM Treasury came out with the results of Gordon Brown's infamous five tests and decided it wasn't in Britain's interests to join the Euro - something I'd been saying since 1996 after reading the late Rudi Dornbusch's acutely argued piece in Foreign Affairs, September/October 1996:
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19960901faessay3403/rudiger-dornbusch/euro-fantasies-common-currency-as-panacea.html
And then there was that letter to the Financial Times in February 1998:
"More than 150 German economics professors have called for an 'orderly postponement' of economic and monetary union because economic conditions in Europe are 'most unsuitable' for the project to start."
http://www.internetional.se/9802brdpr.htm
By then I had to conclude that DTI minister or not, he really hadn't a clue.
Posted by: Bob B | Feb 8, 2006 5:01:29 PM
Schools should have broken up for the Easter holidays by the time Good Friday dawns, though, surely?
Kids, today, eh - they just can't wait to tuck in, can they...?
Posted by: Aidan | Feb 9, 2006 4:52:43 AM
Indeed one might say that burning buns is a hoary English tradition dating back to the days of a certain King of Wessex - although possibly not since that is almost certainly an urbain legend
Posted by: Francis | Feb 9, 2006 9:45:30 AM
Aidan - But to the initial surprise of the supermarket chains hot-cross buns have progressed to be rated as an all-the-year round item instead of just a seasonal item. Customers like the buns and the original religious assocation has become irrelevant. The cross marking is retained to distinguish the particular spiced bun from other bun varieties - such as the "Bath" bun and the "Chelsea" bun.
Posted by: Bob B | Feb 9, 2006 11:09:20 AM
I've been wondering about the name British food has. My trips to England have never disappointed in a culinary sense(once I realised that Europe and America have very different ideas as to what constitutes cheesecake, that anyway). Whether it was a plowman's lunch quiche and squash soup in Chichester or Veal sausage at Badger's or any of the broad range of sausage at the Essex brewery or
even the fare available at the Women's Auxilliary in Emsworth, I've enjoyed eating in Britain. Of course, I live in New England where baked bean dinners at the local church ir Grange hall are a tradition so an affinity for beans on toast or with breakfast might be to be expected.
Posted by: B's Freak | Feb 9, 2006 1:45:08 PM
Tis not quite the whole story as I've blogged, as her main reasoning was that it wasn't yet Easter and therefore not time to eat them. Which seems a fairly understandable response.
Posted by: Bertie | Feb 9, 2006 7:54:40 PM
Will they ban croissants next? After all, legend has it they were created to celebrate the lifting of the Siege of Vienna, the current high water mark of Islamist agression in Europe. Given the irredentist nature of the barbarians, I'm surprised there hasn't been some trumped-up outcry.
Posted by: David Gillies | Feb 9, 2006 10:30:12 PM
Bob B - yes, indeed, good point. Should really have realised such. After all, I'm sure I spotted them nestling somewhere in the specialist Easter egg aisle of my supermarket as recently as, ooh, I dunno, last week of September?
Posted by: Aidan | Feb 10, 2006 5:05:15 AM
