steamed silverbeet with olive oil, crushed garlic, salt and pepper. simple. nice.
Category: Food
It’s called profit!
I finally got around to contacting Dairy Bell about their obvious recipe changes in recent years (can you say cost down, margin up?).
I was going to put pen to paper but email is just so much easier! Anyway, I let them know what I thought and that their products are now crap. I’m sick of food manufacturers *cough especially Arnotts *cough pursing these cost down, margin up strategies in producing food products. They inevitably reduce the quality of the product which is ironic given Arnott’s slogan: “There is no substitute for quality” – see, clever title right… 
.
These moves clearly indicate that companies such as Arnotts think shareholders are more important than customers. Well, I know of companies with customers, but no shareholders, but I don’t know of many companies with shareholders, but no customers. /rant
As for dairy bell, they are clearly struggling in recent years due to ongoing pressures but really, I think they have missed a lot of opportunities in recent years. We all know how ubiquitious the gelati store is around Melbourne these days. Surely with Dairy Bell’s experience and brand recognition they could have tapped into this market early on. “Dairy Belle” anyone?
If you visit a Dairy Bell store these days you’ll see that they are confused and grasping at straws. They are selling mixed lollies and chocolates as well as ice cream. The chocolates I think is ok, but mixed lollies? Oh and while they are at these, why wouldn’t they pay more attention to their core product, Ice Cream. Right. The ice-cream is presented in a way unchanged in as long as I can remember. This is while funky gelati stores are laying whole snickers bars on top of ice-cream shaped into waves. And then there is the service, Sim knows what I mean.
Anyway, enough ranting… It’s a pity really because Dairy Bell used to be great. Great quality and reasonable prices, definitely formerly the best ice-creamery in Melbourne. Now, to be honest, I would only give them a few years and wouldn’t be surprised if they close up shop. As for Arnotts, I don’t want to get started on that. All I’ll say is this, if you don’t know what I’m going on about, buy some Saladas and pay close attention. “You’ve changed man, You’ve changed” – I say.
Over and out.
Caveat: Of course, without seeing figures, for all I know, Dairy Bell never been more profitable. But somehow I doubt it.
Genetic engineering comes to the rescue again offering us stink-free durians. Pity about the taste though…
Non-smelly durians (NYT Article)
No, I can see how durians could be an aquired taste, I mean, it sort of grows on you, its like a punishment which you hate at the time but when it’s over you miss it.
Christmas was an interesting one this year. Although I missed out on a big family gathering back in Melbourne, it was interesting to experience Christmas in another country (however snow came a little late so I still havn’t had a white Christmas 
)
Firstly, I was surprised by how much Christmas is celebrated over here, mostly by the younger generations. Also, shops/restaurants also ‘celebrate’ Christmas and cash in on the Christmas spirit. Most shops had Christmas sales and restaurants had special Christmas/Christmas eve dinners and events.
Christmas eve I went out with friends from Uni to a North African restaurant which wasn’t anything special, but we did win some prizes (soft plush toys) because they had a door raffle and some game/event sort of things. Oh and they also had belly dancer who was dancing while holding a real snake of some sort, and who put the snake around various customers necks and that sort of thing.
After dinner we went to a karaoke place and sung some songs till about 1:30am. The trip home was interesting because the taxi driver didn’t turn off a road when he should have, and it wasn’t going to be very easy to do a u-turn or go back the other way. So, waiting until some police nearby (driving) were out of site, he proceeded to go against traffic to get back to our turn off (in the service lane at 1:45 in the morning so rest assured it wasn’t dangerous, or at least I didn’t feel like it was). But it made for an interesting end to the night.
The next day (Christmas day) I slept in till about 1pm haha. After giving my family a call I planned to go out to eat Japanese with friends from Uni. However, the restaurant was closed by 2:30ish when we arrived. So, we went to another nearby all-you-can-eat buffet. As it turned out, because it was Christmas day, they had a massive roast turkey which although missing cranberry sauce was cooked to perfection! So, in the end I got a roast dinner – but not a white – Christmas.
The end.
Merry (belated) Christmas.
For any Futurama fans out there, you will surely be familiar with the episode entitled “30% Iron Chef”. You’ll recall that Bender was given the essence of flavour, and using it his cruddy dishes suddenly tasted great!
And of course we’ve all heard of MSG (Mono Sodium Glutamate).
Anyway, in Chinese, MSG is called Weijing (味精 <- i think these are the characters but most of you probably cant see them anyway). The literal meaning of each character is as follows:
Wei: Taste, flavour.
Jing: Purified, selected, best.
Although i’m sure everyone got this from the episode, it was funny to see the meaning in the chinese characters.