We have bread at last

On Saturday, the Cambridge Cheese company had some of the Poilane French bread I was telling you about a couple of weeks ago. Here's what half a loaf looks like. I'm hoping it will last us all week. We had some with our dinner on Saturday and I also enjoyed it yesterday with some liver and port pate (again from the Cambridge Cheese company), very tasty!

Today's lunch will be leftovers from last night's dinner of pasta bake. I'm beginning to realise that on our tea/dinner meals, we're actually already pretty much palm oil free. We eat very few processed/pre-packaged meals. Mostly we cook fresh, but I will shortly start scrutinising the list of ingredients of all the things that we cook with for our evening meals.

I also realised yesterday that there's another option for lunches, I often have a bowl of soup in the winter, don't really feel like eating soup in the summer, especially when it's as hot as it has been recently but there are some great recipes for chilled soups in my New Covent Garden Soup Company's Book of Soups. Chilled soup will be lovely for the summer and means I can use the Poilane loaf to make croutons (I'll just toast it and cut it into squares) so when it's getting dry at the end of the week, I can still eat it. I've had the book several years and a quick check on Amazon shows it's still in print. I'm going to have a go at making ginger and carrot soup with lime first but iced cucumber and yoghurt plus acocado and cucumber are both of my list to try.

I've heard back from Reckitt Benckiser, the makers of E45 cream, who say "Our laboratories have looked at the formulation for E45 Cream and commented that it is unlikely that anything related to palm oil is in the formulation". It's not really an unequivocal statement (which is what I asked for) but as the list of ingredients doesn't contain any of the usual palm oil "suspects", I'm going to believe them.

It's a similar story from Dermal Laboratories who say "We can confirm that palm oil is not one of the ingredients in Dermol Cream (or any of our other products), and to the best of our knowledge none of the ingredients are derived directly from it." Ditto regarding their ingredients list.

I'm waiting for a delivery from Elemis of their shampoo and conditioner, it's a 3-5 day delivery service so it should be here any time.

Good news from Heinz

Heinz have sent me the following:
"Thank you for contacting us with regard to Baked Beans, HP Sauce, Salad Cream, Tomato Soup & Vegetable Soup. I would like to confirm these products do not contain Palm Oil."

I'm slightly surprised by the response as Heinz Salad Cream has vegetable oil in its ingredients list so I am writing to them again just to clarify what oil the vegetable oil is. I really like a scraping of salad cream on a ham/cheese and salad sandwich so I'm really hoping for a positive response and not a re-run of the Morning Foods fiasco!

No other responses yet but I'll keep you updated on replies.

Excellent news also from The Cambridge Cheese Company, an independent cheese shop and delicatessen in All Saints Passage, just behind the Art & Craft market in Cambridge where I sell my jewellery on a Saturday. We often buy gourmet items from them. Geoff, my husband, goes shopping for our Saturday evening meal there whilst I'm on the stall.

They stock a bread which is made in France, it comes in a big cob and it is palm oil free. We tried some a couple of weeks ago and quite liked it. It's not as moist as a loaf and according to the chap who runs the shop, it never goes off. It's quite dry (but not as dry as a crispbread) to start with so you need to make sure you put lots of moist items in it to make a palatable sandwich. After a couple of days it is even drier but makes great toast if you put some Tiptree marmalade or jam on it (palm oil free!) Trouble is supply seems to be a bit sporadic, last week they didn't have any in because it was a bank holiday in France and this week, they just didn't deliver ... I guess that's the French for you (bless em!)

Additionally, Geoff asked about their policy on palm oil and the owner said that his wife did most of the buying and apparently it sounds as if she feels as strongly about palm oil as I do; he couldn't guarantee that nothing ever gets under her radar but I'm really reassured by that! They have great handmade pickles in there so I'm quite relaxed about giving up salad cream if I have to and using that instead. :-)

We went to my mum and dads for lunch yesterday for Father's Day and we've come home laden with strawberries and raspberries from my dad's allotment so breakfast with Oatiflakes is well and truly sorted now. Especially now I know from Heinz that baked beans are palm oil free - on the odd occasion when we have a cooked breakfast, I can now be sure that every breakfast from now on is palm oil free. I feel like I'm getting somewhere.