It's a Low Alcohol Beer Festival!

Many thanks to Ørjan Frøvik for the photo

As part of tackling Mr C's high blood pressure, and also for other health reasons, we've been trying to cut down on alcohol. During my last pregnancy, I got used to (very) low alcohol Becks, so that's mostly what we've been drinking at home over the last few months. There are, however, lots more brands on the supermarket shelves so, in the absence of any guidance from beer god Roger Protz, who I am sure would be horrified this posting, we've decided to give them all a go.

A good place for low alcohol/alcohol-free drinks is The Alcohol Free Shop, who stock a huge range of beers including the mixed case that we have treated ourselves to. They also do a mixed case of wheat beers if that's more your thing. So you now too can have your own alcohol-free beer festival in the comfort of your own lounge. Fun AND healthy!

I will update this posting with tasting notes as we work our way though the beers. Here's the list...of course, these are all "continental"/lager-type beers - I shudder to think what proper bitter/ale would taste like if it was tinkered with to remove the alcohol...

Bavaria
Becks - still my favourite
Bitburger Drive - I first had this back in 2001 while pregnant, and thought it was horrible. I'm prepared to give it another go though.
Cheers
Cheers Dark
Clausthaler - apparently the most popular low-alcohol beer in Europe
Cobra - has a slightly sweet edge to it which I am not keen on, but is fine when drunk very cold with an Indian meal
Holsten
Jansen
Jupiler - as this is Belgian, I have high hopes for it
Krombacher
Sagres Zero
Stella Artois
Super Bock Twin - a Portugese beer, which went down well
Super Bock Dark
Veltins
Warsteiner Fresh

Low Sodium Stock Cubes

Low salt stock cubes are hard to find. I've been using Kallo's for a while, but they only do a vegetable low salt cube, which is far from ideal for gravy or a casserole based on red meat. However while shopping for the baby today, I found the Boots "Baby Organic" range stock cubes - they contain 0.02g sodium in 100ml of made-up stock, compared to about 0.4g per 100ml of OXO or Kallo cubes, and are available as veg, beef and chicken.

I've been Googling too and have found that Heinz do a "Cook at Home" baby range which includes low sodium stock, although I haven't tried it.

Which I guess means we can have 20 times as much gravy now!

Vive le Sel!

The lack of recent posts has been because we have been away on holiday in the Dordogne region of France. Very nice it was too (especially because the weather in the UK was so bad!) but we did have to abandon our healthy diet temporarily. OK, we didn't have to, but you can't go on holiday and not eat out, and I wasn't about to spend hours slaving in the kitchen.

Although more people seem to cook from scratch there, there also seems to be more of a reliance on ham, cheese and bread, and so reports from government research body INSERM show that the French end up consuming 10g of salt a day - more than in the average UK diet, which is now 8.4g per day (although the "everyday" cheese there is Emmental which is much lower in sodium that the cheddar which we Brits use for everything).

It seems that they have no immediate plans to change anything - a recently proposed VAT rise on unhealthy foods to 19.6% has been abandoned due to the credit crunch. So let's hope that all those unhealthy eating habits are cancelled out by red wine.