The Raw Chef

Double (Trading) Standards

Had a meeting with a very nice guy from Trading Standards yesterday.  I wanted to go through exactly what laws I need to comply with to be able to make and sell my own products.  I have to say that even though I expected it to be difficult, I wasn't prepared for the amount of detail there is to think about!  Hasn't put me off though, I just see it as a process that includes some hurdles.  Some of those hurdles will be small and some will be large so I just need to take each one as it comes up, should be a fun journey!

I had to smile when we got on to the subject of what I'm allowed to call my food products.  Apparently if you're making a claim about the healthy aspects of a product then it has to be provable or 'common knowledge'.  What about uncommon knowledge, where's the allowance for things we haven't found out about yet?  And what about supermarkets that call their bacon 'healthy eating', is it common knowledge that bacon is healthy just because it's got less rind?  I've also seen chocolate eclairs marked in the same way...healthy eclairs!!!  Could I bring out a product with that much refined sugar in it and call 'healthy' just because it's got less fat than a 'normal' eclair?

It's no wonder our supermarket shelves are dominated by big name companies' products.  The legislation that has to be worked through is enough to put anyone off that doesn't have a team of lawyers working for them.

This is going to call for guerrilla warfare tactics :-)...exploit the things that you think put you at a disadvantage and turn them into your biggest advantage!

I'm off to assemble the troops...

Tallyho!

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free"

Michelangelo

Little bit tired tonight as I only managed to get 3 hours sleep in last night.  Had to prise my eyes open this morning but still managed to get up and make my juice before I started my day of lessons!  So what's been happening?  Funny you should ask.  I was working my Tesco job yesterday and had what drunks refer to as a moment of clarity.  It suddenly dawned on me that i'm holding onto my job out of a complete false sense of security.  If i'm going to get things going in this next phase of my life I need to close this chapter and so have decided to hand in my notice.  I am working on my intuition and feel that if I take this action the universe will respond positively.  All the time i'm in that job i'm sending out a vibration that isn't in alignment with who I truly am.  The funny thing is that i've just typed out the letter and my printer has run out of ink!!!!  I'm going to have to go to Tesco early tomorrow and get another cartridge, how ironic!

I was out delivering really late last night and had a couple of orders out in the middle of nowhere.  Have you been out on these beautiful clear cold evenings to a place where there's no light polution from the street lighting?  I can highly recommend it.  It's one of my goals to have my own telescope in my house so that I can spend time just looking at the stars at night.  There's so many stars up there that you don't usually see.  It's really an amazing sight and it's one that i'd forgotten about.  It got me thinking that those stars have always been there but I just haven't been able to see them because I hadn't taken time to move away from the bright lights and just look up.  I was thinking about other things in my life that are right there in front of me, beautiful things and people that, if I just took the time to 'look up' at, I would see thier twinkling beauty.  What would you see if you removed the haze and looked up at your life and the people in it?

Who turned out the lights?

"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to persue them."

Walt Disney

Had a power cut this afternoon which apparently affected 10000 homes in Sussex.  Having no traffic lights during my driving lessons was an experience!  Electricity is top of my gratitude list today.  Isn't it amazing how something we don't even question or appreciate makes such a difference when it's not there.  There was traffic everywhere and i'm sure people were completely lost and were panicking about the prospect of an evening with no TV.  The truth is that an evening talking and really connecting with their families could have been the most enlightening evening they've had.  Maybe they could have just sat and thought about what is happening in their lives and about the direction they're heading.  Are they happy with that direction?  That's the real reason they were probably so scared of an evening with no TV, they would potentially have to engage in these thoughts and conversations.  No problem though, electric came back on so it's back on with the TV in the room they call 'living' (borrowed that last bit from Woody Harrelson's poem) into a media induced coma....what time is Eastenders on?.........