Can-tastic: the self-heating meal

We all know that cooking Christmas dinner can be a bit of a mission if you’re unprepared/hungover/just a terrible cook. So if you can’t really be bothered with it all this year, but still need to line your stomach before the binge drinking commences, the Hot Can self-heating meal is the answer to all your prayers!OK, so it might not be quite what your hungry guests are expecting, but if it prevents them from resorting to cannibalism at the dining table, everyone’s a winner, right?Hot Can's Christmas Dinner is the obvious option for this time of year, and we would have loved to have sampled it, but since they were sold out we settled for the Bangers & Beanz meal instead. Now, it’s fair to say we didn’t have particularly high expectations about this product. We were prepared for it to be bland at best and inedible at worst, but it was neither. To our surprise, it was actually very tasty and unexpectedly filling. The fact that we didn’t really need to do anything to it except peel back the lid was also a nice bonus. We had it as a side dish to our main meal but there’s a big enough portion size to easily satisfy one person.
Here’s how we rated it:Tastiness: 8/10 (There was no weird “novelty” taste due to it being self-heating. And if it was served up to you by someone else, it’s unlikely you’d ever guess it hadn’t been anywhere near a cooker).
Price: 7/10 (A can of Heinz beans & sausages is much cheaper, but considering this provides a hot, filling meal that you can eat just about anywhere, it’s decently priced at £3.99).
Ease of use: 10/10 (Very, very simple. No fuss, no muss).
All in all, there’s no faulting this product. It does exactly what it says on the tin, and for a self-heating meal that’s all you can ask for really! Just try not to be put off by the curious fizzing noise it makes while it’s “cooking”.The Hot Can's website's shop section is currently under construction, but in the meantime you can buy them from Harvey Nics for £3.99, which is where we stumbled across them. There are several varieties if you're after something a bit fancier than beans and sausages, but none of them really tickled our tastebuds, sadly. Hopefully the company will come up with some more adventurous varieties in the new year.That's all from us for now. Stay hungry and have a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!x

A handy guide to boozing...

I saw this on Time Out last week: a guide to the best craft beer bars in London.

I've been to some of them before I started this blog: Brewdog; Camden Brewery; and the Old Red Cow amongst others.

Of course it's given me plenty of more ideas of where I can experience new drinks.

This stuff tastes Bile

A few weeks ago I was in my local off-licence and noticed this can of beer on sale:

Out of curisosity I bought it.

I had no idea what it was called, nor what sort if beer it was, but assumed it was a type of Ukrainian lager.

I was almost correct: it's actually a Ukranian wheat-beer, basically their version of Hoegaarden, and is pronoucned "Be-lay" (Ukrainian for "White"), and is made by Chernigivske.

In the unlikely event that you find it, I'd recommend buying it and giving it a try.