Sport Relief – food and sport go hand in hand.
If you are anything like the chefs in the SK Foods kitchen, sport is something you do from the comfort of your own armchair, but there are still occasions when we get a sweat on, and that’s not when we’re cooking something hot!).
We’re not qualified enough to tell you what you should be eating, so as Sport Relief is about raising lots of money and having fun at the same time, we thought it would be much better to have an irreverent look at how food can be used in sport.
Shrove Tuesday happened last month, so how many of you took part in pancake races? We told the story in our Pancake Day blog that tossing the pancake is said to have originated from the year 1445 when a woman was so busy making pancakes that she forgot the time until she heard the church bells ringing for the service. She raced out of the house to church while still carrying her frying pan and pancake, tossing it to prevent it from burning. This very British tradition still happens to this day and the beauty of this event is you get good exercise, followed by a nice meal at the end.
We have also previously blogged about Burns Night but do you know that in Scotland there is a sport known as hurling the haggis? Don’t believe us, then watch this video of celebrity Ade Edmonson trying his hand at it.
If hurling a sheep’s stomach into the air is not your cup of tea, how about pea shooting? Remarkably, each year in the little English village of Witcham people flock to compete in the World Pea Shooting Championships. Competitors stand 12ft away from a circular target made of putty, and fire pea beans as strongly and accurately as their lungs and eyes will allow. We’re unsure as to whether this truly is a ‘world event’ (why is it not held anywhere other than Witcham for example), but our view is that the peas could be better served in a lovely homemade pea soup!
If you think that’s barmy about cheese rolling. Every year, hundreds of people gather at Cooper’s Hill in Gloucestershire (what is it about the UK?), attempting to catch a 9lb wheel of Double Gloucester cheese as it races down the hill. The person who catches the cheese before it reaches the bottom of the hill gets to take it home. Plenty of cheese toasties there then but we would use it to make some of our lovely breaded cheese bites!
We can’t leave this blog with looking at what is probably the best food-related sport of all, namely competitive eating.
Not surprisingly, our cousins over the pond excel at this sport, but even we were surprised when researching this blog to find there is actually an official competitive eating league – namely Major League Eating – in the USA.
The current world number one is 23-year-old Matt “The Megatoad” Stonie, who, last year won the 2015 Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest. Matt won by eating 62 hot dogs in just 10 minutes, dethroning the man who had won it for the previous eight years.
Matt also holds numerous other records, including eating 182 strips of bacon in 5 minutes, 14.5 pounds of birthday cake in 8 minutes, 10 pounds of spaghetti and red sauce in 8 minutes and 103 tacos in 8 minutes.
You are probably thinking Matt is a very large man indeed, well think again. Are you ready for this? He weighs just 9 stone. Don’t believe us, then check out his exploits on his Youtube channel.
Pass the bucket!
About Oliver Parkinson
Sous Chef of SK Foods.
Your food. Our Passion.
