Damsons, cats, more soya milk and a deeply rich tomato sauce

...while Megan samples glass A. They liked both smoothies, although they thought glass A, the soya version, was sweeter. Now that I've used So Good, I could tell which was which just by smelling them. In the end, and before I revealed which was which, Tom preferred the soya while Megan liked the cow's milk best. I much preferred the cow's milk...but then, I don't have that sweet a tooth and a smidgen of bias is creeping in. But clearly, So Good did work well in this experiment, and Tom happily finished off the soya smoothie.

After the romanesco cheese debacle, I'd mentioned my concern about the sweetness to Emma at Wild Card PR agency - she replied: 'In answer to your question re. why it is so sweet, all soya milks tend to be sweetened to improve the taste and make more milk like (soya beans aren?t naturally sweet). Some soya milks use fruit juice to sweeten the taste ? So Good uses sucrose and vanilla flavouring. So Good held extensive consumer research to investigate the taste preferences of both soya and non soya milk drinkers. They found that the new recipe was most popular with both sets of consumer groups and was more highly favoured compared to the old recipe and its biggest competitor for creaminess, smoothness, thickness and taste.' Hmmm - maybe many of today's consumers have grown up with much more processed and therefore sweetened food than when I was a lass.
Yesterday, I spent a lovely day in the Bucks countryside with J, scrumping damsons which I cooked down and pureed to go with a fantastic lunch dessert of rice pud and a new find of J's - Tesco's Finest hazelnut yoghurt. Yummylicious. One of the many joys of visiting J is spending time with Daisy, here resting with a monkey...