To: readerseditor@independent.co.uk
Subject: Cooking the books
Dear pp Tristan Davies.
Great!
I know all letters cannot be answered
personally and so you send out a standard
thank you letter saying the writer has raised
interesting points etc even if they write in
native gibberish but you have sent me a great
one.
It is addressed to Arthur Brownwindsor
Society for the Preservation of Organic Old
Foods. Windsor
You have sent a letter to SPOOF.
All I was doing was messing about.
I wrote about the decline in sales of cook
books saying people wanted traditional foods
and were searching for the recipes on the
internet.
I suggested for instance a delicious old
fashioned nourishing soup named after my
home town Windsor.
I said go to Google,,,,,,,type in Windsor Soup.
Hit "I feel lucky.
See what you get.
Try it and see why my society is called
SPOOF.
www.windsorsoup.co.uk
Dear Sir
You ran a story the other day claiming that the public becomes immune
to continuous warnings about health.
There is one area however that the government can claim as a success.
Among other warnings pipe tobaccos are for sale with the legend "
Smoking when pregnant harms your baby." It can be guaranteed that a
visit to an ante-natal clinic anywhere in the UK would not produce more
than one or two pipe smoking enceintes.
Also re your story that some soups contain more salt than seawater.
There is nothing wrong with seawater, just see it as natures fish soup.
It is the commercial ones that are the problem.
Society for the Preservation of Organic Old Foods
Dear Chef .JUNE 2004
I am the founder member of the Society for Organic Old Foods and live in the royal town of Windsor.
There is a soup named after our town, Windsor Soup. Not many towns have that honour. I wrote to you suggesting that I was surprised that the soup was not available on the Convent Garden Soup display in Windsor Waitrose nor in your branch of the Soup Company in Windsor Royal Station.
You replied that the soup had been on sale during the Jubilee Celebrations but not recently.
I was in the Royal Station yesterday and was not surprised to se e that your branch is now closed.
Might I suggest that there is a connection between the non availability of the soup and the closure of the branch?
People come from all over the world to Windsor. Many have researched their visit on the internet and found " Windsor Soup" on search engines. Naturally they want to taste the soup and on arriving by coach or train at the Station must have been disappointed to find the soup unavailable.
They probably boycotted your premises as a result. I am only sorry that you did not heed my warning.
Society for Organic Old Foods ( SPOOF)
Dear Chef
I live in Royal Windsor.
There is at the Royal station here a company which I believe is yours which sells soup.
Yet it is never possible buy Windsor Soup there.
There is a branch of Waitrose in Windsor and it did stock it once.
But I have looked at your site and although Windsor Soup is not a summer soup, more for the darker days of Winter I am surprised that is unavailable.
My point is:
If you cannot get it in Windsor then where can you?
I have no doubt that if I visited Mulligatawny I could get soup that was native to the town.
If I visited Gazpacho, wherever that is, I could buy their soup.
I feel there is a gap in the market.
Yours
Society for the Preservation of Organic Old Foods
More SPOOF Stories will be added
The reply, Convent Garden Soup
Thank you for your email.
We produced a Windsor soup as a 'soup of the
month' to commemorate the
Queens Golden jubilee, however this was only
available for 4 weeks. I will
certainly pass your comments to our Product
Development Team as the more
feedback that we get the more likely they are
to consider using a recipe
again.
Kind regards
Isla Coleman
Customer Relations
Covent Garden Soup Company
