would you rather...

...have fish for fingers or tin foil for toes? The beak or the voice of a pigeon? Or would you rather substitute vinegar for milk or wear your Nan's pants?

These things, we must know.

In fact, so life defining/office time wasting are these dilemmas that we've put them on the back of our big cartons.

Here's the latest batch as penned by our drinkers

 

If you fancy seeing your name in crayons on the side of a litre of whole crushed fruit, just post your favourite 'Would you rather...' below and the best ones will end up on the next set of designs for our big cartons (around December time) as well as winning a case of smoothies for pushing our grey matter to the limits.

Rules are: nothing rude, offensive or pigeon related. We've exhausted the pigeon category.

friday fun (on monday)

Here's the innocent creative team (Ben, Ted, Ceri, Kat, Tansy, Zoe) minus Kate 1 (Heidi), Kate 2 (Bev), and Claire, who have all joined since this picture was drawn. And here's some videos and links we've been sending each other recently that I meant to post up last Friday but didn't have time to. But are still worth a first thing in the week look.

 

Spar launches wine labels with local dialects.
 

roaming around

If you like rural things but live in a big urban thing (London) you should keep an eye out for Roam, a traveling ex-mobile Library that's working its way through East London's parks and green places right now. Part gig venue, part library, part a lecture theatre, part nature disco, part reading room, part meeting point, all depending where it stops. I went down last Friday to see Adem (who played at out innocent village fete a couple of year ago) play the guitar and use the side of the bus as a drum kit. Very good. There's still plenty more Roaming to come.

 
 

the ping pong ladder

It's all about Ping Pong at Fruit Towers at the minute. And Ping Pong ladders...

 

If Ping Pong is your thing then you could do far worse than popping over to the Ping Pong Parlour on London's Carnaby Street between July 14 to August 14. Our very good friend Meera (who once celebrated her birthday in our post room) has a lot to do with it, which pretty much guarantees it's going to be great. Get pinging and ponging.

 
 

 

a recipe for a healthy cake

Hi there. I'm quite new to Fruit Towers. My name is Vanessa (but I prefer Ness) and I've been recruited to do the very important role (even if I do say so myself) of Company Nutritionist.

I trained to be a dietitian, which is a bit like a nutritionist, except you get to work in a hospital and wear a very fetching tunic. Now, as big a fan that I am of the NHS, I do happen to like wearing my own clothes to work (I don't pay all that money on fashion magazine subscriptions for nothing). So, a few years ago now, I decided to ditch the tunic and head over to the dark side of the food industry.

If you'd read the job advert for my position, you would think they were after the Mary Poppins of the nutrition world. It even included a requirement to make a healthy cake. And so I thought I would share my attempt with you.

First of all, I will own up and say that this recipe is not my own (shh) but from a wonderful book by Harry Eastwood.

 
This particular cake uses butternut squash, but there are other recipes in there that use courgette and turnips.

 
My strawberry plant has only mustered a measly three strawbs this year, so I took the biggest one...

 and gave it pride of place on top of the cake...

 
Here is the final result...

 
What do you think?

This scrumdiddlyumptious delight contains two of your 5-a-day, but only if you eat the whole thing. Which A. you couldn't manage without feeling sick and B. would defeat the object of a healthy cake, because you'd be getting all that extra sugar and fat. 

I would suggest you're far better getting your two portions from one of our smoothies and enjoying your cake for what it should be...nothing to do with health whatsoever and all about the deliciousness of it, with a cup of tea.

That said, I have now realised that my boss may be questioning whether I am practically perfect to do this job after all. I best keep looking for a healthy cake recipe anyway or else me, my carpet bag and nutrition text books will be looking for a new home.

If you have any healthy cake recipes, do let me know. 

corned beef & smoothies

We were very amused to find a reference to our smoothies in The Guardian's over by over report of the England v Bangladesh cricket match on Saturday. 

 

It seems the reporter popped out for some corned beef, as you do in the middle of a test match, and came back with a smoothie.

 

No such joy in their live coverage of that football game though.
 
 

looking for long life in Hong Kong part 1 & 2

Our friend Alex Horne (who's currently attempting to become a Guinness World Record holder as the world's oldest man) has just got back from Hong Kong, the world's second oldest nation. You can find out what he got up to, and the secrets to long life, by perusing these two videos he's compiled of his trip. 

amazing raisins

Our innocent smoothies for kids are now sporting 12 new activities for little people. Here's just one of them. Look out for the rest in the shops. Amazing.

two short films about our 2010 AGM

Every year for the last few years we've had an innocent AGM and every year we try to share the event with as many people as possible, not just those lucky enough to be picked at random to come along on the day. That's why we celotaped an iPhone to a climbing hat this year and stuck it on Luke's head for the day. 

And that's why we've made not one but two short films about this year's AGM for your viewing pleasure. Here's one (the edited highlights version).

And here's two (the from the people who were there version).

An amazing day indeed.