Everyone knows the honey monster wins everytime.

Still, spotting said ‘spelt popples’ in a local tofu emporium, I thought: “What the hell, can’t be all that bad?”

I should add I have fond childhood memories of sugar puffs, and was only allowed to eat them when I went to visit my grandparents up north (usually while watching kids TV classic Wackaday (another forbidden pleasure.)

LondonCooking Verdict:

The honey monster has nothing to fear from his vegan competitors.

Spelt popples are utterly bland, without a doubt more like styrofoam than anything else I’ve ever tasted.

Honey Monster Foods 1 – Amisa ‘Special Diet Nutrition’ – 0

More classic Sugar Puff ads, ooh… and buy the T-Shirt (you know you want to – it’s just £2, and for charidee, after all.)

On the other hand, the less said about Honey’s rap duet with Samanda (‘Honey Love’) the better.

On the odd occasion, however, we like to veer off topic.

There was a piece in London-based newspaper the Economist lately on the various different nicknames the capital has earned over the years:

Manhattan-on-Thames, Londonistan and, lately Rekyavik-on-Thames, to name a few. But where does the Economist say our fair city is headed now? In essence:

‘London will simply resemble the less prepossessing city it was in the 1970s and 1980s, before the excesses and excitements of the New Labour epoch’

So, as we journey to the past (not necessarily a bad thing?) LondonCooking would like to suggest the following as a fitting, affectionate new nickname for ‘the big smoke’:

Nodnol

This links us to the classic episode of Red Dwarf in which the crew lands in an alternate London where everything plays out backwards. And as they too discover, it’s not all bad…

What do you think? Does the name fit? And will it stick?

It’s got to be more cheery than ‘the Abyss’, or ‘the Empire of Hunger’, right?

Couldn’t be easier really – so long as you’ve got a mixer. Which I don’t. (Gasp!) Unwilling to wip out the pestle and mortar for the moment, looks like it’s back to hummus bros for me, at least for the moment.

NB: Apparently, Americans call chick peas ‘garbanzo beans‘ – crazy stuff.

Did you know that current Celebrity Big Brother contestant (and hence current London resident) Coolio is the star of his own web TV cooking show?

You’ll probably live to wish you didn’t.

On this edition of ‘Cooking with Coolio’:

He quickly comes to regret letting possibly the most obnoxious child in New York to guest on his web TV show, as he offers up a nifty, easy to make chicken recipe. He also finds a ‘foreign object’ planted in his food (almost certainly not suitable for work…)

I think this has the makings of a great web TV format (seriously)… And who else but Coolio could get away with having ‘Sauce Girls’?