Monday 10/22/12

Human Interest News   —   Posted on October 22, 2012

Lunch lady slammed for food that is ‘too good’

A talented head cook at a school in central Sweden has been told to stop baking fresh bread and to cut back on her wide-ranging veggie buffets because it was unfair that students at other schools didn’t have access to the unusually tasty offerings.

Annica Eriksson, a lunch lady at school in Falun, was told that her cooking is just too good.

Pupils at the school have become accustomed to feasting on newly baked bread and an assortment of 15 vegetables at lunchtime, but now the good times are over.

The municipality has ordered Eriksson to bring it down a notch since other schools do not receive the same calibre of food – and that is “unfair”.

Moreover, the food on offer at the school doesn’t comply with the directives of a local healthy diet scheme which was initiated in 2011, according to the municipality.

“A menu has been developed… It is about making a collective effort on quality, to improve school meals overall and to try and ensure everyone does the same,” Katarina Lindberg, head of the unit responsible for the school diet scheme, told the local Falukuriren newspaper.

Eriksson added that she sees it as her job to ensure that the pupils are offered several alternatives at meal times.

The food on offer does not always suit all pupils, she explained, and therefore she makes sure there are plenty of vegetables to choose from as well as proteins in the form of chicken, shrimp, or beef patties.

From now on, the school’s vegetable buffet will be halved in size and Eriksson’s handmade loafs will be replaced with store-bought bread.

Her traditional Easter and Christmas smörgåsbords may also be under threat.

Parents and pupils alike find the municipality’s orders distasteful.

Fourth-graders at the school have even launched a petition in protest against the decision to put a lid on Eriksson’s passion for cooking.

Pair banned from all-you-can-eat restaurant for eating too much

George Dalmon, a former rugby player, and his friend Andy Miles were banned from an all-you-can-eat restaurant in Brighton, England, after the manager branded them “a couple of pigs”. The men would each eat five bowls of stir-fry during their regular meals at the Mongolian barbecue, which invites guests to create their own dishes from the buffet.

Diners are told they can request meals “as many times as you wish” for £12 ($19). The manager, who did not want to be named, said the two friends were eating him out of business. He said: “Basically they just come in and pig out. We have put up with them for two years but I’ve had enough.
“They are in such a hurry to beat everyone to the food they spoil everything. We are supposed to be a buffet but they eat everything out of the bowls before people can get there. We just can’t keep doing this.”

He said diners drank only water and never paid the optional service charge.

He added: “We are not a charity, we’re a business. It’s our restaurant and we can tell people not to come back if we don’t want them to.”

But Mr Dalmon, 26, said the restaurant should honor its promotion. He said: “They’ve only got small bowls and you can’t get enough in there so we always go back for more. We’ve been eating there for a couple of years then suddenly the owner came to our table in front of all the customers and went absolutely mental. He said we were a couple of pigs and we were banned for life. I couldn’t believe it.”

Goats released on NC high school football field

A small herd of goats caused plenty of problems for a North Carolina high school hoping to play a home football game on senior night.

The Shelby Star reports that nearly a dozen goats were released in the Burns High School stadium in Cleveland County Thursday night or Friday morning. School officials say the goats caused enough of a mess to force the game against Rutherfordton-Spindale Central to be moved.

The prank raised concern because of a recent outbreak of E. coli cases associated with the Cleveland County Fair west of Charlotte this month. Burns Athletic Director Eddy Taylor said health department officials came to the school and told them the game would have to be moved.

Finnish couple win 2012 Wife Carrying Championships

A couple from Finland have won the 13th Annual North American Wife Carrying Championship, held in Maine. Taisto Miettinen and Kristiina Haapanen were victorious in the hazardous race in Newry on Saturday Oct. 6. “Wife carrying” sees male competitors race each other while carrying a female team mate to whom, perhaps misleadingly, they do not have to be married.
Fifty teams had to navigate a 278-yard course, which included such obstacles as a three-foot high log hurdle, a small pond called the “The Widow Maker” and a sand trap known as “Sand Mountain”.
The couple won prizes including cash equal to five times Haapanen’s weight, plus her weight in beer.
Watch the video:

Footage courtesy APTN

From The Local (Sweden’s News in English), The Telegraph (London) and The Boston Herald.