Brussels 21.01.2013Dear Richard, A short introductionBefore the industrial revolution people cooked their own food. By the late sixties the tv dinner and convenience foods like pot noodles were a standard fixture in most supermarkets. The combination of freezer and microwave allowed the TV meal to flourish through to the eighties when the health concerns of a nation, rapidly becoming addicted to excessive salt and fats, forced many manufacturers to snap back to reality. TV meals started to clean up their act. This process has gradually continued through to today where the ready-to-heat meal still features largely on most shopping lists but the choices are practically unlimited, ranging from the mass produced reclaimed meatballs in spaghetti, retailing for under 2 pounds through to luxury Quails thighs with Truffled Vitelotte Mash at ten times that. From Weight Watchers reduced calorie, vegetarian and Halal, to gluten, lactose, nut and even salt free, whatever restriction you want it is probably being manufactured.Theoretically it would be easy to argue that there is nothing new that can still pique the commercial imagination in a market as saturated as that. Yet, as long as buyers exist there will be sellers determined to get them to prefer their particular product or brand. Like us!The Tiffin Kay ethicAt Tiffin Kay we do not work in a factory. We have a kitchen, where fresh vegetables, starches and pulses, as well as quality fish and meats are transformed by hand, into quality dishes rivalling and indeed surpassing what a competent housewife could make at home. Although we have close to 1.500m2 of work floor our dishes are produced in small batches of maximum 120 portions to minimise the detrimental changes inherent in scaling up.Our work tools consist of stoves, pots, kettles pans and ovens with our combi-steam ovens the only modern tool our grandmothers would not have had. We use fresh ingredients wherever possible and frozen if and when necessary. We use no arti