Saturday, January 29, 2011

The Ice Wall comes to Manchester...

As a Mumbassador for The New Ice Age whose aim it is to "show you just how convenient, beneficial and healthy the frozen food option can be for you and for your family", I decided to meet the team who came up to Manchester to promote the campaign with their fantastic Ice Wall!

The Ice Wall in Exchange
Square.
The New Ice Age is a fun and informative site about all the uses of frozen foods created by The British Frozen Food Federation and has fantastic tips, hints and interesting facts all about using frozen foods and indeed they also have some fantastic competitions and hugely informative blogs so make sure you have a look at http://www.thenewiceage.com/  for clever ways to save money whilst using healthy frozen foods for the family. 

The Ice Wall was first launched in London where massive blocks of ice holding hundreds of food items were put together as a wall on display for the general public. 

This year it came to Manchester where in the early hours of a freezing cold saturday morning (Jan 22nd), the crew were setting up the huge blocks of Ice in Exhange Square near the Printworks.  I ventured down around nine in the morning and had the pleasure of meeting Lauren and Rachel, the fabulous girls of The New Ice Age who had quite wisely brought extra pairs of socks and gloves to keep warm whilst standing outside all day!

This year, the Ice Wall had a massive twist.  Instead of different foods being encased in the ice. It was money!! Hundreds of pounds in notes, coins (all covered in plastic of course) and even some mini coloured capsules containing the BIG prize of £200!!!!  Basically passers by were encouraged to have a guess of how much money the Ice Wall contained.  The people with the closest guesses were invited to come back and...have a go at chipping away at the ice to win the money!  You might think this was easy but some of the entrants took it all very seriously, taking time to try to *add* up what they could see inside the wall.

I spent the morning hopping from one foot to another (it really WAS very cold) and chatting to passers by about the Ice Wall and taking my cue from the girls, I tried to get lots of people to enter to come back and have a go!! 


An entrant wins some cash!

The correct answer is the equivalent to how much an average family of four could save by using frozen foods for a year instead of the fresh alternatives and no, I'm not going to tell you, but you can find out by reading all about it on the website!

If you want to learn more about what The New Ice Age are all about and find out how you can reduce waste in your kitchen and indeed help your food budget go to The New Ice Age and sign up for fantastic features, more campaigns and incredible competitions.  You can follow them @TheNewIceAge on Twitter and Facebook!

Why not comment below and tell me what your favourite frozen food recipe is and which frozen food product do you buy most in your house?

3 comments:

The New Ice Age said...

What a great post! I wish I could have been there to meet you :) Its a shame you didn't get a chance to chip away at the ice, I heard people really got into it.

Anonymous said...

That sounds like fun and what a great way to raise awareness. I am a big lover of freshly frozen foods. Its such a convenient way to cook and not waste too much food especially for a family. Thanks for sharing x

jamesd said...

I actually went! It was a great day for the kids too. All that frozen money! Have a look at all the pictures here http://www.thenewiceage.com/blog/cool-photos-icy-manchester – everyone really had fun.