I am not sure I can deal with the idea of Suggs being the new Captain Birds Eye.

I read the most amazing article today about McDonalds admitting it was adding milk and wheat to their french fries. (Can we call them chips now please? This is an English Weblog - In fact were I come from they fry them in beef fat anyway).

Admittedly, I find it a tad strange that McDs are adding such things to their chips but that’s not my problem with the article. My problem is with comments such as:

“I am vegan. I have eaten their vegetable burger with fries for many years. I will never do it again. I really hope their vegetable burgers were animal free.” 

What? What fucking retarded vegan would eat at McDonalds anyway? I can understand if they were forced in there once and had to eat something to be social or because they were starving but come on, this one has eaten there “for many years” and not had the nouse to actually check with McDonalds that their stuff was animal free? This is McDonalds, not some trendy vegan restaraunt in Covent Garden.

Then it struck me… Half way down the article there is a quote:

“Nadia Sugich, a vegan, is also suing McDonald’s. Vegans do not eat any animal products at all (vegetarians include dairy and eggs in their diet, vegans don’t). Had she known the product contained milk she would not have touched them.”

Silly me - How did I miss that? It’s just an excuse to sue somebody. Obviously these people expected a certain duty of care and dedication to their high standards of vegan care FROM A FUCKING HAMBURGER SHOP!

Well I am sorry and I have no issue with most vegans, but in this case I hope the courts force them to pay costs and tell them to fuck off and get a life.

I don’t see myself as a Luddite but something about the obsession for accuracy these days is starting to piss me off. When I was being educated, on the occasional times I deigned to attend that is, there was always some bright spark who could quote Pi to god knows how many decimal places. To my mind, Pi is generally 3.14 - Usually, I am more than happy with Pi being 3.

Bear with me, this is going somewhere.

It’s all the fault of the sodding electronic calculator. See back when I was younger than I ever really was, there were slide rules, and a slide rule looked like this:

I appreciate that many people reading this won’t have ever used a slide rule in anger, but the principal behind them is that most of the time, you more or less guess the answer, as opposed to have it displayed to 9 decimal places in monocolour LCD lettering. Look up a little from here… See the third scale down? Just to the right of the 3? There’s Pi marked. It’s marked roughly between 3.1 and 3.2 - It’s about 3.15 in fact. If you want to multiply Pi by 3 you pop the two numbers together on the correct scales and read off about 9.45 on the result scale; if you want to multiply it by 30, you add multiply that by 10 in your head… If you want to multiply it by 3 million, you do the same only with more zeroes and your error rate has gone up considerably, but it doesn’t matter much really, does it?

Why is this annoying me? Apart from the fact that I want to shoot people who can quote Pi to more than 6 places? Well it’s the post office, that’s what it is. They have digital scales now, and when the parcel you are posting weighs 501 grammes, they charge you for over 500 grammes. Generally speaking by that point, I just rip a corner off and make them re-weigh it but even so, when did we become so obsessed with this “down the nearest gramme” accuracy? I don’t like it. Make them stop. I am not even going to start ranting about their new letter size measurement devices which very much depend on the operator’s skill at getting parcels through a little plastic measuring slot - Well I am not going to rant YET, at any rate.

I want markets back where they plonked stuff on scales and weighed it in pounds. If it was 4.4 pounds, and cost 30p a pound, they’d charge you about £1. 30 because that was roughly what 4.4 * 30 is (a slide rule would confirm this to you, if you were to ask it, especially a W.H.Smiths one with the little clear slider thing missing like most of them are these days). These days they pop things on digital scales, tell the scales that the things you want cost 78p per 100 grammes, and when it weighs 264.5g it prints a label that says £2.08 (yes, the bastards round it up too).

I blame the Common Market.

Prometheus’s lesser known little brother stole butter and a frying pan from the Gods. His monumentous achievement was overshadowed by the cheek and audacity of his older sibling’s theft but none the less, was a major milestone in the relationship between man and his Deities.

I had been pretty much ignoring recent milk adverts; after all, Milk is pretty much just Milk unless it is Wiseman’s “The One” which only has 1% fat but tastes pretty much the same as normal 4% milk. (No, this is not a sponsored post I just like the taste and the fact that it is purple).

Anyway,  I saw some of St Ivel’s new Omega-3 milk, reduced to 40p in Tesco last week so I decided that I may as well try it.

St Ivel, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that what milk really needs, is added Omega-3. Of course, being moderately sane I figured that they would make this tasteless but apparently, I was wrong.

The first thing I did with it was to make a Latte - I was still being naive here and I thought the fishy taste was just my imagination but then I had a pint of the stuff, cold and fresh. It tasted like herring in a milk sauce! I am not exaggerating, it really did.

I checked… I didn’t believe it so I took a photo of it because I knew you wouldn’t believe me either. St Ivel got perfectly good milk, straight from a perfectly happy and innocent cow, and then squeezed the innards of a fish into it.

I don’t think I can say any more, this is just madness! Mind you, the cats love it.

** Update: That last statement was a lie, they were just being polite because I was watching them. I just went back into the kitchen and the rest of has been left untouched by a pair of greedy felines who will eat just about anything; alive or dead.

I had to pop to Canada later that day so the time had come to deal with Neil, who was hanging in the back of my Land Rover making the place a little stinky.

Here he is, and what a fine chap he still is if you ignore the fact he is a little floppy and skanky.

On a closer examination of our patient, it appeared that the injury he had sustained by being hit at high speed by a car had caused some of his spine and various other shattered bones to peirce his skin and make him a little delicate as far as his body went. It didn’t look like plucking him with the skin intact would be that easy but none the less, I tried.

Ok, as you see, it wasn’t a great success. It looked like in this case, the best bet would be to get as many feathers off him and basically gut him and fillet him there and then. He doesn’t need his wings any more though.

With most of the feathers off, it was time to dismember the poor chap and make a start on that rather damaged body. They don’t make it easy.

Ok, now the messy bit - You may want to close your eyes for this bit is you are squeamish. Luckily, you can’t smell it, though in fairness to him he wasn’t too bad.

Finally… As they say on Blue Peter, here’s what your Neil should look like in the end.

And of course there are some leftovers, but they are quite cute really.

I am sure we will see more of Neil later, but for now I have a flight to catch. Bon Voyage! Oh, whilst I am gone, remember to practice the Pheasant Plucking rhyme:

I’m not a pheasant plucker, I’m a pheasant plucker’s son and I’m only plucking pheasants till the pheasant plucker comes.

I have meat and potato pie, with mushy peas covered in Worchester Sauce and Squirty Laughing Cow Cheese… Haute Cuisine don’t get much lower than this!

Oh dear, the mouldy bits don’t taste too good. I think the pie was old.

Meanwhile I thought somebody had stolen Neil this morning but he’d just slipped his noose and fallen to the floor of the Land Rover he is hanging in. Tomorrow I think, poor Neil will be stripped of his dignity and trussed. Poor thing!

I am starting to agree with Robin (the chappie who reduces food at my local Sainsburys) that the major difference between Tesco and Sainsburys normal foods and their Finest, or Taste The Difference ones is that the more expensive ones simply have less salt in them.

With half a tonne of salt added to it, Tesco Finest Moussaka may well start to taste of something - Unfortunately without it, it doesn’t. It’s as simple as that really. It’s a shame though; I was looking forward to it. Grumble.

Ah ha! Look what I found on the way home this morning. I have called him Neil. Isn’t he pretty.

I guess I will have to hang him for a few days and then decide what to do with him. Where is a copy of Hugh’s Meat Book when I need one!

For the record, Tesco Finest Creamy Fish Pies are lovely if you ignore the fact that they are overly padded out with rather boringly tasteless salmon.