food: mmmm dunno

So this post was triggered after consuming a Danone Danio yoghurt, well I'll have to take their word for it that the product was yoghurt as it had a bizarre spongy texture and quite literally absolutely no taste.
Danone claim that the milk is passed through a special fat extraction thingamajig which leaves the yoghurt extra thick and with 0% fat.
This yoghurt was completely vile, and I'd sooner lick the white fluid from the inside of George Michaels underpants than the white crud in a Danio pot, but it's 0% fat so that apparently makes it acceptable to sell tasteless goo for lots of money.
But ultimately what is the point of all these fat free, reduced fat, completely disgusting things? If the thing you are eating is unpleasant then just don't eat it, because there's no fat freeer, calorie lower item than nothing.

Plus I've never understood people that don't eat butter and cream. In particular people don't put butter on their bread because it contains salt and fat, instead they spread vegetable fat based stuff full of chemically and mechanically altered I don't know what. How can you ever argue that an almost natural product rich in vitamins and protein is worse for you than whatever Utterly Butterly is? I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! I Can't Believe People Eat That And I Definitely Can't Believe It's Food!
And if the bit of fat and salt in butter is a problem for those people's health then how much butter are they spreading on their bread?

Here's a crazy new idea, if you want to lose weight and stay healthy eat a sensible amount of tasty food and not a massive amount of 'Low Fat' crap. You might just enjoy eating your dinner for once.

mini-moan: it's gone everywhere

This post skirts around the issue of false advertising in a way, more precisely product labelling.

Today I decided to have some pickled red cabbage with my tea and opened a new jar of a brand I had never previously purchased. This wasn't some cheap Tesco value or even Waitrose Essential product, no this was the good stuff by Garners (well the hefty price implied it was good).

So I whacked the lid with a spoon as years of idleness has left me weak, feeble and barely capable of opening the jar. I stuck in my fork, pulled it out, and to my dismay there were but a few scrawny pieces of cabbage. Bewildered by this I once again stuck in my fork and stirred expecting resistance, I'm use to resistance when I stick it in, but there was none and it became clear that my jar of pickled cabbage was more pickled than cabbage, by which I mean mostly vinegar.

So I wondered, legally what proportion of the jar actually has to be cabbage in order to label it as pickled cabbage? Based on my experience it should have been labelled vinegar with a cabbage ganish!

Logically it would need to be at the minimum 51% cabbage so the majority of the jar was cabbage, but the experts at The Laboratoire Condiments and Accompaniments department, who also dabble in Preserves, Conserves and Pickles and are the only individuals in the world that actually know the difference between a Preserve and a Conserve, assure me that this was not the case.

Therefore Garners pickled red cabbage does not get TheGuyWhoMoansCalledMatthew seal of quality.

mini-moan: man is a many layered beast.

As requested by John I have corrected the number of apostrophes in this post

The final touches are still being made to the epic post, so here is a mini moan to help ease the pain.

You may know Im not the biggest fan of Waitrose product's and thi's i's never more so than when it comes to their fruit. But occasionally Waitrose produce's an edible, if insanely priced product such as it's Party Croissants.
These delectable's are in packs of 12 containing 2 flavour's, the deliciou's mushroom and the mediocre ham. So by now you are wondering what the purpose of this post is. Have I purchased share's in Waitrose and this i's an attempt to increase my wealth? Idiot, Waitrose doesn't have share's.
No, the problem i's with the packaging, you see these two different varietie's are each packaged in a plastic tray, and these two tray's are layered one atop the other, with the more deliciou's mushroom cream filled one's at the bottom. Annoyingly, layered in such a way that all of the croissant's on the bottom layer become stuck to the underside of the plastic tray on the upper layer, often falling onto the floor whilst the upper layer is lifted free of its plastic film.
ARGH!!!
It seem's that whilst mankind has mastered the art of filling tiny pastrie's with flavoured creamy goo, it has not yet mastered the art of placing a piece of cardboard between two plastic tray's, or even better moulding plastic protrusion's into the lower tray which lift's the upper layer slightly above the creamy goodne's's.

food: you say ping...

... I say pong

I'm a big fan of all things garlic, on occasion I could probably be mistaken for a Frenchmen, and I often cook up a batch of garlic butter king prawns. Garlic prawns and fresh bread is hard to beat.
But the problem with cooking up a tasty garlic based dish is having to handle the Garlic, everybody is well aware of my issue with Asparagus and Garlic isn't much better in that regard.
The main issue is crushing of the cloves, all manner of garlicy juice absorbed deep into the very core of my hands and it just wont shift. I've tried everything short of scrubbing my hands with wire wool, I even resorted to asking a Frenchman how he removed the odour of Garlic from his body, and his response was to rub my hands on a Zinc tap which proved to be as effective as the French army (or Lithuanian Air Force) . If you are interested the exact phrasing of the question was 'Hey, you're French! You must know how to get the smell of Garlic off your hands?'.

But finally I have solved the problem with the newest creation from the Advanced Technology Department at The Laboratoire; Garlic_Gloves.
These multi-use gloves manufactured from fabric coated in a custom Garlic repellent film specially developed for use in Garlic_Gloves by experts in the field of odour repellent films at The Laboratoire are guaranteed to repel all Garlic juices.

On sale immediately at a mere £10 for a right Garlic_Glove, £20 for a left Garlic_Glove (because being left handed is wrong and left handed people should be punished for their Satanic ways) or £50 for a matching set containing 1 x Right Garlic_Glove and 1 x Left Garlic_Glove.

food: trused-up

Don't worry reader the picture above is nothing to be concerned about, well that's not strictly true, it's nothing sinister.
Today I decanted to my local Tesco Extra to purchase the final few ingredients for a curry, one of said ingredients was a bulb of garlic. I spent some time circling the store at one point proclaiming 'Am I stupid, I can't find garlic anywhere', I received a few strange looks.
When I was finally pointed to the garlic I couldn't quite comprehend that which I saw, at first I thought they obviously only sell garlic in packs of 2 or more which was annoying as I only needed one bulb, but as I lifted the sack to my face for inspection I discovered that the sack contained just one.
I can understand the need for a sack if storing two items, but this is completely unnecessary.
I can only guess that Tesco have had numerous requests from customers that they need to be able to swing their garlic around and Tesco felt that swinging a sack would provide the best end user experience.
I am certainly not saying that you can't have a great deal of fun with a sack, but a sack containing a single bulb of garlic is completely unnecessary.
This is made more ridiculous when examined in context, nowadays Tesco provides carrier bags that are designed to bio-degrade, they actually bio-degrade before you've even managed to get your shopping home often leaving a boot full of plastic confetti, and they want everybody to re-use their bags to help 'save the environment'. Well then, why on earth are they manufacturing garlic sacks? Surely the carbon footprint of that garlic sack is far larger than selling the garlic loose and the customer using one of those little clear plastic bags that Tesco already have to supply for the other vegetables?
Plus most bizarrely Tesco sell their "Chef's Choice" garlic in sacks of 1(49p) or 4(£1) and Organic garlic in sacks of 3 (90p), I found this bizarre, why not sell the "Chef's Choice" garlic loose for say 30p each and let the user choose however many they want?

mini-moan: denied the opportunity

Recently I ranted about ripen at home fruit that does anything but. Instead you spend days monitoring that nectarine or banana only for it to rot into compost when you look away.
Today I turn my intention to fruit that is the polar opposite, an example of this would be the Waitrose 'Perfectly Ripe' range which is more 'Perfectly Rotten, Perfect For Compost', though sometimes with Waitrose even their regular range of fruit is rotten before you leave the shop.
On Saturday I purchased a punnet of cherries, and with them being Waitrose they were far from cheap. Yet the very first cherry I removed from the punnet was dripping and rotten, the next also rotten, the one after home to a whole colony of mould, eventually I found a cherry that wouldn't have caused me severe digestive trouble and it tasted, well it had no taste at all.
I returned the cherries to Waitrose and with my refund I purchased 4 Pears, rather expensive golden jobbies imported from New Zealand, although the fact they came from New Zealand should have been the first warning they would be terrible, much like anything imported from New Zealand.
The first pear while massively disappointing was indeed 'Perfectly Ripe', the second '50% Rotten', the third '75% Rotten' and the final '25% Rotten'. With a success rate that low I don't know how they can use the term 'Perfectly Ripe' unless they mean for making White Lightening.

At least with 'Ripen at Home' I get the opportunity to live in hope for several days that my fruit will be ready, the enjoyment of inspecting the fruit and proclaiming 'Tomorrow will be the day, I will feast on various fruits' before the disappointment that is a rotten puddle of decayed fruit where before there was optimism. No, with 'Perfectly Ripe' you bypass the fun and head straight to disappointment town, much like the A34 when heading towards Didcot.

mini-moan: what's in a name.

I'm not a fan of our Duchy of Cornwall's range of expensive organic food, so far I've not had a single item from the range that I thought was any good. But today while browsing the shelves of Waitrose I saw a Duchy 'Sandringham Strawberry Yoghurt' for 25p instead of the usual 84p, how could I refuse.
Proudly displayed on the tub was 'Organic', Charlie has a bit of a thing for organic and I believe he only feeds Camilla organic hay (that one was unfair). I wouldn't be surprised if old Charlie brushed his teeth with a stick of organic Celery dipped in organic yoghurt.
But while reading the ingredients on the back of the tub I noticed 'flavouring*', and the asterisk explanation read 'Flavouring from approved non-organic ingredients'. So if the flavouring in this 'Organic' yoghurt isn't organic then how the hell can it be an organic yoghurt?
Shame on your Charlie, you've let me down, you've let Waitrose down and most importantly you've let yourself down.

Also, as the yoghurt was the least Strawberry flavoured I've ever eaten the individual that 'approved' the non-organic flavouring certainly wasn't me. This yoghurt isn't getting the 'tgwmcm' seal of approval.

mini-moan: griping and moan

How do they get away with it?
Surely it is illegal for Supermarkets to stick the words 'Ripen at home' on a punnet of Nectarines or a bunch of Bananas? More accurately it should read 'Stay completely unripe for a week and then suddenly become utterly rotten at home'.

I'm willing to bet nobody has successfully ripened any 'Ripen at home' fruit at their abode. Each day you pick-up that peach, give it a gentle squeeze, a breeze block would be softer, you return it to the bowl upset that you won't be supping on the sweet fruit. After several more days of this you approach the bowl, pick up the fruit and your hand is moist and slimy, you rotate the fruit and discovered it is now completely rotted and covered in mould.
After many years of this you've learned the error of your ways and instead decide to not bother ripening. You take a bite and crack 4 of your teeth on the granite like peach.
Finally you give-up. Fruit isn't that nice anyway, what's a bit of scurvy between friends?

mini-moan: show some restraint.

Today it was decided that rather than go through the hassle of cooking,  the new Laboratoire kitchen is still far from fully operational, dinner would be prepared by the experts at Toby Carvery. How can you go wrong? A choice of up to 4 meats and unlimited quantities of 8 different vegetables for a mere £5.95.  Plus for an extra £1.50 you can go 'King', that's extra meat an extra Yorkshire pudding and 2 Chipolatas. How could I refuse.
But refuse I should have done (I know, terrible grammar), for a meal fit for a 'King' it was not and instead of even more delicious meat I had even more tough, grisly and completely tasteless meat. My larger plate merely allowed me to choose more tasteless and undercooked vegetables. And rather than eating more I left at least 50% of the bland and badly cooked food on my magnificently proportioned plate.

So I warn my reader (I didn't forget the 's'), if you are ever asked if you want to go 'King' turn around and leave, for anywhere offering such a service will likely disappoint with spectacularly large portions of substandard and inedible food.

And I haven't even mentioned the 20 minute queue for the food that stretched across the building.

mini-moan: brave new worlds.

I prefer the finer things in life and that means I don't eat that air filled, batch baked, tasteless, mass produced sponge they call bread, instead it's often a freshly baked Tiger Loaf upon which I spread my butter.
 But what really annoys me about a Tiger loaf is it goes mouldy so damned fast, a standard farm house loaf can keep for a week with no problem, but after a few days a Tiger loaf soon becomes home to new civilisations. After a week they've evolved to the point of constructing rudimentary tools, 10 days and they have democracy, poetry and fine art. By the two week mark, out of the corner of your eye, you may notice the occasional satellite orbiting the loaf sitting on your worktop. Fortunately at the 21day mark they've attempted to, but failed to crack nuclear fusion and irradiated themselves into extinction and you can now safely feast upon your Tiger loaf.

food: carbohy-light

As a sad and lonely man (have I mentioned this before?) much of my diet consists of microwave meals for one, in fact the microwave becomes your second best friend when you've been single as long as I have even if operating it is so torturous eating broken glass seems like a more inviting prospect and probably more flavoursome compared to all the ready  meals I've previously eaten.

But a big problem with such ready meals are the portions, we all know they aren't very generous, but why is it that there is barely any carbohydrate and far too much protein? You'd expect it to be the other way, god knows how poor the meat has to be if it works out cheaper than rice or potato and I certainly don't want anybody to tell me where it comes from. 

Take a microwave curry as an example, you'll get 3 grains of rice in the 'rice' compartment and 2 dozen flocks of chicken in the 'curry' compartment. That's hardly a balanced meal, so I'm sat there already depressed because I'm alone eating a ready meal trying hard not to wonder where they found a square chicken from which they can carve the perfect 1" cubes of meat while carefully rationing my last grain of rice as 90% of my meat curry is still on the plate. Perhaps it is all a ploy to increase the sales of Naan bread, you'll certainly need a score of them to mop up the bounty of curry sauce because you obviously won't be able to do so with all that rice you didn't get. Don't even get me started on a microwave chicken chow mein that will contain all of 2 noodles and a slither of cabbage.

mini-moan: it's the taste

I can't eat Asparagus, well that isn't true, I can eat Asparagus but then I get really bad Asparagus Wee. When I say bad I mean bad enough to cause a gag reflex. It stinks for days even after the smallest quantity of Asparagus has been consumed, I wouldn't be surprised if merely looking at Asparagus was enough to make it stink. The smell is on par with 'funky tea' prescribed by a 'crazy lady' that goes 'woooo' while waving her hands in front of you.

And it isn't just my wee, it also makes my sweat smell so during the summer the house needs to be evacuated when Asparagus is on the menu.

The problem is I like Asparagus, so what am I to do? Answers on a postcard.

But why am I telling you this? You don't want to know about my bodily fluids and their various odours, or do you? The correct answer is yes, and that's why I told you.

mini-moan: a depressing sight.

This will be a quick one, that's something I tell all the girls.

I'm about to show you two pictures both of which are meant to be representations of the same item.

We spent several hours carefully excavating but were unable to locate the second layer of biscuit in this 'Double Decker' deliciousness. We then hired a team of forensic investigators who were also unable to uncover the fabled second layer despite the use of many thousands of pounds of radar and x-ray technology. Eventually we contacted Derek Acorah  who promptly rushed around on the promise he would get to eat the second layer should it be discovered, he wasn't able to contact the second layer from the spirit world, but he did contact my fist with his nose.

mini-moan: an awful surprise

I like to think I have a sophisticated a discerning palette in fact I really like to think that even though it probably isn't true. And there is nothing worse than eating a food, in particular a sweet, that is delicious on the outside but deep inside a demon lurks.

As a child I was deeply scarred by the abomination or rather abonbonation that is a strawberry bonbon with a toffee centre. The horror that struck me when the delicious strawberry tangy outer layer was breached to reveal not a sweet strawberry filling but instead a fudgey monstrosity. Don't think for one moment I dislike fudge, for you would be wrong, but you might as well fill the middle of a bonbon with Stewed Donkey Feet if you are going to ruin it with fudge.
To this day I am so terrified of coming across this vile mixture that I haven't purchased a strawberry bonbon since :(


And just in case you were wondering, I'm just finishing up the One Thousand View Question Answering Extravaganza so stay tuned for more.

mini-moan: £6 for some pâté on toast, you must be kidding

I actually proclaimed '£6 for some pate on toast, you must be kidding' when reading the menu at a restaurant about 18 months ago. When fellow guests ordered (much to my dismay) and their food arrived it transpired that the toast was a single slice of Tesco Value white loaf that had seen the inside of a toaster, and the pâté was 'wafer thin' I was right to be so disgusted.

What is up with restaurant prices these days? If it costs me £6 to buy the ingredients for making 20 portions of pâté on toast and with superior quality ingredients I might add, then it is outrageous for a restaurant buying ingredients at even lower cost to charge that for a single portion. I think you can probably buy a sofa in DFS for £6 on a Double Discount weekend.

I don't want to come across as a skinflint but it seems like people have forgotten the true value of things at the moment, especially when somebody told me they were charged about £4 for a single slice of quiche at a farm shop :O

So why am I suddenly bringing this up now? I don't know, must be bored I guess.

food: tumbleweed

For my tea yesterday I purchased an Asda Stuffed Crust Meat Feast Pizza. With the wording Meat Feast I was expecting quite a banquet on my plate. But what I got barely fulfilled the claim of Meat and certainly fell short of being a Feast.

I expected the top of my pizza to be piled high with cow, pig and various other animal innards, but what I instead received were 6 slices of peperoni, 10 squares that I believe were meant to be ham but more closely resemble diced carpet tile, and some brown lumpy pieces that I believe were scrapped from the inside of a McDonald's deep fat fryer but the label on the box purported to be 'Beef'.

By the time I discovered how far I had been deceived by Asda I was starving and ate the sickly tomato monstrosity, but I will be writing to my MP about this I can assure you.

And have you tried that Asda Price Guarantee? I'd like to see a person that has successfully met every criteria laid out in the T&Cs.

food: A meal for all the family.

I really love Nik-Naks and I much prefer them to a bag of Walkers. My favourite flavour for years was Sour Cream and Chive, and then one day they just stopped making them. Some bright spark at GoldenWonder who clearly has ageusia replaced them with Scampi.
Maybe I am not an expert on snack foods, but it doesn't take an expert to know Scampi flavoured corn starch tastes vile.
Scampi clearly didn't sell well because now they have replaced them with Pickled Onion in the multipacks, but I understand some odd people still buy them in the extra large individual packs.

Here's a tip Golden Wonder (owners of Nik-Naks), bring back the flavour people actually liked.

P.S. What happened to all the massive Nik-Naks you used to find in the bags, now they are just pathetic.