Tuesday 18 November 2014

Cooked a couple of meals over my days off that turned out ok. High spot was probably the M&S £10 Meal Deal offer. A main course, side dish, dessert and a bottle of wine for a tenner. If you price it up you are effectively getting the wine free, so saving about £7. They have a new line in the 'Cook' range of Cod with a crumb topping and a sundried tomato sauce, which was very good. The duck breasts with plum sauce has lovely breasts [ouch!] but the sayce is waaaaaay to sweet and spoind the duck if spread over it. I served it with three times cooked chips and some green stuff [for visual effect]. M&S are doing a range of desserts that are shaped like a half base-ball [ie half a globe] with a sort of twirl effect radiating out from the top. There are three varieties, a white one, a red one and a pale choclate colored one and they retail at £4. There are two servings in each box, only one of which is visinle through the perspex 'window' of the box. I've bought them twice and on both occasions the soft sugar covering of the unseen pudding has been broken and in a mess when I opened the box; not something you want at £4 a tick. I checked all the boxes in the store the following day and they were all like it, so warning - don't buy 'em for your special Christmas meal unless you intend to serve it in a bucket. Quick shop story. A few months ago I was sorry to hear that George, one of our customers had been diagnosed with cancer and been given 'a year to live. I don't know him well - he's a footie supporter and chats with some of the other staff about the game - but still I was sad when Brenda [another customer] came up to me and said, "George died over the Weekend". I comiserated and said I would let my workmates who knew him better know. This I did over the next few days as I saw them. "Wow!", said Bruan, the young lad whp probably knew him best, "I knew he was sick but that was fast!" It therefor came as something of a shock when filling the milk shelves by the front door, I looked up to see George walking through it to but his paper as normal. Mouth open I stared at him [from a distance] and later, I pulled Brenda up when she too, came in. "Brenda - george is still alive - He was in this morning! Well to cut a story short, of course it had been a different customer who I'd no idea was called George who had died, and luckily I was able to put my workmates right before any damage was done, but it was close - one had bought a condolence card but just hadn't got round to sending it!

Wednesday 12 November 2014

Today while stacking the shelves with the chilled items from the days delivery I was given cause to muse upon the marketing strategies employed by the various producers of the provender we eat. The particular item that caused me to step back for a moment was a brand of sausages [currently on special offer, £2 for 6] that go under the name of 'Porky Whites'. Now four or five years ago a brand appeared on the supermarket shelves under the name 'The Black Farmer's Sausage', the packaging of which showed a sillhouetted figure [wearing a stetson if I recall correctly] standing against an orange-red sunset. The inuendo of the branding would have been obvious to all but the most nieve of individuals and no doubt caused some smiles [and indeed sales] as people encountered the make for the first time. Now I may be absolutely on the wrong track here, but I can't help but think that the subsequent later appearence of the 'Porky Whites' variety is not a coincidental to the earlier brand. 'Porky whites' sausages also feature a photograph on their packaging, but this time we see a 1930's style olde worlde picture, conjouring an image of a time when all was right with the world [as if!] and all butchers were known by the sobriquet 'Porky'. Again I may be on the wrong end of the bat here, but I can't help feeling that if the house-wives choice between the two would be 'The Black Farmers' [and why not, they're bigger] then Nigel Farrage's would be 'Porky Whites'. This all could be just wild speculation on my part; there might be no connection between the two brandings whatsoever and indeed the inuendo of the first example to appear may be all just my [questionable] imagination working in overdrive. What do you think?

Monday 10 November 2014

Last night I did one of the things I like best; I went down to M&S and bought some stuff, took it home and did a three course meal for E. [my wife] and me to sit down at like we have our own restaurant at home. Seriously. We have really good quality plates and cutlery, crystal glasses and the full works in order to re-create the 'feel' of eating out - but instead you're at home. This a) saves you a shed load of money and b) means you can get as pissed as a stick without i) making a tit of yourself at a posh reataurant and ii) having to spring for a taxi home [unless you're the kind who screw's convention and just drives home anyway in which case ignore ii; hey - I'm not in the judgement game]. I bought M&S 'Gravad-Lax' which is drop dead gorgeous and has a dill-sauce sachet included that avoids that bitter after-taste you get with some brands. The downside is there is only enough actual salmon for about one decent mouthfull per person and for this you have to bung £6 - so it's actually gram for gram probably dearer than beluga caviar but there you have it, who said being a gourmand was cheap! [Quick diversion; who can tell me the difference between a gourmand, a gourmet and a gastronome because there is one. I'll leave this one hanging as a hook to draw you back in here again, and reveal all at some later point when I have actually remembered [or re-checked] what the answer is.] Anyway next we had a roast pheasant [nearly typed roast peasant there - I'll save that one for closer to Christmas] with stuffing, roast pots and a little trio of veg. M&S do this small bag of trimmed carrots, broccoli and mangĂ©-tout that you just bung into a microwave bag and all and two minutes later you've got all your veg done. It's reaaly nice veg, crisp and well flavoured and it comes in at 80 pence a bag which is enough for two. [Quick lesson; for those who do those 'great big fuck-off roasts' you must be mad. A roast should be small enough to fit in as part of a three course meal and so simple to get onto the plate you could do it while simultaneously watching 'Debbie does Dallas' if you wanted to. Screw all of that standing around over boiling pans!] Anyway, the whole pheasant we bought from Marks was good flavoured, but I think it would have benefitted from a bit more 'hanging' - like for about a year! It was so tough I had to ask E. to pre-chew mine [not really] and that was the best bits. The tougher parts [legs and thighs] are currenly forming the major part of a PhD thesis on 'natures toughest matereals' which I will bring to you in due course. Actually I gave a piece to one of our cats who this morning is still chewing away like he's John Travolta in 'Grease' - I'll probably have to pay to have it surgically removed at some point in the near future! But aside from that the meal was actually ok. Dessert was a Bon Mamma rum-baba, as near to the real french thing as you are ever going to get [served with a Sainsbury's own brand pudding wine which was actually ok ay £4 a half bottle - much better [and more of it] than the M&S sweet muscat at £3 for which you only get 2 glasses. Cheese would have been an M&S 'Cornish Cruncher' which is out in front the best cheddar you can get anywhere, including the 'speciality' high end brands, but alas I was stuffed to the gills by this point and it was all I could do to retire to the front room and finnish of the three bottles of wine we had opened. Why do I do it? [Wine info; 'The Ridge' Sauvingnon Blanc 2012, 6/10 Tesco's; A Rioja of no note and an Argentinian Malbec that was drier than the Rioja. Don't worry - when I find something worth directing you to, you will get all the details.]

Saturday 8 November 2014

a new beginning.

For whatever reason, my blog site seems to be messing around with me today and not letting me 'compose in the normal manner. Ok - I can deal with it; I'm a big boy now. Anyhows - I've decided to change the way this blog is going to work. From now on, rather than being about the crap I think, it's going to be about the crap I experience. So let me tell you a bit about myself and the sort of stuff I do. I work in a seven-eleven store as a 'supervisor' of sorts. I've done some other stuff in my life [but thats no matter and It's really just my way of letting you know 'I'm Better than thet - honestly!' - but of course I'm really not]. My chief loves in my life [after me that is] are my wife and family, the occasional bouts of travel I get up to and the more regular meals that I either cook at home [I specialise in getting stuff from the supermarkets etc and making it better] or out in restaurants. From now on I'm going to tell you about this stuff. Not probably daily, but hopefully often enough to make things fun and interesting for you to want to keep up with. There'll be lots of spelling errors and gramatical bollocks, and shed loads of swearing and politically incorrect stupp. That's just the way I am. So please, drop in every once in a while and say hello. Hell - it might be fun ;)