Today's blog starts of slowly, gets worse in the middle and falls apart completely in a sobbing wreck at the end with another toilet tale, if you like rambling then this is a blog that rambles and rambles, read at your own peril...
Take a look at the above ingredients, look a little strange does it? Garlic, sunflower oil, salt and Champagne?! Wow, that's a bit rich for a tub of garlic in a chilli oil, what next caviar in brown sauce, gold dust in custard powder? One omission that has been good to see is the loss of E numbers and a change to at least telling us a little more about what they stuff in apart from horse meat that is. For those of you that never lived through the era of the E number it was basically a code that appeared in the list of ingredients that disguised the actual name because essentially they didn't want you to read things like Monosodium Glutamate as a flavour enhancer (E621) or Potassium Chloride (E508) as a gelling agent.
In 1983 I bought a book that listed all the E numbers and their side effects, it was all part of my curiosity and fascination with links, lists and random bits of information, although that's quite possibly due to the fact I am in some way mentally unstable and prone to writing blogs as a way of coping with it all.
Anyway, there was some dodgy stuff being put in our food so imagine my surprise when I switch on popular foodie program's like The Great British Menu and Masterchef only to find that when you expect the meals to be made from scratch with care and attention from the best ingredients possible I now see chefs turning up with tubs labelled Guar Gum and the like. E numbers it seems has returned, only this time we are going to pay more to eat them in the quest for prawn flavoured sand and edible stones.
Chemistry has entered the professional kitchen in a big way only this time that tasty fancy dish tempting you on the menu may contain more E's than a 80's raver off his trolley. Oh hum, there's nothing that will alter it but I think it's just a shame that's all.
Which brings me around to my most miserable food experience ever. Snails. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't the taste if essentially you like eating a chewy elastic band tasting of grass but more the effect it has on my digestive system.
I enjoyed the meal and sat back in the chair and looked around the room. Nice. I stifled a burp, took a sip of wine and thought contented thoughts. It was only as I rose that I felt my stomach lurch and emit a gurgle that didn't know if it wanted to exit from the top or the bottom of my body. Uh oh, something's amiss my mind said to itself. You know the feeling, you don't feel quite right but you can't put your finger on it.
On the way back in the taxi I knew it was more than a little indigestion, the rocking of the car only served to stir up trouble, whatever had disagreed with my body was having a fight with my lower intestine which was acting like a bouncer and not allowing anybody to leave the building. I could feel the fight as my lower half made such noises that even the taxi driver was concerned enough to stop endlessly chatting and ask 'You alright mate?' As I gripped on to the handle above the door.
'I'd step on it if I were you, I don't know how long I can hold out!'
I don't remember much from there my next memory is bursting into the bathroom with my trousers around my ankles and stumbling onto the toilet almost bent double in pain, sweat pouring from my brow and an expression that I have failed to recreate since but has been described as Arthur Mullard sucking a lemon.
Remember that meteor crater in Arizona that's 600ft across and could have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs or the Daisy Cutter bomb from the Vietnam war that cleared vast tracts of jungle? Well, lets just say mine was faster, harder, stronger and almost broke the bowl on its exit. It's the first time I have heard the clunk of porcelain and the last time it has been followed by what can only be described as tipping a bag of ornamental pebbles into a bucket of custard. It whooshed if it could be described as a whoosh and caused a vacuum that almost turned me inside out through my own backside.
I sat reeling unsteadily gripping on to the towel rail that was almost ripped off the wall, the toilet paper was scorched, my trousers ripped and my shirt in tatters. I had lost a shoe and the neighbours were banging on the wall for me to keep the noise down. Apparently I had made such a guttural noise that a passing Wookie had stopped because they thought I had shouted their name.
It wasn't over, I still had the aftershocks to go. I managed to wedge my leg in the bathroom cabinet to avoid slipping off as it all changed to a combination of rampant gusts of air interrupted occasionally with a hailstorm followed by a the slow hissing of escaping gas. I was like a vacuum cleaner stuck on blow, only the bag was now empty. The pain! the noise! the smell! I managed to achieve a state of zen, I saw the end of the universe, I knew the meaning of life, I could talk to cats, I could relax... meditate... even levitate...
Well actually I didn't levitate, I fell off the toilet pulling the cabinet door off in the process and collapsed into a limp heap, I had lost my other shoe in the fracas but found a comb I had lost weeks earlier from my new lower position.
Anyway, that's why I don't eat snails any more.
Told you it was a ramble, here's one last thing to amuse. Last night I was looking through all the free apps that had become available and was rather tickled to find this...
I don't know what's better the picture, name or classification, I for one will download it immediately. Egg, cocks, ball, I wonder if there's an E number for it?
www.petersmithcollective.co.uk Home Of Foreverbunny and the Impossimals
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