We the Weasels…
Yeah, the Fourth of July is not usually one of my big holidays. Too damn hot for me. But this year, it’s downright chilly around here. This has been the coldest Summer ever, so far. If it keeps up like this, they’ll have to talk about it — whether they have their hearts set on a warming trend or not.
Anyhoo, I’ve just finished a steak and a baked potato and slaw and a beer. The beer was British, which didn’t seem quite right, but it’s my favorite. Bite me, King George! Lush that I am, I never drink in the daytime, so I feel quite naughty. Lookit me! Drinking a beer! Before five!
Now for a nap. God bless America! (I said that just to confuse Dawn. And I didn’t get hit by lightning or any
July 4, 2007 — 2:07 pm
Comments: 9
Bringing brown to the masses
The HP Foods that brings you Omelette ‘n’ Chips is most famous in the UK for HP Sauce, the empire’s leading brand of brown sauce. You’re at least as likely to find a bottle of HP Sauce as a bottle of ketchup on your table in the local cafe. I’m not sure what people put it on. I’ve never seen anyone eat it.
It tastes…brown.
Oh, so very brown. Like steak sauce, but without the kick. It’s made out of vinegar and dates and…brown.
Meat sauces and chutneys were popular in England in the 19th Century. Making them was time-consuming and required exotic ingredients, so they were out of the reach of most households.
In the 1890s, grocer Frederick Gibson Garton hawked his own sauces from a hand cart. He registered the name HP in 1896, after he heard a rumor his sauce was served in the dining room of the Houses of Parliament. He sold the name and the recipe to vinegar mogul Edwin Samson Moore, who brought brown to the people in 1903. The launch was delayed in deference to the death of Queen Victoria.
You couldn’t get more British than that if you tattoo’d the Union Jack on your arse while whistling Rule Britannia.
Sadly, HP Sauce has fallen in with Johnny Foreigner in latter days. First the French (Danone) and then the Americans (Heinz). Under Heinz’s’z ownership, production was moved to the Netherlands. Enraged Brits (ha ha! Just kidding. Somewhat shirty Brits) tried to organize a boycott in response, but, thanks to their supine neighbors, HP still accounts for more than 70% of the brown market.
Brown trivia
· At one time, a motorway cut through the middle of the Aston factory, necessitating a vinegar pipeline over the highway
· HP Sauce was known as “Wilson’s Gravy” during the tenure of Labour PM Harold Wilson, after his wife told the Times “If Harold has a fault, it is that he will drown everything with HP Sauce”
· Wilson later admitted it was Worcestershire sauce he slathered on everything
· Which makes much more sense
· Who came up with the slogan “what can brown do for you?”? Seriously, is UPS retarded?
· Between HP Sauce, Daddies Favorite and Heinz 57, the Heinz Corporation has a perilous stranglehold on the British brown trade
· Heinz also makes the most popular and ubiquitous British baked beans
· On their web site, they infuriatingly spell it “baked beanz”
· Ohmigod! I just phoned Britain and got a bean check. They spell it “baked beanz” on the cans, too! How the hell could I have missed that all these years?!
· By never drawing a sober breath in Britain, that’s how
June 6, 2007 — 4:56 am
Comments: 12
Omelette ‘n’ Chips
A client came into my cube today and was frightened by this object. Take a close look. Do you know what this is? It’s scrambled eggs, french fries and baked beans.
In a can.
He paled. “What sort of people would eat something like that?”
“English people.” I said, “over toast.”
This thing reaffirms by belief that foods with ‘n’ in them are not fit for human consumption. Also my belief that god is, at best, indifferent to human suffering.
It sits on top of my filing cabinet. I tucked it away out of the sight of visitors once, but Mike from the other side of Cubicle Row said, “you can’t do that! It’s kind of our…department mascot.”
So there you have it. A living reminder that not everything invented by WASPs has been a boon to mankind.
June 5, 2007 — 4:41 pm
Comments: 15
Special bonus weekend report: Mr Brain’s Faggots
Because if you can’t trust a weasel to keep a promise, what is this world coming to?
When I first saw Mr Brain’s fine product, I’m sure it was labeled “Mr Brain’s Frozen Faggots.” I can’t work out if “pork faggots” is more or less funny than “frozen faggots.” Anyhow, of all the absurd things in the British supermarket that make an American fall to the floor and bark like a hound, Mr Brain’s offering takes the prize.
I’ve always meant to try them. I almost left it too late; we had to visit several supermarkets before finding one down-market enough for MBPF’s.
I was pretty sure I was going to be okay with the pork balls, but the “rich west country sauce” worried me a good deal. Looks like some unholy mash-up of moose testicles and Shoney’s strawberry pie filling. Frozen, it was a symphony of shit brown and ice crystals.
Cook from frozen, 30 to 40 minutes at 230 Eurodegrees.
On the whole…not bad. Tasted very strongly of sage and onion, like country sausage but less firm. Subsequent research has turned up worrying information about the traditional composition of faggots, but it looks like the Brain variety involves nothing more terrifying than pig liver. Ugh. Liver.
I ate all four. I’d do it again on a bet, but I won’t crave them in the middle of the night. Just as well, really.
I leave you with this classic BBC news item about the Doody family and their famous love of the British faggot.
If I die in the night, tell the weasels I love them.
May 26, 2007 — 7:13 pm
Comments: 10
Tea, old school
It was fine and hot today. We walked along the shingle beach at Littlestone to Romney Bay House, a big square pile built for Hedda Hopper in the late ’20s. Then, it was painted bright yellow and nicknamed the Mustard Pot. Now it’s white and a hotel. It stands off by itself right on the edge of the Channel.
We sat in the sunshine and ordered cream tea for two. It was us and the waiter, a dark man of indeterminate nationality. Not even the cook showed up today, so we couldn’t have sandwiches, but scones and jam and clotted cream would do us fine. Presently, a little fluffy dog trotted out of the house, curled up in the shade under our table and begged the occasional bit of scone.
To the North, the white cliffs of…Folkstone, actually. Dover is the next promontory up. Behind us, the local golf links. In front of us, the neat green lawn stretched right down to the beach and thence the sea. Big ships and little went up and down the Channel.
We heard subdued applause, and turned to see the English Women’s Golf Tournament had stolen up behind us and were making neat ladylike putts across the dunes. I shitteth thee not.
“Right! That’s it!” I banged on the table with the pommel of my Bowie knife, “somebody’s got ten seconds to find me a goddamned deep fried ‘possum barbecue sandwich before I start kicking limey ass!”
You really can’t give these people an inch.
May 24, 2007 — 5:01 pm
Comments: 7
Shapsnots: I heart salmon and cucumber
Yep. Got a sushi mold for my b’day.
The ordinary course of action is to roll up all your sushi doo-dah on a bamboo mat, by hand, and then give it a squeeze. But you can also press the ingredients into molds of various shapes and configurations.
The key is the sushi rice, which is both sticky and puffy, and compresses into firm shapes. Plus the seaweed wrapper, which is very dry but sticks to itself nicely when dampened.
Somehow, I always finish a sushi-making session with little sticky gobs of sushi rice stuck to me in improbable places, like itinerant boogers.
May 23, 2007 — 4:14 pm
Comments: 5
We’re naming the next one Mr Whiskers
Question: How do you make an authentic Texas chili?
Answer: There’s no doubt that the quality of the beef is an issue, whether ground beef or steak is used. First, brown the meat thoroughly in very hot bacon grease and pour off the excess fat.
Most importantly, however, before you begin cutting up the peppers and onions, make sure you rub the surface of your cutting board vigorously with a cat’s rectum.
March 16, 2007 — 1:45 pm
Comments: 3
I got nothin’
I drew my least favorite sort of a job today — I have to build a multimedia dingus for a trade show on a tight deadline. It has all the elements I like least in a job: work, labor, toil, effort…all areas in which I’m constitutionally disadvantaged to excel.
Plus, it’s a trade show. Those bastards are never willing to move dates to accomodate me. Blow a trade show, and I might as well rent a bulletin board to announce “I am SO fucking fired!”
So I didn’t get much time today to visit with you, my imaginary friends who live in the computer. Please, share my supper with me.
I love shrimp. But I hate peeling them. I always look down at the chitinous exoskeleton and all the little legs and think, “sweet mustache of Jesus! I’m eating bugs!!!”
March 15, 2007 — 6:49 pm
Comments: 3
Snake: it’s what’s for dinner
Dave in Texas shared his rattlesnake story, so I’ll share mine.
The local rattler where I come from is the Mountain Rattlesnake, Crotalus horridus — short, fat, shy and not terribly venomous. Compared to its Western cousins, anyhow. Despite growing up galumphing about in the woods, I’ve only seen one living rattlesnake. Naturally, we killed it.
Well, it was in our front yard, snoozing in the sun — which was cheeky. My friend took it out with one .22 shot to the head.
We had a strict “you shoot it, we eat it” policy in my family.
“Mother, there’s a dead goat in the sink.”
“Your brother shot it, we have to eat it.”
I have flirted with vegetarianism ever since, out of a weary “dear lord no, not another shattered furry bleeding out in the sink” feeling. I favor meats that look nothing whatever like the animal that made them. Sausages. Paté. Spam. As god is my witness, I will never eat groundhog again.
I didn’t dream the YSIWEI policy would apply to snake.
“Rattlesnake goes for fifty dollars a pound in Texas. Of course, we’ll eat it!”
Well. Back outside, I guess. Our snake — as snakes are wont — would not stop moving. Even decapitated and soaked for an hour in a bucket of salt water, it continued a slow, reflexive coiling and uncoiling. Jesus, no wonder our ancestors thought these things were supernaturally evil.
Apparently, the correct way to skin a snake is to tack one end to the shed and peel the skin off like a gym sock. We did not know this. We are ignorant boo-boos. My friend got scissors and cut it up the belly. Every time the scissors snicked closed, the snake would buck and jive. Ohhhhh, pleasepleaseplease make it stop. Finally, we put the skin in a Mason jar full of instant tea, hoping the tannins would…you know. Tan it. What actually happened, it turned up several months later as a jar of scaly brown diamond-back jell-o.
Meanwhile, back in Mama Weasel’s Kitchen, she washed our handiwork and cut it into small sections. That’s better. I could convince myself these were, like, squab breasts or something. Then she rolled them in cornmeal and pan-fried them, like catfish.
You couldn’t not eat it. My mother was master of the Double Dog Dare. I was the only kid in my circle who continually got in trouble doing stupid stuff my mother dared me to. Frankly, I think that was behind the YSIWEI policy, more than anything. It wasn’t good animal husbandry, Mother just liked watching her children eat absurd things. It was like her own personal showing of Jackass.
Rattlesnake tasted pretty good, actually. Not so much like chicken; more like lobster. It had the same translucent, striated texture. If you could forget what it was, it was probably worth fifty dollars a pound.
Only, you couldn’t possibly forget what it was. Mother would wait until somebody got a big mouthful and blurt, “I heard dying rattlesnakes whip around and bite themselves to poison the meat!” or “say, this isn’t bad FOR A SNAKE!!”
Urp. Excuse me. I feel a bout of vegetarianism coming on.
March 13, 2007 — 9:20 am
Comments: 10