Forgive me please, I have tried. I try to be good. I want to save the planet, the trees, the whales. I believe in conservation, I really do. I am a nice shade of light green. However, no matter how hard I try, I cannot eat recycled food. If food has already been digested by someone else, I just can’t eat it. I know it’s the future, I know it is necessary, but I cannot do it.
What is wrong with me? Does this make me a bad person?
Those of you who have been subscribing to the analytical reports of the Chip Laboratories since ancient times know of our well founded efforts to ethicise (ha! take that, dictionary) omnivorism. We are trying folks, we really are. We have put all of this week’s grant money into considering balloon animals.
Some of you maybe scoffing, as you associate these creatures with parlour games and carnivals. However, I am not talking about simple domesticated balloon animals. I am talking about great sweeping herds of massive fortean creatures, blocking the sun on their nomadic trek as passenger pigeons once did sweeping across America. And no, there would be no reliance on foul, poisonous oxygen. These are great helium or methane filled beasts, nodding and swaying as they are blown by the currents of wind, just as giant jelly fish are swept across oceans. Picture them now in your mind, see them billowing and filling the sky. Tremendous storms of them. The wondrous sight of them as they rail against the elements, indeed as they rail against their own ridiculous existence. Observing them as over time they are pitted by hail, scarred by lightning. And the wonder of them is that their pseudo life is no life at all, it is a mere impersonation. Brave balloon bound hunters shall pursue them without ethical quandary, intrepid mountaineers shall stalk them to their winter homes, small children and we here at the laboratory shall wonder at them.
O! If only we could get some nutrition into their skins! Some flavour into the rubber. Some texture into their form. And find some way to stop giant sea turtles from choking on them in their thousands when they critters deflate and drop into the sea. Perhaps it is impossible. But is not the dream as important as any mere actuality? At least this dream can unite us all, omnivores, carnivores, vegetarians, vegans, fruitarians, lacto-vegetarians, lacto-ovo-vegetarians, pescetarians, pollotarians, and pollo-pescetarians, the dream of the hunt of the giant pseudo-beasts in the sky that can sustain us all without troubling our consciences.
Until then, at least we have salad.
[“Life’s Solution” by Simon Conway Morris, p112 ‘Fortean bladders’]
Sorry, I see that I have been doing this all wrong. Don’t say I don’t learn. I have now read every other food blog and I see what I should be doing. Lets start again.
I made a salad.
First I took an iceberg lettuce. I broke it up, washing the fragments, carefully removing slugs and returning them to the wild. (Tip – don’t use soap.)
I sliced some carrots with my knife. It hurt them more than it hurt me.
I cut up some capsicums.
I sliced some lebanese cucumbers.
I mixed them together. (Technical term – tossed.)
I threw in some coloured cocktail onions (mmm, food dye), just for a change.
I made my own dressing with lemon and vinegar and the blood of a third world child*. (*No I didn’t but I don’t have any of the exotic herbs everyone else refers to and I felt left out.)
I opened a tin of sliced beetroot and served it separately.
I took lots of pictures of my shitty salad but they did not turn out well. However, that would not stop me adding them if I knew how.
I drank half a bottle of vodka later and vomited everywhere*. That is the picture I really wanted to add. (*No I didn’t. I have never drunk vodka again since a fateful night with a very large Russian when I was young and hadn’t learned I was not invincible. I learned otherwise two hours later.)
Bugger, I didn’t use macaroni. Everybody else uses macaroni.
Yummo, it was nearly as good as germ sausages, and it tasted just like chicken. (Must check microbes – see “Aboot”.)
Isn’t the internet wonderful?
********
“your writing isn’t nearly as “creative” as you think it is”
is that better?
Coming soon – spaghetti from a tin – ON TOAST!!
Tears of a Clown, no longer easily obtained at my local bottle shop, does not taste like chicken. Other products tested this week which do not taste like chicken include:
Unfortunately, separate reports are only available where indicated.
Next time, we shall look at salad. Doesn’t that sound interesting?
You Are What You Eat 