...the following announcement sounded over the tannoy: “Passionate about service; would all till-trained staff come to the check-out please. Passionate about service; would all till-trained staff come to the check-out please.”
Fortunately I was able to face this with equanimity, since I have recently attained a high level of Zen wisdom.
In my home town of Bodmin, the local Asda is pronouced 'Asders'
ReplyDeleteI think they should go back to Associated Dairies. Much more homely. Also milkmen and passion sit together more comfortably.
ReplyDeleteWord verification: nonstrop - a blogger's prevalent mode of existence.
Not to mention milkmaids. The very word is suggestive.
ReplyDeleteThe staff in my local Asda are relentlessly cheerful so the brainwashing is clearly working.
ReplyDeleteOn another note: turnips. Are they, or are they not, to be placed alongside marrows in the category of 'least edible vegetable ever'? Discuss.
Oh I don't know, Sophie - when chopped up, roasted in olive oil and garlic and well-seasoned the humble turnip is almost, but not quite, edible.
ReplyDeleteAs for marrows, yes, courgettes are bad enough but a marrow is like a mega-courgette.
I know it's a cliche but I still think sprouts take the prize. I eat the customary singleton a year to prevent Christmas dinner from being too perfect, but I resent even that one.
We've had a Co-Op in Dolgellau for a decade. People still call it the Old Tannery Pit. Perhaps they are wise.
ReplyDeleteListen Sophie, if turnip is good enough for sheep it's good enough for us.
ReplyDeleteY'all shop at Wal-Mart, how, well, plebish.
In the Greensboro Wal-Mart y'all can buy your ammo, stacked next to the vegies.
Brit, when Mrs Brit sends you shopping she must be more specific than 'fine wines', eg..1982 Margaux or 1957 Spanish Sauternes.
We've had a Co-Op in Dolgellau for a decade. People still call it the Old Tannery Pit. Perhaps they are wise.
ReplyDeletekeep going NGB
ReplyDeleteWell worth repeating, I'd say.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, read the opening of NGB's fine post here for a true Wiki classic.
It was in commenting on this post that I discovered the Oregon crab, so much to be thankful for.
I bet even sheep wouldn't touch marrow, Malty. My husband once attempted to recreate his mother's stuffed marrow recipe, stung by my assertion that it could not be rendered edible. The resulting mush of sodden mince and vegetable fibre was so disgusting that we were reduced to hysterical weeping (perhaps because supper was perforce mostly alcohol).
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ReplyDeleteIf Wikipedia is to be believed, "marrows" are squashes. I never knew that.
ReplyDeleteNo one actually eats squashes. That's why the call them "squashes."
You carve them up for halloween, make pies out of them, use them as decorative features for autumn festivals and sometimes, if by accident you've dropped rat poison into a dish, you can cut up zucchini as a signal to your guests to give it a pass; but you never eat them.
(Except for some reason in Chinese food, where they are cooked for 24 hours straight and highly seasoned or in Japanese restaurants, where they are breaded and fried, which makes anything edible.)
Marrow doesn't taste of much but is perfectly edible if chopped small and fried with garlic and tomato. Courgettes are just fab with garlic, parmesan, black pepper. As for sprouts, this is black heresy: a properly parboiled sprout sings like an angel in its sphere.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, about the only good thing I heard of Bush Senior concerned his personal war against broccoli. Said that people had been trying to make him eat it all his life, and now that he was the most powerful man in the world he just wouldn't. (Actually its almost OK if you defy the British custom and eat the stalks, not the florets.)
Now parsnips -- they really are the devil's dung.
These are radical heresies, Jonathan. The honey-roast parsnip is surely the king of vegetables.
ReplyDeleteDavid - a marrow is like a giant zucchini, only even worse than that suggests. 'Squash' would normally refer over here to the butternut squash, which ain't half bad when cubed and roasted.
brit - as far as I am aware, a marrow IS a large zucchini. Zucchini are simply marrows that have not been allowed to grow to the seedbearing stage.
ReplyDeleteI personally have to say that I really like all vegetables, and any I haven't liked have been down to poor cooking, as I genuinely think that just about any vegetable can taste delicious if given the proper stage on which to shine
You buy store-bought cupcakes! I feel as let down as Charlie Brown and his friends felt when they first learned their beloved teacher got paid for teaching them.
ReplyDeleteThose are just my emergency cupcakes, Peter. I pray God I never have to use them.
ReplyDeleteJonathan - I believe that if a vegetable can't stand up and be counted on its own, without garlic and tomatoes, then it doesn't deserve to be called food. I'm sure I could eat cardboard if it was cut up and cooked in such a way. I am, however, totally with you on the sprout and here is a recipe from Rules in London which will, I promise, make you very happy: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/recipes/article2180708.ece
ReplyDeleteFinally, I'm not normally one to go on about word verification but I'm happy to report that mine is 'pearl'. Does that make you lot swine?
Not at all; I've never swined in my life and I don't intend to start now.
ReplyDeleteIf a Charlie Whelan job needs performing on any vegetable then let that be the sprout, vile little devil that it is, causing apoplexy in those cases where suppression is attempted and acute embarrassment where it fails, should be marketed under the heading 'methane generation kit'
ReplyDeleteI love that expression 'store bought' as in 'store bought woman' or, in my younger days 'store bought clothes'
Veg talk - that's how you really provoke the passions as these comments prove. Makes me think of..
ReplyDelete"Had we but world enough, and time . . . /My vegetable love should grow/Vaster than empires and more slow."
Grow on, grow on...
It's true, Gaw. You gut John Gray's best selling book or diss a whole political class and virtually nada. But criticise the brussel sprout and all hell breaks loose.
ReplyDeletePrecisely, Brussel sprouts cause loose breaking, we mutter about vegetables and the roof is falling down upon our heads.
ReplyDeleteTalking about Brussels or at least that non country Belgium, some stooshie or what, viva UKIP.
Sorry, ah said sorry, my computer got an attack of the Foghorn Lehghorns, boy.
ReplyDeleteI am weaning my son on turnip. It may sound barbaric, but imagine the pleasure of cauliflower or aubergine after a portion of turnip, courgette and pea purée.
ReplyDelete