Blowing Chunks

Its lunch time here in Sunny Devon and at this great educational institution my lunch usually consist of getting a sandwich to eat at my minging bacteria ridden desk! (note: don’t forget the anti biological wipes next time). So I go to the campus sandwich bar. As a vegetarian my choice is usually limited to cheese, cheese or errr I think I’ll have the cheese today thanks.

But today was different, today they have another choice. Vegetarian Chicken Chunks! Vegetarian Chicken isn’t that both impossible and an oxymoron of the ‘Military Intelligence’, ‘Friendly Fire’ sort? On further investigation it turned out that these Vegetarian Chicken Chunks were nothing more exciting than that delicious fungus Quorn.

But what gets me is that food producers seem to think that vegetarians are so hard done by that all we really want to eat are things that remind us of the things we don’t want to eat. So we get offered lamb flavoured cutlets, beef flavoured stuff, and chicken flavoured slush. And very often stuff one just can’t describe the flavour, probably some Australian outback road kill flavour. (I’d probably try duckbilled platypus quorn just for the hell of it! Would people want koala flavoured quorn – I doubt it)

Come on guys, get with it. If I wanted animal flavoured stuff I’d probably eat the animal. As it is I’ll make do with the ubiquitous lasagne. This is the universal dish that makes restaurateurs, and other food suppliers feel that they have catered for the ‘minority’ eater. What they do is make a big batch of them and stick them in the freezer, so come the day one of us militant eaters enters their hostelry and demand vegetarian food, they can sling one in the microwave and ping, conscience clear. That or a very watery veggie curry specifically designed to make us not want to come back again.

I like quorn and it’s never made me ill. I even like its description as a fungus, what’s the problem there? Look think of it more like the Italians and French do as Fungi rather than you lot out there thinking of the fungus between your toes and the need to buy some ointment. That’s not it. Try it its nice.

But what I don’t like is these quasi meat eating oxymoron’s such as vegetarian meat, meat substitute (is that an oxymoron). I don’t want to substitute meat, I want to eat fruit and vegetables thanks very much and no I’m not neurotic.

I had the eastern quorn which basically was curried fungus in a baguette with some lettuce. Very nice - but with a tendency to fall out and down ones shirt front leaving suspicious dark stains. But my desk is now littered with crumbs and smears of curried quorn so that should keep the bacteria happy for a while then.