Category: Delicious

Avatar Bamse Mums

Hey kid, are you hungry? Do you need something to snack on before dinner?

What you need is a bag of Bamse Mums.

Joyful in every sense of the word

We take the finest things that sugar can produce and fashion them into someone that would make even a Smurf squint with glee.

Hidden beneath a veil of chocolate is something that up until writing this post I wasn’t quite sure what it was. It tasted like milk but it’s actually a marshmallow. Yeah, one of them covered in chocolate but also tasting a bit like a Kinder Egg. In the shape of a bear. Sort of shaped like a bear. In your mouth.

Trust me, with a packet full of these in your pocket, well, they’d melt obviously because it’s summer. They would melt into the sexiest confectionary you have ever seen or maybe not because they’re made in France but my sister sent some over from Sweden. Also nobody is impressed with melted chocolate unless they’ve got a hoover bag covered in holes for a brain.

English people probably don’t know what they are. They’re Bamse Mums.

Import some today and wonder why you bothered to do so in the first place.

Avatar A terrible waist

This week I’m going to a wedding in Jernsey, an island just off the coast of France near where I live. It’s been a while since I went to a fancy do, so I did the usual thing, which is to get my suit out of the wardrobe about a week beforehand and try it on.

I got a new shirt and tie, so I put those on and they look nice. The suit has a waistcoat – I like waistcoats – so I put that on, and it’s smashing. The jacket is also looking very swish. The trousers, on the other hand, are a cause of concern. They have three fastenings at the top and it’s a good job they do, because they are so tight that a single button would not have handled the strain.

I breathe in and I heave and I pull and eventually get them fastened, and then I attempt to sit down, an activity I rapidly have to abort due to the discomfort involved and the extreme risk it poses to my perfectly innocent trousers.

I contemplate attending a wedding at which I have to politely decline all opportunities to sit down and where I have to avoid eating anything all day long. I decide this is not a world I want to live in.

On Saturday I take the trousers to work with me, and in my lunchbreak head out to a tailoring and clothing alterations place nearby where the man has a look, explains that there’s enough extra in the waistline to let them out by about four centimetres, and gets this job done in the time it takes me to find a working cashpoint and come back with the money. I try them on and find this modest change is ideal – the trousers are now well fitted but with plenty of room to breathe, to sit, and to insert a three-course dinner. Problem solved.

I return to work and relate these events to one of my colleagues. Oh yes, she says, I think everyone’s going through a bit of that these days. She and her husband went to a wedding just last week, one that had been postponed since Spring 2020, and the pre-pandemic suit her husband had bought in February of that year no longer fit properly. He had to have the trousers adjusted in exactly the same way to fit his post-lockdown waistline.

It’s the lockdowns, she said. We all did less exercise and ate more food. It gets to us all. I laughed with her and agreed. It gets to us all.

In my head was a different thought. It’s not lockdown. I only bought this suit six months ago and it fitted then. It’s not lockdown, it’s just too many biscuits.

But I’m not saying that to anyone. They can never know.

Avatar BIG BA… NANAS

(Yes, it’s another stuck at home, covid post)

The virus hit me unexpectedly so much so that my cupboard wasn’t entirely brimming with food. The freezer was, thankfully, yet those perishables and little things you take for granted were already gone. I had to rely on the kindness of friends to drop shopping at my door. They could have flung it through my bedroom window and I would have been fine with that as long as I didn’t clock 4 pints of milk right between the eyes.

I asked for bananas and this is what I received:

Fruit fist

My hands are tiny anyway, they’re not the best for sizing up another item accordingly. These were the biggest, longest, fattest bananas I have ever had the pleasure of being in the company of. Sexual jokes aside (phwoar mate, get your lips round that, that’s the kind of girth ma missus would die for, someone’s gonna be happy tonight, are you sticking with the one or is the full bunch going up there etc. etc.) I found it easier to bite them along the side rather than trying to cut off a full disc. Is that the right expression? A banana disc? Let’s go with that.

Before they were fully ripened, because they turned up solid and green, you could have built a shed with one. You could have someone’s eye out with that. The option to beat a man to death with one was on the cards, if only I hadn’t been self-isolating the possibilities would have been endless.

Let us all say a psalm and remember, if you’re going to start a fight make sure your opponent isn’t in possession of a banana that’s greener than a Ninja Turtle and tougher than Chuck Norris.

Avatar Time to shape up or ship out

Do you have poorly-raised pork? Are you in receipt of rude chops or maladjusted mince? Are you berated by bad bacon and lazy lamb cutlets? What you need is the best in the business to teach them a lesson they’ll never forget.

Manners for Meat will take your ill-educated meat products and transform them into something you can show to mother and father at the next boating ceremony.

Leave your meat with us and we will put them through an intense yet fair training regime to whip them into shape.

No more crossed words. No more mumbling under their breath. No more ill-advised comments during luncheons and dinner parties. No slouching, no passing wind, no loud burps the likes of which could shake the top of Ben Nevis and drip snow on all the surrounding villages.

Manners maketh the man but they also maketh the meat.

Give us two weeks and we will put them through their paces and leave a lasting effect that will be seen for generations to come (or until your next Sunday dinner).

Come for the manners, stay for the meat.

Avatar A taste of Hampshire

People sometimes ask me: Chris, why did you move to Bordon? What attracted you to this small ex-army town in Hampshire? Was it the abundant woodland? Its proximity to the South Downs National Park? Being in easy reach of the picturesque and charming market towns of Farnham and Petersfield? Being within commuting distance of London while also being less than an hour from the coast?

It was none of these. What brought me to Bordon was enviable hilltop location on the borders of Aragón and Valencia in south eastern Spain, and its delicious red wines, a blend of 75% Tempranillo and 25% Garnacha grapes.

Wine from Bordón

Avatar Take a trip with me

The last two years have meant that most people haven’t been away on a proper holiday, myself included. Not that I really wanted to go anywhere. Can you see me in a pair of shorts sat on the Bermuda Triangle trying to buy a croissant? No, exactly, it’s not my style. Even so, it would be nice for a change of scenery.

So what do you do when things aren’t going right? Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got and taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot. Wouldn’t you like to get away? Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name to Delicious City.

Mmmmmm, taste it!

Situated in close proximity to my office, many a time have I walked past and pondered the delights of Delicious City. I’ve been to cities before but never anywhere delicious. I expect I’d walk in and there would be people taking huge chunks out of a skyscraper made of ham, punters stood waiting for a bus and then when it arrives they punch out the windows and suck them like lollipops, and drunken bystanders hanging around in parks for the champagne fountains.

Willy Wonker’s Chocolate Factory has got nothing over Delicious City.

So why haven’t I been already? I’m worried that I would never escape. You know me and food; once I’m in, I’m gone. Surrounded by an entire city made of food would only compound matters even further and you’d never hear from me again. I’d be riding a cloud made of candy floss and chasing cats made of Oreos (because the animals, for some reason, are also delicious).

Now I’m falsifying a form so I can get into the RSPCA and eat all the animals in there. I’m also drop-kicking a watermelon into a taxi’s windshield so I can steal the marzipan from it’s back wheels. Now I’m scooping the bacon from the washing lines of my neighbour’s gardens, pushing them into a sandwich that’s thicker than my neck and breaking into the museum on the corner in the hope that they’ve got some brown sauce for this bad boy.

Oh dear Lord, what is wrong with me? I punched an old lady in the face so I could use her mobility scooter to get into the gym and taste the swimming towels (they have the best and keep them for themselves like a bunch of grumbo grumps). I ordered pancakes at the café then refused to eat them because I filled up on bread napkins before they arrived. I think I ate my boss’ shoes due to them smelling like fresh pizza.

As you can see, I can’t have anything nice and my excursion to Delicious City, or any city in fact, has been delayed indefinitely.