I will not have this.

Oh dear, little miss McKeith. It looks like the enemy won in the end after all ... well certainly triumphed in this decade at least. How did you eat so healthily and come out looking like a shrivelled old prune at the ripe age of 51, whereas Nigella has had fun all of her life and still echoes a radiant glow. Nigella eats lots of yummy things like chocolate and cake and wine and cigs on a daily basis, whereas Gillian worries about shelling hemp seeds all morning. Alongside the occasional glance at a stranger's faeces to check that "everything's normal" (is it? Define normal) she believes in holistic medicine and even has some qualifications in them. Apparently. So this gives her a bit of authority to boss people about and criticise what most people would call "balanced" diets because they didn't include enough of her own super expensive product that didn't do very much anyway. Who honestly has linseed and goji berries for a nutritious and revitalising snack? I've lived the best part of my life without them, so I don't really see any reason to start now.

What worries me most is that her original degree was nothing science-based whatsoever, but events and people management. Well, somewhere along that vein, as she ended up getting an honorary masters in international relations when she worked in America. I wouldn't really say that she was one that had been called up for helping the Cold War negotiations, judging by her people skills on TV. She reminds me of a witch.
After that, she goes out to get her MA and PhD in Holistic Nutrition, a course completed long-distance, of course. What really gets to me though, is that this course wasn't even accredited as it was organised by the American Holistic College of Nutrition, another bunch of new-age mumbo jumbos. How has she been allowed to practise and get so much publicity over here when there are plenty of good nutritionists and dieticians who have got a reputable qualification from a well-established university? This Holistic College of Nutrition ended up changing its name and then disbanding, so those "degrees" are worthless for all I care.

I think Gill's love of blue green algae may have something to do with her demise. She wrote a thesis on it (without conclusive evidence, of course...)as well as singing its praises, despite the fact that she's been consuming something that releases potentially harmful amounts of toxins into the blood (cyanobacteria). I don't think they even taught her any science on this course either, because she talks about consuming darker green leaves because they have more chlorophyll, and therefore can "oxygenate the blood better". WHAT? I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT SHE'S TRYING TO SAY.
First of all, leaves only produce oxygen through photosynthesis, which requires them to be alive and near a light source. However, if the leaf's no longer part of the plant, it can't make any extra oxygen... and there is certainly not enough light in your digestive tract to allow a plant to continue with photosynthesis. So, that's no extra oxygen going into the bloodstream, but perhaps she's referring to the way that it is carried around the blood? Actually, I can see a bit of sense in there. It took a little extrapolation and interpretation to guess that the darker the veg, the more rich in iron it will be. Iron is found in haemoglobin, the bit that makes oxygen stick to the red blood cells and carries it to where it needs to be in the body. Hooray! Does she get a point for that? ...No. What she doesn't realise is that oxidising or "oxygenating" these cells is going to lead the organism to an eventual death, where the cells have fully oxidated and just broken. Ah, oxygen. Our two-faced double-edge sword.

She's a big fan of her detoxes as well. Take her favourite standard detox, which eliminates 12 different foods, or, as she likes to call them, "toxic terrors" (and proves that she can't count),

smoking; caffeine; alcohol; chocolate and sweet snacks; pub snacks such as crisps, nuts, and pork scratchings; processed meat; white bread, white pasta, white rice; products containing added sugar; takeaways and ready meals; table salt; saturated fats; and fizzy drinks

How bloody boring. No wonder she looks so miserable at that age. Telling so many people to stop living their life as they wish and become obsessed with superfruits? I think not. I wouldn't trust a word she says, and especially not when it comes to colonic irrigation. *Shudder*

My eyes have been opened to the perils of the marine world. Mainly baby sea turtles in Australia.

Dear Mother Nature:

As a sentimental human I would like to ask you to spare a thought for all the sea turtles out there. Namely the baby ones which have such a treacherous journey to take just moments after they are born. For one, please spare more than just the one or two out of one hundred hatchlings who make  it to sea, and help more of the hatchlings to return to their home safely. However, I know that you like natural selection to weed out any of the weaker species and replace them with a new, faster, feistier, sharper and better model. Of course weak and feeble baby turtles that are mere few minutes old and have to travel for three days are a pretty dated application of natural selection, but nature is in the process of weeding them out and modifying them to adapt to their duties better. Or getting rid of them completely. However, I watched a documentary this evening about the Great Barrier Reef and turtle mating/laying eggs/hatching was very emotionally portrayed, and I truly connected with the poor turtles. What they go through every day is awful and must be stopped, but cannot be stopped due to the delicate balance of the ecosystem, which I completely understand. However, I will still continue to display empathy for the targeted species.

Let's face it, sea turtles have a hard life. I wouldn't want to be a sea turtle if I were reincarnated, not at all. For starters, sea turtles are born under the sand from eggs that the mother turtle laid god knows how long ago, and couldn't be bothered to stick around and wait for her babies to hatch. So she then went back to her home in the middle of the big blue ocean, and left her little darlings to fend for themselves in their first vulnerable minutes of life. On land. And with flippers. And in the middle of birdy hatching season as well, so plenty of big bad birdies that are ready to snatch away and mutilate incompetent or unwary turtle hatchlings, so that baby birdies will have full tummies. Survival of the fittest at its most extreme here... or possibly the luckiest?

Of course, Mother Turtle is fully aware of this. However, she only just got home from that bloody beach (aka "The Love Shack" according to younger turtles. What a misnomer, seeing as it was a beach from hell...  nest  building exercises and being around no one that really grabbed your attention with an evolutionary advantage potential. feelings of inadequacy surrounding mating with a male that didn't possess strong and defining features necessary for strong offspring). No way would she be travelling back to that place with it being hundreds of miles away and filled with memories that are already trying to be suppressed. That is if turtles even had emotions... If not, the female sea turtle would need the time at home to recover from the long journey and regain energy to look after her offspring.
She knows (maybe not consciously, but something instinctive is telling her(?))that there are lots of dangers out there, in between the hatching place and the turtle's true home hundreds of miles away. The chance of one turtle being able to do that and return intact would be incredibly slim, so in order to prevent the circumstance of no returning hatchlings she lays lots of eggs. HUNDREDS of them. Maybe thousands? Well, she most certainly buries the entire contents of her womb under the sand... I lie. She lays lots and lots and lots of eggs under the sand, ( a figure ranging between 50 and 200 to be slightly more specific/give a vague idea), leaves them to incubate for 2 months whilst she rushes off home.

This, of course, would be completely unacceptable in any human society. For one thing, if someone were to give birth to 50 to 200 children, they would expected to look after their offspring, especially for the first 2 months after birth. During this time, trust bonds need to form between parent and children, which can't be done when you're buggering off home. With such a vast number of offspring, in this day and age we are meant to honour each sibling with a similar amount of favour. Yes,  time will be spread thinly between them all, provided they return to the nest safely...
Yet the mother turtles seemed to forget that most young sea turtles would not have enough energy/strength/size/valour/luck/food to cross several hundreds of miles of ocean, led by a little internal GPS pointing to mummy. It would be a shame to not have anything swimming back when the other  baby turtles return, so lay lots of eggs. Who cares if the other 127 die on the way into the sea? At least you get the one or two to carry the gene line going. Besides, nobody has the time for 127 kids, especially if they can all make it across the ocean by themselves. However, it is not alright in this modern day, age and society to allow these lives to be born to die. Who cares about their physical attributes? So what if he's missing a flipper, he has a marvellous personality and tells limericks wonderfully. No one could possibly hurt such a soul like that, even if they were super hungry and this baby turtle was a prime target due to being a cripple... But they do. They are hurt. Slaughtered. Butchered. Murdered by bullies. Yet the mother is perfectly content with sending 99% of her hatchlings to certain death... how is that moral? In human terms, turtle mothers are psycho. Well and truly psychotic and dangerous, yet are completely blinded by their faiths and rituals...

However, turtle mothers are not moral. They are not human. They are sometimes dangerous, rarely suffer similar psychosis to humans and certainly do not have faiths and religions. Yes, they have their age-old rituals, but that's the only thing that comes even close to how they should stand next to a human society. Human Society seems in certain ways to go against the laws of nature, especially with the ever-changing laws and regulations of today...
So we deem turtles "immoral" and look down upon them because they have a different way of treating their young from us. Humans are pretty much stuck growing up for 18 years with mother and father constantly providing for them, and useless in the real world. Sea turtles are completely independent from day one, and because of this they don't need Mummy's help. What's the point of going back to a creature that has no certainty of relation? What use is relation anyway to sea turtles when all of their brothers and sisters are competitors? None. Turtles don't need human concepts. If we tried to use our human morals down there, I wouldn't expect us to last very long. Who is going to convince a shark not to eat them due to their turmoil?
Sharks eat now, listen later, so your list of reasons not to be eaten would be rather fruitless.

I talk of the first few hours of turtle lifedom being one of the toughest life challenges facing any animal on this planet, and obviously their experiences in this short time determines their fate in the next 5 minutes or so. First of all, the turtles have to crack open their shells under the cover of night (sunset is best) and wonder what te fuck is going on. But of course, they have no time to wonder what is going on as they feel an incline to head towards the sea because the flippers that they had been provided with were no use on land. Shuffle shuffle shuffle.. Similar hatchlings shuffle around hastily, all moving the same way... Of course the sand is a bit annoying to shuffle in, but it could be quite pleasant with the brothers and sisters...

Nature doesn't want you to play happily and in your own time, little turtles. EVERYTHING IS OUT TO GET THEM. THEY ARE THE PERFECT TARGET. No parent, no defence, slow, disorientated... easy meal for any sea birds of prey. Even though they are this young, they are still capable of the struggle, powered by the sharp adrenaline increase from fear, and often are incapable of concealing their discomfort and unhappiness towards the end. It is emotionally scarring for many turtles watching their brothers and sisters being picked off one by one whilst the smart ones evade the birds by zig-zagging down to the sea. Of course they don't have any true emotional connection with these other turtles. They were raised in eggs for goodness sake. However, these pawns demonstrate the wrath of other creatures in this world. Trust nothing. And shuffle really really quickly.
Many turtles were able to get out of an offensive with one of these birds with a great deal of luck and timing, but a memory of something like that at an early age? The feeling of sheer terror and relief and panic would provide a terrifying experience for any 18 minute-old  creature, and would certainly cause many repercussions with his social development throughout life. They must be right head-cases.

Lots of the turtles are weeded out by the initial trial, a sprint across the sands dodging hungry birds. Next comes the water trial. An endurance event, small turtles are eased in by being washed in by the tide so that they can quickly get used to the water. If they don't, then they die. Simple as that. Then of course some could be swept away by the tide and into  lairy crab's pincers, touched inappropriately and generally assaulted. The hatchlings that get away from these despicable creatures are truly worth their grit, despite their emotional baggage. After that, they've got to make a ridiculously long journey to a patch of seaweed that they deem fit to raise their colony in and go back to that bloody mating place when they're old enough to mate again.

Despite all this, their suicide rate is next to none!
All this shit happens to them so often that it is considered "normal" to them

.
Sea turtles' lives are too hard for me to enjoy. It's all toil and angst and no play, alongisde fright and flight scenarios that must always be assessed. The odds that I would survive within the first 5 minutes of life are determined by luck and speed, and are slim. If I'd temporarily swapped with a turtle for a "Day in the life of Me." where I was a turtle, I'd be sat twiddling  my thumbs in a dark room for 23 hours and 55 minutes instead of doing what I wanted to do, swim around... However, it seems that I have gotten my "Buddy" eaten by a seagull, due to initial incompetence of working the flippers.
Sorry matey. Nature hates you :(

but when you live, you live forever anyway so you might not die out for a while yet.

Lose 4 stone in just as many weeks using these 5 easy steps!

I don't understand why adverts like this are still popping up all over my advert space on the internet, when it's clearly not a feasible feat. Everybody should know this by now, and yet people are stupid enough to still believe that there's a way to get thin without leaving the couch. Or maybe I'm just underestimating the average intelligence of your average skinny-figure aspiring, ice-cream-and-donut-loving internet user.

My personal top tips

1. Eat less. But not too little. Actually, only eat when you're hungry.
2. Stop eating crap. Greasy things make you fat because it's cooked in fat.
3. Move more. More you move -> More energy body requires -> more you can eat
4. Only put in what you need out. It's like fuelling a machine.
5. Diet pills are silly. Even if they initially make you lose weight, when you go off them and you're still stuck in the same habits as when you went on them, once you finish the course YOU WON'T STOP GETTING FAT.

The whole concept of weight loss is simple. If you eat less and move more, you lose weight. Simple. Of course it's easier for some than others, because ... I don't know, some people are more inclined to eat healthier food? or they don't sit on the sofa all day? I don't believe that there are some people out there who actually sit in their house and don't leave the television set except to urinate, defecate or to get food. It's quite obvious that they don't need that much energy (I mean, they are just sitting down, which can hardly be counted as a strenuous activity), yet they must not grasp the concept that you don't need that much food whilst vegetating on the settee. If you're a hard-working builder and decide to have a bacon and egg sandwich and a mars bar for lunch, following a busy morning's brick-laying and tea drinking, (can builders lay bricks?)a heavy lunch is justified. Fuel for the afternoon. Yet Little Miss Couch Potato wonders why she's getting fat whilst munching on a sharing size pack of doritos during Jeremy Kyle.

I used to work in a health food shop, and the number of people looking for quick-fix diet pills were phenomenal. The majority of these women weren't necessarily worried about their health, but needed to drop a couple of pounds for their holiday or wedding, and fast. What I always wanted to tell them was that if they had eaten better before, they wouldn't have been in such a predicament! And now there they were, a fortnight away from their long-awaited vacation and stressing about how they would look in a bikini. To tell you the truth, I'm glad that I don't holiday with this type of people. However, despite my initial impressions, I would always politely approach them and help them find the right product. Who knows, they may actually want to change their lifestyle after all!

A typical conversation would go like this:
Customer: "Can you help me find something that would help me lose X amount of pounds in Y weeks?" (Values X and Y completely unobtainable)
Myself: "I can certainly find something to help start you off on the right track, though I think that you're setting your goalposts too high! 3-4lbs a week is more achievable and I can help you find something that will help you with that."
Customer (looks a little apprehensive): Alright. I should've started earlier then, but anything that helps would be great!
Myself: Is it alright if I ask you a couple of questions first? Just so that I can help find the right products for you?
Customer: Of course.
Myself: First of all, the killer question. How would you describe your diet?
Customer: (hesitating) I think it's alright, I guess. There are the odd days here and there where I fall down. [The odd day? No kidding. I don't know why these people lie to someone who wants to help. I only start judging you if you aren't truly honest and come back to see me in 6 months time with the same problem]
Myself: We all have those. What sort of foods are your weakness?
Customer: Sweets and cakes. But I do snack a fair bit as well on crisps when I get home from work before making the kids' dinner. But the rest of my diet's good! I only have takeaway once a week and I don't eat breakfast so I can save my calories for later in the day! [No dear, it doesn't quite work like that...]
Myself: Okaaaaay... And how much exercise do you get?
Customer: I walk to my office and back from my car every day, and I sometimes take the stairs. I don't really have time to do exercise.

What I want to say/what this lady needs to hear yet isn't allowed to because I would appear to be completely insensitive and not complying with the high levels of customer service that rigorously must be maintained:
Righto. First of all, don't lie to me about your diet. If you have a shit diet, just say so. I'll give you some advice and some support to help you beat sugar cravings and overcome unnecessarily calorie-laden yet nutritionally sparse foods that you so love. It'll help you with energy levels! Mood swings and sleeping patterns! But no. You're not in this losing weight thing for the long haul are you? So you most certainly do not want to disclose your true dietary habits to an impartial shop assistant who, god forbid, might tell you off! If you can't face up to the fact that you have a crap diet and yet can't shed the pounds, maybe you need someone to do so. But no, by saying your diet's alright you're effectively closing off a route that may help you.

However, having classified your diet as "alright", you then go on to say that you are impartial to the odd cake and sweet (one at 10am, 11am and 3pm perhaps? Those are my personal weakpoints), snack on a bag of crisps at home most probably after cake and have a takeaway (probably at least, she doesn't look like a woman with true willpower) FREQUENTLY? What is even the appeal of takeaways anyway, when you can make the same meal at home, it will taste loads better for the fraction of the price? I guess that we're just a nation of junk-food addicts with the aspirations of achieving a toned flexible physique trapped underneath rolls of blubber.

I guess that's what the government think as well. I think they're now saying that nearly half of under 10s are approaching obesity or are obese and we're a nation of fat people with bad eating habits. So why not have a government drive to stop kids tumbling into an early and extra large grave? So the "Just Eat More (fruit and veg" campaign was launched a while ago, Jamie Oliver gave school lunches a makeover (whilst watching his School Dinners programme I was amazed by the quality and variety of his menus) to help us and our kids. I bet half of the parents who this campaign was aimed at either didn't care/couldn't comprehend the concept or couldn't afford healthy food. Why is healthy food so expensive anyway? You can buy 40 sausages with roughly 20% meat (a variety of pork, chicken and beef plus anything else) for £2, yet a bag of 3 or 4 peppers costs nearly the same amount. Personally I would go with peppers, but I can see why some people go for the bag of frozen sausages. For one, they wouldn't read the ingredients list, and secondly, it's cheap and can feed you for aaages. I guess mums and dads stock their freezers and cupboards up with this rubbish and serve it up to their kids as a meal. NOT A VEGETABLE IN SIGHT.
Let's see... Sugary cereal and toast for breakfast, chocolate bar at break, pizza and chips for lunch with chocolate pudding for lunch, crisps and chocolate biscuits for after school snack and sausage and chips for tea followed by ice cream. For some variety in their diet, take them to a popular fast-food outlet. Mum and Dad obviously hated their vegetables as a child and didn't want to inflict the same torture on their own offspring. I HAD TO EAT  BROCCOLI EVERY DINNER TIME FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER. May be I was 3 or maybe 4 when I started, but I still have broccoli every dinner time even now. In fact, I love broccoli, even though it used to be my least favourite part of the meal. If I didn't eat my broccoli, I didn't get any pudding. Simple. I guess kids answer back to their parents too much these days to find these techniques effective...

We also have fat kids because as a nation, we are becoming more lazy. What happened to the days where everyone used to run around everywhere? The days when you'd go and play in the street with a football or hide and seek in the garden or tennis or tig in the park? Gone now, it seems. I used to hate any games that involved sprinting because I wasn't very fast as a child, but I'd still take part. If you didn't, you faced ostracization by your peers, and that's no fun when you're in primary school. These days it seems like kids sit indoors all day on their x-box and cell phone and laptops and watching TV SIMULTANEOUSLY. AND EATING CRISPS. School obviously hasn't taught them that the more you eat and the less you move, the fatter you get, and of course mummy and daddy don't have time to do that. They have to do this and that and are really far too busy to be doing anything more than making sproglet's dinner. In the oven/microwave it goes. Later Mummy and Daddy wonder why child is fat, blame school for not educating child about healthy eating, government changes curriculum to include healthy eating lessons to be taught from nursery school leaving literacy and numeracy even further on the back burner. CHILD IS STILL FAT they later complain. Government changes school dinners. Why are Mummy and Daddy incapable of accepting responsibility? Maybe they're wary that it may flag up some of their poor eating traits, the neighbours would find out about their habits and publicly humiliate them. What a ridiculous food insecurity.

Why were we a nation of hearty meals, yet leaner physique in the past than today? Nowadays it's all or nothing, you're flipping between the on and off phases of yo-yo dieting, overindulging too frequently and unwilling to face it, yet obsessed with organic food, superberries and antioxidants. In a desperate attempt to seem healthy (many would call it a "health kick and that would be the end of it)an unopened jar of overpriced manuka honey sits in the cupboard alongside an open, yet practically full bag of goji berries. It's sad when you're reduced to this marketing ploy to make yourself feel healthy whilst in real life, you're constantly surfing sugar peaks and troughs whilst craving salty meals and greasy treats. All these people that are in denial have to face up to the fact that they have a junk food addiction. Yes. That's right.
ADDICTION.

Like smoking. Junk food is addictive, just like smoking, and it is also bad for you. Smoking is also bad for you as well, but junk food is available to people of all ages and hasn't started to become regulated by the government. I read somewhere that junk food helps release dopamine in the brain (not exactly sure if that's entirely correct, but you get the gist) just like drugs. Except most drugs make you thin because of the dopamine re-uptake etc, which pretty much eliminates the desire to eat. However, as far as I know, junk food doesn't work in the same way as agonists do. For starters, junk food is generally a lot bulkier than most common agonists, and therefore will need a place to sit whilst it's being processed. Not enough room here? Quick! Produce more room to store this shit! It's not waste, so we'll have to make an extension, we're running out of room anyway. Et voila! One Large Big Mac meal comfortably stored around the consumer's abdomen. Another thing is that junk food isn't an agonist either, so as far as my knowledge goes it won't help with the re-uptake of dopamine, so your satisfaction buzz from your Big Mac won't last as long as one from a narcotic. Undoubtedly you'll be seeking more consolation in another form of crappy food at some point soon and whining about it later.

DO PEOPLE HAVE NO WILLPOWER THESE DAYS?

AND WHY DON'T WE MAKE OUR OWN FOOD ANYMORE?! We settle for this prepackaged crap that is pumped full of additives to make us buy it again, using "not enough hours in the day" as an excuse. How do people truly understand what's going into their meals if they're not making it themselves? Back in the day, everything was made from scratch (apart from base ingredients) so you knew what was happening to your food. Why have many people lost this tradition and succumbed to the temptation of ready meals, fatter middles and a very happy and extremely fat cat at the top of the corporate ladder? Make your own pack-up for once,  leave out crisps and put in a couple of apples instead. Ditch coca cola, drink squash or water. Or coffee. Simples.

I am aware that in spite of the fact that I have been preaching these words of wisdom time after time after time, I must admit that I am shit at eating well. I get away with it because I somehow have a way of being skinny, yet I'm not quite sure what it's down to. I guess that I walk a fair distance every day and don't spend all day in bed, and these days I don't even like McDonalds. However, I like muffins. I have the habit of buying a bag of something delicious (like muffins or dates or donuts or apricots or whatever) and eating them all in one go, or failing that, on the same day. With dried fruit this leads to disastrous consequences, rendering me incapable of leaving the bathroom on the same evening. However, when I go weekly shopping for food I never ever buy anything really nice. Just lots of vegetables and cheese and pasta and chilli sauce and broccoli (I can't afford chicken, fuck that)and kid myself that that's all I will eat during the next week. Fat chance.
Instead, I pay through the nose for individually packaged products just so I can only have one at a time because I know that I have no willpower if I go for the value option and buy the larger box that costs fractionally more. Dear lord, I have sacrificed value for healthy eating! But due to this lack of value, I can't buy as many over the course of a week ergo some sort of self-control in place. Only some though. If anything starts to get out of hand, a couple of days of extra hot chilli sauce with added chilli powder in every meal generally sorts everything out.

I would love to see some middle-aged ladies try that out.

There are too many fussy eaters out there these days.

One of the "not-so fussy"

I mean, I should know, seeing as I'm one of the many of them. However, I'm not fussy to the extent where I will only eat food that is white, or solely potato wedges and spaghetti hoops, nor do I have to ensure that everything is cut to an equal side and must be ate in a certain order (however, if it's all set out nicely on a plate, broccoli should be eaten last). Well, I guess that's basically bordering on obsessive compulsive behaviour. However, too many people have some really crap food habits, like not liking vegetables. Agreed, mushrooms, sprouts and aubergine are vile, but all the rest are just lovely. You feel positively radiant eating them, so I don't understand why some people have to stick to pizza and chips.

It is moving. Ergo, meat.

However, the people that really get to me are these so-called "vegetarians". I don't mean the real type of vegetarian who completely eliminates all meat and meat by-products from their diet. I mean the type who come out for a meal and say: "I'm a vegetarian, but I eat chicken."
IS A CHICKEN NOT AN ANIMAL OR SOMETHING? HAVE I MISSED SOMETHING? LOST THE PLOT PERHAPS? Because to no extent of my imagination does eating poultry fall into the not eating meat category. I guess that fish is a moot point (the Bible was a bit blurry with the classification), but we have pescetarianism for that. And besides, fish is much better for you than chicken anyway. However, the person must be deluded, absurd to even think that a chicken could pass as a vegetable. That person is clearly not in it for any sort of ethical reason whatsoever.

I used to be a vegetarian. It wasn't down to beliefs or anything ethical, I just didn't like it. Still don't really. One day I just thought to myself: "Well, I don't eat beef, lamb, duck, pork or game, so it would make sense to stop eating chicken and call myself a vegetarian to save the confusion amongst everyone." And that was it. Didn't eat chicken for two more years because of that, and then started again because I felt like I was being a massive inconvenience to anyone who tried to cook for me. I guess that having consumed fairly hot chilli sauce on practically a daily basis for nearly a year now, and smoking like a chimney have washed my tastebuds up into oblivion, as I work by the mantra now: "If it's cooked for me, I'll give it a go (especially if it's free)."

Never looks that great raw,
does it?

However, I would prefer it if it weren't bought from the supermarket, as you know those cows/chickens/pigs have gone through hell to get squeezed into those sad little packets and pumped full of water. Half of the stuff that those animals were fed throughout their life was cheap crap as well, combined with the confinement of small space and unhappy animals, it doesn't make great meat. Butcher's meat is always better, as you know that the butcher is friendly and certainly knows who he's getting his meat from, what it is and how it was fed etc etc. And it always, without a shadow of a doubt, tastes nicer. I mean, I appreciate that, even though I don't really like the taste of it. But say that I were to have a dinner party, it would be the butchers I'd visit.

Om nom nom 

I did try and be vegetarian again after watching River Cottage a couple of weeks back. I haven't bought any meat or fish myself, which is a start (well, it's not really a difference to the norm), but I have had a couple of pre-packed chicken sandwiches from Boots, and some King Prawn Noodle salad. The chicken was vile, never having one of those chicken sandwiches again, but I think I've found my Achille's heel with those prawns... And I did have a chicken dinner with my family. Had to eat it to be polite, of course.

So it turns out that I'm not a vegetarian after all, nor will I call myself a vegetarian in spite of me eschewing meat 75% of the time. That's because vegetarians don't eat meat at all. Ever. Not even haribo or jelly. And vegans? Gosh, my will-power is not strong enough to substitute strong cheddar and camembert for soy milk and tofu. Just sayin'.

Vom.

PS. Quorn is AWFUL. How anyone can stand those plastic lumpy imitation-sausage.... things is beyond me.