Eish!

…and it looks like a chicken? Well, that’s settled then.

I may have mentioned chicken somewhere before. I forget why exactly but when I considered that I’d mentioned vegetarianism before too, it all started falling into place [1].

Can one, indeed, dress Mutton as Lamb?

I cannot begin to think why not. The one is none other than an ovine O.A.P. [2] that’s trying to stay hip (or at least with a hip-replacement). It is a tactic adopted by most cougars on the hunt for nubile, blind young men who are impervious to the smell of moth-balls. These are, for obvious reasons, in short supply, hence the need to dress down so to speak.

Dressing Lamb as Mutton, on the other hand, would be like photographing your child with a slicked down comb-over, a little tie and a blazer that’s been pulled taught behind his back with safety pins to make it fit. My parents have many of these pearls. I know yours do to. Don’t make me prove it.

This weekend I visited Rocking the Daisies and, amongst other impulses, developed an acute hunger pang. As tradition dictates, so did about 12000 other festival goers, all at roughly the time. We stormed the food halls like a tribe of Philistines brandishing loyalty cards. A selection of ten eateries presented convenient queues for thousands of beer-soaked, sun-stroked hungry okes. I employed naturally culinary selection and chose the shortest queue.

Oddly, this turned out to be  a vegetarian stall called Portobello [3]. My options were quite broad: I could engage in a scorching wet curry served in a biodegradable cardboard box balanced on my sun-burned knees and eaten with a plastic fork; or I could purchase a chicken wrap.

I know, I too had to double take on that one. It was presented as a chicken wrap and, upon query, it was further embellished upon that no actual chicken was harmed in the production of the wrap (other than embarrassment to the chicken for being told that was being rendered redundant by a vegetable).

Soya dressed as Chicken. It doesn’t roll off the tongue so well but it certainly did roll down it. It was delicious but this is not the point.

Why do vegetarians insist on making vegetable meals appear, for all intents and purposes, like their meaty counterparts? The vegetarian burger? Soya sausages? Chicken wraps? etc. etc. Soya is hardly the O.A.P. of food groups. It doesn’t drool down your bib or pinch your bottom inappropriately. Why do we not venerate it? Laud it? Applaud it? Make a meal of it?

Do vegetarians genuinely believe that we hairy-backed and wide-eyed hunter gatherers are afraid of a little chick-pea? Are we that fickle that the thought of half a scooped out butternut could drain the blood from our faces and the snot from our noses? Is the terror in our faces that manifest when we are faced with seaweed strips in our starter soups?

For heaven’s sake, I have a sharpened garden spade with a handle hewn from the bones of whales! My girlfriend drives her own wood-chipper! My festival t-shirt is crafted from solid, unadulterated hemp!

Bring it on! You don’t frighten me you silly knnnnnniggets!

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[1] But not into plaice. That’s a different kind of Fish.

[2] Did You Know? Between lamb and mutton, a sheep finds itself being called a hogget. Would you find this as confusing as I do?

[3] Which I believe to be a nice little spot in Long Street.