Christmas Day Links #25
Christmas Eve Links #24
Plastic penguins, grotty grottos and grumpy elves: it’s not easy being a Santa impersonator:
"The pandemic has taken a toll on the festive season, and now many of my fellow Father Christmases are struggling."
Festivus Links #23
Christmas Links #22
Man sent Christmas card by stranger for more than 20 years:
"The man decided it was time to get to the bottom of the mystery."
Christmas Links #21
Review 2021:
The Christmas Sandwich Reviews:
Conclusion.
Food And there we have it, twenty days, twenty sandwich reviews. As you might suspect, the original plan was work right through to Christmas Eve, but at a certain point when you've walked into both Wilkinson's and Co-op on multiple occasions only to find that they've sold out of pre-packed festive sandwiches or weren't even restocked in the first place that you realise you have to just stop. That and being stuck in the above cafe working through this dismal three bird sandwich (chicken, turkey and duck) just to make up the numbers and realising the logistics of trying to squeak out a final four review could ruin an already psychologically tenuous Christmas.
Do I have any conclusions after eating turkey, bacon, stuffing and cranberry sauce on malted bread every lunch time for nearly three weeks? Not really. Most of the sandwiches are very similar and after comparing my own experiences with the some of the professional reviews online, you're probably at the mercy of whoever put the individual sandwich together as to how it tastes. Too much of one ingredient, too little of another can mean the difference between a pleasant or average lunch. There's a lot to be said for looking in the window on the hypotenuse of the triangular packaging and seeing if they seem to be well balanced.
The choice of ingredients can mitigate against the average. The bread needs to be relatively thin, it's not the most important part of the meal, it's really just a container. My preference is for thinly sliced Turkey rather than "pulled" or in chunks which can create a stodgy effect. Smoked back bacon please. The thin streaky bacon might be what you'd find on pigs in blankets but it often barely registers in this environment. Proper cranberry sauce with real berries, anything else is just sad. Sage and onion stuffing, but a thin layer. Pork is already covered in the bacon. No spinach or brie, they're just an unnecessary complication. Sausage is optional and only if its moist.
The price of sandwiches doesn't seem to have much sway on the quality. In these circumstances, you don't always get what you pay for. Some of the cheaper options have been deliciously rich, while the more expensive sandwiches were pitiable. The problem is, you don't know, you never know, although its fair to say that if you already like a particular brand of sandwiches, you'll probably like their Christmas variety. It's all a matter of taste. But make it a treat. Eating these lumps of protein every day hasn't exactly helped my constitution, weight or bank balance. If there's another reason to stop it's so that I can become more regular, healthier and solvent. All the best to you and yours.
Christmas Links #20
A Brief Investigation into Recording Dates for So Haunt Me:
"As we come to the end of the year, it’s a time for reflection, and pondering exactly what you have achieved with your life."
Review 2021:
The Christmas Sandwich Reviews:
Waitrose freefrom Gluton Free Turkey, Stuffing & Bacon.
Food Although I use Google Alerts much less than before - I tend to just visit a search page daily if it's something which is likely to have something published about it well, daily. But there are odd things which I've kept and one of those is for Waitrose AND Liverpool. Every now and then something pops through and it's a piece from the Liverpool Echo website which has been syndicated throughout the Reach newspaper network about product recalls for various supermarkets.
What I'm aiming for is an early warning that an actual Waitrose shop is opening in Liverpool city centre. For years it was one of the shops which was synonymous for me with breaking out of the localist bubble and visiting the outlet in Formby was a way of tasting what supermarket shopping was like in places like London, with a more unusual selection of goods from brands who wouldn't be seen dead in Tesco or Asda. If Manchester or Chester could have a mini version why not us?
Well, neither Manchester or Chester have those any more after a series of branch closures in the past couple of years, which makes the chances of them opening in Liverpool, the city centre also as we've discussed already oversaturated with Tesco shops, increasingly slim. I'm coming to terms with that, not least because a few of the brands which only seemed to have been in Waitrose have slowly begun to appear elsewhere, even in Tesco or Asda.
Plus, Liverpool does have a Waitrose of sorts. It's situated on the top floor of the John Lewis building in The Place To Eat Cafe, currently in the counter opposite the entrance which serves teas, coffees and cakes. There you'll find numerous varieties of Waitrose snacks and where I bought today sandwich, saving me a trip to Formby. Not somewhere you can pick up a Wood Pigeon or a packet of Gravadlax, but still a chance to possibly try something different.
Not this sandwich of course. Apart from the glutton free bread and so slightly dry crusts, this isn't that much different to a dozen or so of the sandwiches I've also eaten this month. The strongest flavour and texture is from the bacon which as with every other occasion this has been the case is smoked. The cranberry doesn't make much of an impression, or the turkey, although that isn't as hard as in some cases. So not bad, but definitely not worth £4.95 ...
Christmas Links #19
"The chocolate-chip cookie celebrated its seventy-fifth birthday this year."
Review 2021:
The Christmas Sandwich Reviews:
Pret's Christmas Lunch.
Food Dear god, what a crushing disappointment. Rather like the film Dune, I find myself on the other side of the overwhelming critical plaudits for Pret a Manger's festive offering which has garnered four and five star reviews from the likes of The Independent and Time Out and generally very positive in places which don't do the star rating sort of thing. The only write-up I've found vaguely in line with experience is from "My London" back in July when they originally went on sale and their writer Melissa Sigodo wrote: "As I bit into the festive meal gone lunchtime snack, I couldn’t quite distinguish the different tastes, as a mish-mash of carbohydrates rolled together in between my jaws like a cement mixer."
Folks, this was a chore to eat. Right through the middle is a thick seem of crunchy spinach which is ever present throughout every bite and overpowers pretty much everything else the sandwich is trying to do. On top of that, the seeds in the too thick malted bread are rather large and tough as grit and yet still somewhat distinguished from the crunchy onions which have been sprinkled throughout. All of this means the turkey, stuffing and sauce which should be the stars of the meal make no impact and you're left with an ordeal of sandwich which seems to take forever to work through. About half way through I had to take a break, not because I was filling up, but to give my jaw a rest after chomping away at the crusts.
Usually I love Pret. Is it a perfect company? No. The wikipedia has a list of their failures including a failure to list all of the ingredients on their packaging which led to deaths. That will account for the incredibly details label stuck to the bottom of the packaging which makes those elements which could cause an allergic reaction as clear as possible. It's currently owned by a holding company which originated with a family whose ancestors were enthusiastic supporters of Adolf Hitler, although the mother of the current owners was Jewish and they run a foundation which offers support to victims of the holocaust and Nazism. Wow, that took a turn. You can bet the end of this paragraph wasn't what I expected it to be when I started writing it.
But I love their porridge, their soups and their coffee. Outside of the Tesco Chicken Salad, the other sandwich I'll walk out of my way for is the Classic Super Club at Pret which somehow manages to get the right balance between the poultry, bacon, lettuce, tomatoes and mayo. Pret's outlets always have a good and consistent atmosphere no matter where you go from Liverpool to London. During the lockdown we'd regularly order a bag full of goodies from there via Deliveroo and it always cheered us up. My first experience of them was a soup at Cheshire Oaks and of all the chain food places, Pret's one the few which has never let me down. Until now. Sulk, sulk, sulk.