Know your Organic Paraguayan Melons

If you want to know what it’s like to do your groceries in Japan, you could do worse than shop in an organic supermarket. In both places the going rate for a melon is about 40 quid. The other great thing about the organic supermarket, though, is that you can feel better about buying yourself healthy stuff there like melons that come over from Paraguay in a jet and change the climate. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Track of the Week

Sorting Out Your Plumbing

There is some documentary evidence that sexual encounters arise from ladies requesting the services of a plumber. In each case, the response time appears to be prompt because the lady never appears to have had time to dress properly or check whether her clothing has been properly secured. The plumber notices this, but to the credit of the professional standards they uphold, never because he was hoping to see something. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

The Prodded Avocado Dilemma

We prod avocado pears to gauge whether they are ripe or not. Or we do if we know what we’re doing around avocadoes. A slight squishiness is what we’re after, just the right side of a squelch. But often the hope far outweighs the expectation. We may end up prodding every one of a supermarket pile of breeze-block hard unripened pears hoping that one will yield. And well one might, if and only if, you are the 20^th prodder to perform the ritual, by which time one may have been softened up enough to give the impression that it is ripe. The avocado is much like celery – you put more energy into getting it into your stomach than you get out of it. (Apparently somebody found that eating squirrels will also leave you wanting more (if you liked the first one) – probably somebody who survived on something more than squirrel (else he wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale), on what we might term a ‘squirrel-supplemented diet’.) (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Damp Sleeve Becomes Damp Squib

The clothes horse contributes to creating more dampness issues than it solves in drying.

Note we say that it ‘contributes’ rather than it is responsible, because it is the washing machine that gets the ball rolling. Consider the long johns top and bottoms. When we take them out of the wash we witness a phenomenon. One arm of the top and one leg of the bottoms have turned inside out. Naturally they are damp and need to be hung on a clothes horse to dry. So here’s the conundrum. Do we hang them up as is, the limbs twisted so that they ride the clothes horse side saddle, or do we brave reaching within the damp long john arm or leg to correct the disfigurement? Either way we run the very real threat of experiencing uncomfortable dampness. If we hang twisted, the crotch on the bottoms or the armpit on the top will dry at a slower rate than the rest of the garment. On the other hand, if we reach inside the sleeve or leg, we dampen the sleeve of the top we are already wearing.

‘So, we are left with dampness in the crotch’, you might think (flippantly). ‘I’ve dealt with underpants in the past where I wore them before the waistband properly dried’ you say with a touch of bravado. ‘They dried off in the wear’ - much like you run off a dead leg if you take a hit in a football match. ‘Sure they left a little red rash or sore’, you admit. But what if you’re a resident of Greenland? A Greenlander? Present any dampness to the Arctic air and you’re playing with frostbite. And frostbite is not a fun playmate (usually, or perhaps never – definitely veering towards the ‘never’ scale of things). So you right the damp leg of your long john bottoms, your sleeve emerges damp, the doorbell rings, you answer, you hold the door open for a delivery man to duck under your arm and deliver whatever he is delivering, next thing you know you’ve a frozen sleeve holding your arm aloft in the holding the door open position in a kind of frozen ‘Seig Heil’. Or had you hung up twisted, you’ve exposed a damp armpit. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

From Chicken-in-the-Basket to Chicken-on-the-Pavement

Back in the 1970s Chicken-in-the-basket was a delicacy on a par with prawn cocktail. The prawn cocktail was later given a further lease of life as the eponymous flavouring in prawn cocktail crisps. Anybody it seemed could now savour something of what it was like to eat shrimp-type things in a heady cocktail of mayonnaise and tomato ketchup.

And so, the chicken meal was to follow a similar trend. Initially, it was what we term ‘a real treat’ not to eat chicken off a plate. Out of a basket thrilled us. It fuelled in us a yearning to eat like the noble peasant. From a basket – if that’s what peasants did. Though we did wonder about how easy it would be to wash up the baskets afterwards, not something we worried about with plates. It was a cause for concern that you might be served your chicken in a basket that had not been washed up. In a reused basket. Though were we to suppose that the baskets were disposable? – we didn’t see evidence of discarded baskets outside Harvester restaurants. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

5 a day? - You Do the Math

How are you supposed to get your five a day in Greenland? You try growing a brussel sprout just outside Nuuk (the capital, for those who don't know and don't know how to use Wikipedia), or a radish, if you prefer, this time somewhere more inner city. See how you get on.

Go to a vegetarian restaurant in Nuuk and the waiter says, 'But you're quite welcome to come in and sit down if you like'. In Greenland, five a decade is more hopeful. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)