CABINET OF CURIOSITIES (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

Academic Joke of the Week

[Mick Harper]

What do we think of Maldon sea-salt flakes? They're wildly expensive, a nightmare to use and never salty enough. Also I'm fed up waiting for someone to call round and ask if I've got any salt.

[Wile E. Coyote]

We have recently converted to Himalayan Pink salt. I was also intrigued by this exciting new development in the Wiley household and, after conducting extensive research, I can now exclusively report to the AE audience that the main area of disparity with common table salt is in fact colour.

[Mick Harper]

To strike a serious note. Common table salt lacks the trace elements of sea salt and, in my opinion, should be eschewed just in case this is the critical factor. Himalayan salt is presumptively, albeit some time ago, sea salt. Your wife is correct: not only is the colour irrelevant but pink has political and gender conjurations that make it undesirable in any AE-ist's home. As are wives, tell her.

[Mick Harper]

Or maybe it is me. Today a regular on medium.com, Grant Piper, posted this up

[Grant]

I like Himalayan salt because I’m always amazed that it’s 200 million years old.

My wife says it’s because I’m being pretentious.

[Mick Harper]

I get this all the time. I find, "If I was pretentious I wouldn't have married you, you common little slut" (and variants) often works but watch out for the "If I were pretentious, it's the subjunctive" response.

[Mick Harper]

Here's a new one on me. Anyone know if a new genre is being born before our very eyes?

[Chad]

A handy guide to pretentious salts:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/feb/17/gourmet-artisan-and-sea-salt-trendy

[Mick Harper]

I used to live overlooking the Menai Straits but that was years ago when we all used it as a sewage outflow. Mainly evaporated for gourmet salt nowadays, I understand. Lots of trace elements apparently.

[Mick Harper]

Many people have been begging me to stop my incessant shopping stories but I am not one to give in to popular clamour so here are two culled from this week's expedition.

My spectacles needed a minor repair and you always go back to where you got them from if you want it done free. This involved a trip to a shop I hadn't visited for four years. "Oh, these are old," said the usual bright young thing manning reception.
"I did get them here," I said nervously.
"Oh yes, I remember you well, Mr Harper."
That sparked my competitive instinct. "And you live in Uxbridge."
She looked up, startled. "Yes, I do as a matter of fact. You're not a stalker are you, Mr Harper? Here you are, all fixed."

Being in an unusual part of town (Notting Hill Gate) I did my weekly shop there, in something called a Tesco Express. I was fascinated because unlike my usual haunts these are designed for bright young things. What amazing things they eat. Including a pair of gigantic Polish sausages for £1.49.

Why am I telling you this? Well, you will recall from a previous effusion of mine, that I had been staggered by Sainsbury's having absurdly cheap Polish sausage and me concluding it was because we were out of the EU and the CAP and could therefore avail ourselves of the world market price for comestibles. My theory appears to have been triumphantly vindicated.

[Wile E. Coyote]

I don't really get why folks buy sausages. You are really buying sausage meat that, rather than being packaged cunningly in the cleaned intestines of the animal, is these days instead packaged disgustingly twice. I guess folks like the shape or maybe it's the the gluey chew?

[Grant]

I don’t like gourmet sausages. Sausages are supposed to be made of the cheapest cuts of meat.

[Mick Harper]

And the cheapest filler. They've been ruined by all this 'up to 90% prime pork" nonsense. In my young day you could eat sausages on Fridays. But talking of 'casings' I was nonplussed today when I got out my pack of 'Tesco Express Giant Gourmet Frankfurters', slid one out for the morning fry-up (I'd forgotten the bacon, see previous stories passim) only to find they were in removable casings. Have you ever heard the like? Have you ever had to remove a removable frankfurter casing when the eggs and the toast were already at a critical state?

There's more to being a gourmet than the ability to quell panic in a moment of crisis.

[Grant]

“Removable casings!” Why have I not read about this in the Daily Mail?