Blergh! Moisture Infused Pork Is Crap!

Am I the only one who thinks that "moisture infused pork" is smeg? I bought a couple of pork steaks a couple of months back, and allowed myself to be talked into the moisture infused version, on the info provided that they were "tastier, juicier, more succulent and easier to cook". Sounds great - although in the back of my mind a little voice was saying "it's just soaked in water, you moron! Don't you rant about how meat is being soaked in water to make it heavier, and therefore better value for the supplier? Don't you? Huh?!?"

I cooked it up that night, and served it forth with veggies and gravy or sauce of some kind, and I was very, very disappointed. The meat was, as promised, juicy and succulent. It was also really salty (that would be on account of the brine), really lacking in any other flavour, and the texture... well, the texture is a whole 'nother story. Have you ever had reconstituted meat? When they have taken "genuine pig parts" (or other animal) ground it up and reformed it into a meat-like product? Yup, I think everyone has. You know how it's a little bit... spongy? Yup, well that's what the "moisture infused pork" was like. Obviously the brine is forced into the meat under pressure, or it would just cook out. This high pressure "infusion" makes the meat spongy. In hindsight, it seems pretty obvious to me. Pity I wasted a perfectly good meal on it.

The reason I bring this up now is that I popped into the shopping centre at Winston Hills on the way home from work, and they have a nice butcher there. Not one of the really high-end ones, but they seem to have a good quality of product. I was going to buy some pork, until I realised that (in small, hard to read writing) all of the little plastic signs with the cut of pork and the price on them were labelled "moisture infused". So I asked the chap if all of their pork was so. Yes, says he. Ugh, says I. He tried rather half-heartedly to tell me that he has tried it and it's very nice, but I think he could see that I wasn't going to be convinced. So I sold my soul and went and bought some at Coles (for which I will no doubt burn in the fiery pits of hell for all eternity)

What really worries me is that this is the "future" for all pork. I did a Google search on the subject, and nearly all of it was industry stuff, and overwhelmingly positive, or blogs, and overwhelmingly positive. I did find one blog that panned the whole idea a bit, but only one site in ten pages of entries. That's really worrisome. Funnily enough, Speedy, if you read this, there were comments from you on this blog. Even on the interwebz, it's a small world.

I know that some of you are prolly thinking "SERVE YOU RIGHT, YOU HEINOUS BITCH! DON'T YOU KNOW HOW PIGS ARE REARED FOR MEAT PRODUCTION THESE DAYS?!?". And you would be right again. I just haven't been able to wean myself off the meat of the magical pig just yet, and haven't found a free-range pork supplier anywhere in the area.

Why do they keep fucking with our food? Can't it just be food again? Why does it have to be science?

Anyone?

Anyone?!?

Eek!

I went to sit on the couch in front of the telly (and the fan, more importantly) and trim up some boning and slide it into the freshly sewn channels. It's not the boning I wanted to use, of course, but that standard plastic bridal boning that we all used to use before we discovered the good stuff. I'm just using more of it than the good stuff. I wandered into the living room, but had not even rounded the telly yet when I heard the distinctive, sexed up saxaphone sounds of Lethal Weapon. "Aargh!" I said loudly, "what's this shit doing on again?" Yep, one of the other 400 movies made in this franchise had been on last week, and Rusty had watched that too.

I couldn't even bear to be in the same rooms as such visual garbage. Even from here (the land of Spar-Oom) I can hear  the endless screaming and carrying on like pork-chops. Gag.

I might call mine Larry...

A couple of weeks ago on afternoon radio on Triple J, there was some discussion, including sound bites, about Jennifer Love Hewitt getting Vagazzled. According the partial interview with her that they played on the Js, a friend of hers put Swarovski crystals on her "precious lady" (her ghastly terminology, not mine) and that it was "like a disco ball down there". Please, please don't ask me any questions about how or which er... specific area - I pondered this briefly until I realised that I was actually taking time to think about JLH's vagina, and I changed my train of thought very quickly. (Aaargh! Ponies! Rainbows! Pretty butterflies!) Overall it was mildly interesting in that "why on earth would you bother" kind of way, and had a reasonable amusement factor.

It must have sparked further discussion on the Jays that I missed, as they were playing a bunch of soundbites this arvo, generally of people saying various euphemisms for the female genitalia, including a reference to having it made all sparkly - gemitalia. There was one that made me laugh out loud though, which is still making me a bit giggly...

... Lawrence of Alabia.

*guffaw*

Yep, it's lame, but it's still funny.

Grump

Hmph! I was going to do some frocking tonight, but instead I got to do the reeve report. Woo-hoo.

Oh, and I've lost my good plastic boning, which is making frockage more difficult than it needs to be.

All in all, pretty grumpy.

Bugger

Guess who had to change a tyre in a white linen top today?

Fortunately, I was at the shops when I realised that the tyre was flat, which meant that there were an assortment of random helpful gentlemen to give me a hand. One helped to get one of the wheel nuts undone, I managed another, and then a chap came along who had amazing wheel nut technique who got the other two in about 10 seconds. I fart-arsed about with the jack for a while (it's the one that came with the car, so it is designed to go in a very specific spot, which means (of course) that it was really hard to find), before another chap came along to help with that. Between the two of us, we got it all sorted in good time. No thanks to the twit who commented "hur hur hur, you can teach her how it's done", which earned him my very best "eat shit and die" look as I told him that I have known how to change a tyre since I was sixteen. The helpful chap agreed rather wholeheartedly with my opinion, and made a rude gesture on my behalf to the twit once his back was turned. Aw shucks, how sweet!

So, boo hiss to flat tyres and random twits, but hoorah for random helpful people. I must admit, I had completely forgotten that a chick changing a tyre will attract help pretty quickly, which is generally handy for the wheel nuts if nothing else (those little fuckers are almost impossible for humans to get off...)

Not really the way I wanted to end the day - hot and sticky and covered in skunge. I managed to keep my shirt pretty clean though - and I didn't have to take it off*...

*Thank goodness for small mercies!

The awesomeness of Paddle Pops

No really, they are Teh Awesome.

I haven't had a PP in years, and after helping a bit with Feral Cheryl's moving on Sunday (on a day that was no less than 247% humidity) I was in need of an icy treat. I am happy to report that not only are they still reasonably priced, but they really do taste as good as they did when I was ten. I had thought that they would be a bit like all nostalgia - better in your memory than in actuality, but I was pleasantly surprised.

So, whilst I was slurping down my yummy ice confection*, I read the nutritional and ingredients info (like you do when you are thirtysomething, but not something that worries you when you are ten), and was even more pleasantly surprised. They are not actually an ice-cream, they are more of a milk ice. Made mostly out of food ingredients, rather than numbers, and involving quite a lot of skim milk, they are also only about 5% fat, and about 5% of the RDI of kilojoules. Pwah!

So I enjoyed my almost entirely guilt-free Paddle Pop very much (and bought a box of them at the supermarket yesterday - they worked out to be abut 55 cents each, which is barely more than double what we paid for them from the corner shop in 1979). It's nice when sometimes the good things from your childhood are still roxor when you are nearly....erm, I mean years and years away from being forty.

I know this sounds a bit like blatant advertising for ice-cream manufacturers, but in this case I am prepared to tip my hat to the continued awesomeness that is the humble Paddle Pop, and may they still be awesome in another thirty years.

*OK, ok, I actually had two, because I couldn't decide between banana and chocolate. They both tasted exactly as I remember them. They were yummy. I enjoyed eating them a lot.