:: All in the best possible taste... ::

Well, life's a breeze when you're researching cheese. And chilled processed fish and fermented sauces. I was supposed to be finishing the Packaged Foods project this week, but there's been a "technical hitch" of monumental proportions and all the dairy's gone a bit wrong. Sound like the premiss of a far-fetched but delightfully addictive platform-based computer game? I think so:

Oh No! Princess Parmesan is about to die in a shower of curdling dairy goods. Guide Devukha through pools of probiotic drinking yoghurt to fight the Evil Lord Quark and save her! Collect Mini Babybels for strength along the way - get ready for a buttering!

Enough of that. The yawning lacuna in my work schedule has led to some interesting discoveries as I concentrate on other areas in more detail (far be it from me to surf the net all day at my employer's expense!). Exhibit A is a brand of South African cheese biscuit - I would be surprised if this hadn't appeared on Graham Norton's Show:

On the trail of the ultimate foreign food innuendo (there are too many to mention), I discovered a German wurst manufacturer with the immortal slogan: "Meica - Deploys the Sausages". I love the fact that that works on so many levels - except the very meaning they wanted to convey.

Although they "speak the same language as us", Americans must claim the top prize for all round consumer site stupidity. During my trawls through the likes of Chef Boyardee ready-to-eat pasta-in-a-can lasts-for-three-millenia type products I frequently encounter "recipe sites". That country has turned convenience food into an artform (where else could you buy Uncrustables - pre-made frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?), but there still seems to be a residual need for "culinary creativity". Hence the sprouting of the branded recipe website as an adjunct to the commercial one. Not content with just telling the consumer what is available from their company - usually some brightly coloured, overpackaged, nutritionally questionable box of mush - they now tell us how to remove it from the box and serve it. Usually this involves adding extra flavour (tabasco to mask the plastic taste) or texture (to disguise the insipid consistency of a product designed to keep for decades when frozen).
Even the less processed items end up with some fairly stupid recipes. Hunts manufacture a range of ketchups and tomato sauces. Most of their recipes could be surmised as:
Boil pasta, drain, pour in Hunt's© pasta sauce, add basil/chopped sausage/toenails and serve with something else from a packet.
The prize for "Dumbest Recipe" on their site goes to Hunt's® Antipasto Style Pasta. Beyond the obvious inanity of the recipe presented (which fits the above formula perfectly), the author has completely ignored what ANTIPASTO means - it's the course you have before pasta.

Enough... I must stop talking about food before I get hungry.