Good lord, people actually eat this stuff? They buy it, to eat...?

[desperance]

I have been involved in what I can only call a retail accident. Somebody else's ... product ... has ended up among my shopping. It came in a suitably anonymous wrapping, but was labelled 'garlic sausage'. I often munch on cold meats at about this time of night, while I'm working (and I certainly wasn't trudging all the way back to the supermarket to return it to some ultimately uninterested cashier), so I unwrapped same.

Yikes.

It comes in thick, flabby slices of the most pallid baby-pink, with occasional rose-pink flecks. At that, it has more texture to the eye than it does to the tongue. It smells strongly of that artificial flavour that they are pleased to call 'garlic', that resembles the genuine article hardly at all; it barely tastes of that, or anything. It is the most extraordinarily bland culinary artefact I think I've ever eaten, at least as an adult. Essentially, it tastes as it looks: it tastes of pink.

Cats seem to like it, though. Which is good. I have 165g of it to give away.

Comments

[julesjones]

Chaz, *you're* a food snob. Doesn't mean your cats are. :-)

Yes, people buy it. They buy it because they buy on price per gram, and either don't understand or don't care or are not in a position to care that sometimes you really do get what you pay for. Or because they are buying for other people who consider bland to be a highly desirable characteristic. You mentioned a key feature yourself -- "as an adult"...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Chaz, *you're* a food snob.

Weirdly - weirdly, I say! - you are not the first person to suggest this.

Indeed, there's a snatch of dialogue that I have noted down, for appropriate insertion into my next play:

- Honestly, you are such a snob!
- I am not. There are just some things I'm not prepared to put into my mouth, that's all.
- That's not what I've heard.

Etc. For yes, we can have autobiography and innuendo, both at once...

I have to say, though, I had thought better of the cats.

[julesjones]

[snickers] I'm not infecting you, am I? That sounds like the sort of thing I'd write.

The cats are cats. It's edible, and it doesn't run away fast enough to avoid being eaten. Therefore it is food. Or perhaps I am just jaundiced, having been subjected this morning to predatrix's cats trying to convince me that they had not had breakfast, in spite of me having watched them bolt it not ten minutes earlier...

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Garlic isn't very good for cats -- if your cats are young and healthy, it should be fine, but all allium plants have potential effects on the kidney functions of cats.

Of course, there is the strong possibility that there is actually no, or negligible garlic in that. . . . thing.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't think there's enough legitimate garlic in it to worry - but I will now worry none the less, and they shall have no more of it. They probably wouldn't thank you for this, but I will; I didn't know about alliums being bad for their kidneys. They actually are young and healthy, but even so...

(I wonder if this is why onions & garlic are almost the only vegetable identified so far that Mac won't actually eat...?)

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

Have you considered that the other shopper, in a fit of good sense jettisoned the product, and it landed in your basket?

Or that the market put it there in a deliberate bid to be rid of the stuff?