Today I finally made the decision. I have gone off salt n’ vinegar crisps. Walker had an offer of two bags of six for the price of one at the Co-Op today. Best of all, they were six packs of just salted and cheese and onion flavour, my favourites. I never buy those designer crisps. I want to eat a potato, not a logo on fancy packaging. Pringles taste disgusting and look like genetically cloned slices. Either that or it’s got to be the longest banana shaped potato in the world they been cooking for years.
I always wondered about the vinegar flavour. In Rhodesia we only had Willard’s crisps. Now they haven’t even got them in Zimbabwe, but I remember if on rare occasions I got a packet and they were only plain salt, I would shake some vinegar into the bag. That made my crisps all soggy and not even the dog would eat them. I’ve seen dried grated cheese and dried onion flakes, so my mind has no problem of the manufactures having their workers liberally brushing minute particles of them onto the freshly fried crisps as they go down the assembly line, but dried vinegar?
I imagine it would look like Columbian cocaine. The real stuff, that off-white, greyish hue. Now that would be a flavour – Salt and Coke, The Crispy High!
As the weather was nice today and I had a hot meal yesterday, I decided on sandwiches for lusp (that’s sort of a kombi lunch/supper thing between 12 and 7 depending on what I am doing and how hungry I am). Roast chicken to be precise, but I don’t buy that odd looking and even odder tasting chicken slices in a sealed packet. I hardly ever eat chicken in this country, they are so pumped up with water, they all drowned from the inside out before they got to the slaughter house. Co-Op does fresh roast chickens. I always go for the small ones. First, it’s a pound cheaper, second, I don’t need that much and thirdly, where the hell did they find such enormous chickens? Their mutants of the Dodo’s DNA! There so full of water, the salesgirl is making cups of tea from the steaming torrent pouring out pierced wounds as it is parboiled in the grilling box. Frightening stuff, I could almost feel the chickens pain! God knows what the tea tastes like; just as well she was Chinese! They drink all sorts of exotic teas, Cockroach and Pekinese tea is a best seller a man in a pub told me.
Then I sat in the sun in my next door neighbours back yard (them that wouldn’t lend me their barbecue last weekend) and pulled a leg apart and popped the juicy pieces onto my lightly salty buttered wholemeal bread slice. I hacked up a spring onion that had most definitely felt the affects of autumn in my fridge the past week, it wasn’t in the mood to spring into my sandwich, and covered the lot with a handful of plain salted crisps. Then I placed another buttered slice on top and pushed down hard with my palm. The noise reminds me of a cannibal cracking open the spinal column of a victim for the marrow with his filed teeth.
After that I cut the flattened wreck, now squirting the last remnants of melted butter down my leg after the first push blasted a stream onto my naked brown tanned belly (the chicken was still hot for me by the time I got home, so just had to have a bit of it) into triangles. My mom in Rhodesia always cut them in oblong halves. Only the hotels served sandwiches in triangles. They also put green stuff for rabbits in as well but I pulled them out and threw it onto any future rabbit’s path. I thought it was a law that we weren’t allowed to have triangular shaped sandwiches at home that stood up like Egyptian pyramids, instead of boring oblongs lying like flattened occupied coffins on a plate. Now I throw a wobbly if I don’t get my sandwiches triangular shaped. I don’t attempt to make mine stand though, unless it is with fright, as you will see.
I had forgotten to bring some kitchen paper towels with me outside, so I was well greased up by the time I finished. Looks like I will be eating chicken for a couple of more days. I don’t mind because tomorrow I am going to fry some onions up, pop in finger shredded chicken, some exotic spices like some green stuff you can’t get at the supermarkets, and sprinkle the lot onto an omelette. Fold it up, slide onto a plate without it accelerating and it promptly keep sliding off the kitchen top and onto the floor, with some instant chips from the deep fat fryer and bliss.
The rest I’ll have with cheese and onion crisps another day. Oh, I just remembered I forgot to wipe the melted butter/chicken fat off the next door neighbours porch table. I suppose I won’t get the grill next week either! Damn…
13.07.06
Dedicated to Mel.
Word count.863
3 comments:
Listen Lore their is no question but that the ZANU leadership are only interested in the question of their own self preservation and continued so called governance of zimbabwe. I would contest that what matters now is that given that the black population of the country have been whipped into submisssion by their so called liberators from colonial oppression that they finally accept that the path they have chosen to go down is indeed the one of obeyance to a Western/British lifestyle which allows for scant recognition of their previous existence as hunter gatherers or indeed as herders of livestock. The sorry truth I am afraid Lore is that very few people in the world appear to care about what happens to Africans unless the issue is made temporarily fashionable by fly by night characters like Bob Geldof et al who seem to be almost entirely interested in their own sense of self importance.
I dare say that you were a member of the Rhodesian Police Force in the dying days of the British Empire however that does not mean that you should sit in splendid isolation in North Wales and complain about what you see occuring about you.
Life is undoubtedly hard at times .God knows I have seen that this is true but that does not mean that you should just surrender to the forces that are ranked against you.
I would love to correspond with you and I am sorry if I come across as some sort of concieted idiot but I also feel that I am in the wrong place having spent a lot of years in Kenya and Botswana .
Please Lore do not just sit around in your flat feeling that the world is passing you by and that you can do nothing to change matters.
Take it easy on the beers as well but mGod knows it feels good to be pissed.
Any way it would be good to hear from you.
Cheers Martin
Martin here again Lore,
I dont know when you were last in Zimbabwe but I wonder if any of your readers can remember the glory years of Colcom Pork Pies which are now sadly passed into history.
The quality of the pies seemed to be comensurate with the days when the country was still functioning to a reasonable extent.
It was strange how the pies suddenly became dried out and to consist of fifty per cent fat the minute that the so called farm invasions took place.Can anybody supply me with an answer to this question?
Anyway that reminds me of the Plaza hotel in Bulawayo where I used to go and visit my wife to be whilst I was living in Botswana and go down to the bar for a cool Castle in the evenings.
Does anyone rermember this establishment.It was probably not Zimbabwes premier hotel but it it did not seem to be too bad at the time and the receptionists were always willing to exchasnge money at a reasonable rate of exchange.
Anyway look forward to hearing from you soon.
Lore I dont know where you are living in Wales but is it not possible to get or hitch a ride to an ASDA store where I am sure you will find that beer and wine [which I am sure you will find is a much more economical drink to partake of ]is to be found instead of surviving in your self imposed exile next to the Lion Pub and relying on the vagaries of the Co ops special offers on cans of lager.Anyway let me know what you think All the best.
Martin
By the way those of us here in Sctland have the benefit of highly competitive offers on bottles of whisky to contemplate in our idle moments .
Let me know what you think.
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