Lunch

Everyone’s a critic.

Yes, I am.

Today’s offering is about food, but is unlikely to be useful in a diet context.

There is little that I find more disappointing than poor food.

Let’s take a moment to talk about, The Potato Dog.

As a general introduction to this sorry tale I need to talk about the university canteen, or as they now call it, The Food Court. I don’t think anyone who eats there would argue when I say that over a fifteen year period, there has been a steady decline in the standard of the food on offer at the university, with the exception of the now defunct curry Thursdays. COVID has been the final nail in the coffin, an excuse to serve food in cardboard boxes and only offer disposable cutlery. Chicken and chips, burger and chips, and pizza that you could have chips with if you wanted. What happened to the salad bar? It’s no wonder some freshers near double in size during their first year on campus.

Back on topic.

What do you imagine a Potato Dog might be? A cheesy Potato Dog?

I anticipated some sort of potato layer around a sausage, frankfurter most likely, and a cheese element, possibly cheese wrapped around the sausage before its put into its fine potato overcoat.

What a Potato dog actually is, according to the food court, is a slab of cheesy shredded potato. That’s all. Where’s the dog? Where is the fucking dog? Not a sausage in sight, and I’d got chips to go with it. Potato two ways. If I’d known I’d have got a portion of mash to complete the look, whatever that look would be.

If a dogless dog isn’t bad enough, the university canteen has managed to make a mockery of the beloved Xmas dinner sandwich. They serve it, the turkey and pigs in blankets sandwich, with roast potatos and gravy.

What is that? Who, really who, serves a sandwich with gravy? It’s an abomination, that’s what that is.

Then there’s the New York bagel, a bagel that has no relation to any actual bagel served in New York that I ever came across. Potentially this was more disappointing than the Dog. I started referring to it as the Weston bagel but that’s just disrespectful to Weston. What I’m trying to say is, that bagel has nothing to do with the bagels available on the other side of the Atlantic. An actual New York bagel would laugh in its face, or whoop it’s sorry ass more likely.

I have started taking lunch with me. Better for my health in more than one way, I won’t be able to count on my excellent blood pressure reading forever, especially if I keep buying stuff and chips and getting angry at it.

Anyhow, here’s a dog, not that sort, but a dog.