Charcuterie board just fancy Lunchables, woman realises

A WOMAN eating a grown-up, sophisticated platter of meats and cheeses has realised it is basically the processed snack she used to eat at school.

Lauren Hewitt was happily grazing on the artistically arranged charcuterie board until she became aware it was essentially a large version of ‘Lunchables’, but vastly more expensive. 

Hewitt said: “I’d just laid out the camembert next to some prosciutto I spent 20 minutes rolling into inexplicable logs when it hit me – this is just Dairylea on steroids.

“Yes, the ham might have cost three times as much. And, sure, I’ve got grapes too, but they’re just like the fruit my mum used to chuck in as an afterthought. The whole board is basically a deconstructed lunch box that I’ve somehow turned into a time-consuming art project.

“The magic is ruined. I really thought I’d found a way to have meals that looked incredibly fancy without f**king cooking, but now it’s back to the drawing board. Unless I just give up on saving any money ever and start buying caviar.

“The only major difference is figs. Eight-year-old me wouldn’t have eaten a sodding fig. And the crackers are from M&S not Poundland, so that’s got to count for something, surely?”

Friend Nikki Hollis said: “I could have told Lauren ages ago that her Instagrammable feast is basically just bread and cheese, ie. the favoured food of peasants and kids. But I don’t care because those two ingredients are all the human body needs.

“And, let’s be honest, no one ever eats the figs anyway.”

Your guide to being an annoyingly inconsistent vegetarian

MEAT-eaters usually grudgingly respect veggies’ healthy, ethical lifestyle choice. But not the ones with extremely arbitrary ‘rules’ they think it’s fine to break. Such as these…

Bacon lapses

Apparently bacon ceases to be an animal product when it’s crisped up and placed between two slices of white bread with ketchup. That’s just a scientific fact – ask any zoologist. And that’s why the dictionary definition of vegetarianism is: ‘The practice of not eating meat, apart from when it smells totally amazing and one little sarnie won’t hurt, will it?’

Flexitarianism

Genuinely confusing if you avoid meat but also tuck into some grilled chicken now and then. ‘X is wrong, but a small amount of X is fine’ is not a moral standard that anyone has ever applied in history. Arsonists don’t expect to walk free from court if they ‘only burned the one school’. Jack the Ripper is not applauded for just killing five prostitutes and leaving it at that. ‘Good old Jack, he knew not to overdo things’ is not a phrase you tend to hear.

Bingeing on rennet 

Vegetarians get some sympathy from meat-eaters here, because if there’s one surefire way to make boring vegetables more palatable it’s covering them in melted cheese. They don’t pump cows’ stomachs to get rennet though, so unless you’re eating slightly strange vegetarian cheese it’s not vegetarian. More to the point, if you’re one of those veggies who has cheese with absolutely everything, maybe you should consider a more accurate name, eg. CathedralCityarian. 

Fish 

Pescetarianism is less a diet than a confusing moral maze centred on the nature of animal consciousness and modern farming methods. Do fish in a net suffer? You can imagine a lamb thinking ‘Shit, this place is starting to creep me out!’ when they rock up at the abbatoir, but it’s hard to get inside the mind of a cod. It does raise the suspicion that cuteness is a factor in your ethical choices, but fish are pretty ugly so f**k them.

Ditching your vegetarianism for a particularly nice meal

Christmas dinner is the obvious example – those pigs in blankets look lovely, and ooh, the smell! You’re sure any pig or turkey would have to agree. However there are other scenarios, like going to a super-posh restaurant where it would be a shame not to enjoy it properly. And you’ve got to eat meat if you want to try, say, the tasting menu at the Fat Duck. The lambs, cows, scallops, etc. were probably thrilled to meet a celebrity like Heston Blumenthal anyway and practically hurled themselves into the saute pan.

Fad meat-free diets

If you’re doing the veggie Palaeolithic diet of nuts and berries, it’s probably not from concern about animal welfare or the environment, it’s because you’re into fad diets first and foremost. You absolutely would try The Endangered Snow Leopard Diet if someone had written a book about it full of vague benefits like ‘having more energy’.

Temporary teenage vegetarians 

Not all teenage vegetarians, obviously, just the ones for whom it’s clearly a short-lived fashion choice. Strictness varies – you can either subject your mum to the minor hassle of buying vegetarian ready meals, or go full-on veggie gestapo and demand evidence that your potatoes have not been contaminated by a serving spoon that’s touched a disgusting, pig-murdering sausage. It’s a dreadful teenage cliche, but will provide years of entertainment for sadistic mums and dads gleefully reminding you that your high-minded stance lasted precisely eight-and-a-half days.