A note on the apocalypse

I had a very nice Valentine's Day this year, except for the choice of movie. It was called Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. This is a weird hybrid of a disaster movie (an asteroid is heading for Earth and there is no way anyone will survive - good start, eh?) and a romantic comedy (two messed up folks, one with lots of regrets, the other with lots of issues, set out on a quest together in the face of impending doom). The acting is ok, though.

I was so depressed after all this that I had to watch a bit of David Tennant's Penguins: Spy in the Huddle - which is great, by the way; no penguins died in the bit I saw, which makes it my kind of documentary.

This did cheer me up.

Well, it cheered me up until Friday morning when I awoke to the news that a large asteroid was just about to narrowly miss my one and only home, planet Earth.

No more apocalyptic rom coms for me: it's all been a bit too close to home.

A pancake fit for Popeye

 

The humble pancake

This past week was of course the week of Shrove Tuesday - the British alternative to the European carnival, traditionally being the last chance to over indulge before the sobriety of Lent.

In the olden days, pancakes were a delicious way to use up disgracefully decadent ingredients like butter, eggs and milk (and I suppose anything you can stick on top). When I was a little one, we had our pancakes at dessert with anything sticky and sweet that we had in the cupboards. This included lemon juice, orange juice, sugar and maple syrup - all of which would collect in the plate in a delicious, acidic mess. These were very thin and a bit crispy like a French crepe.

A friend I used to work with said that her family always ate pancakes filled with bolognese on Shrove Tuesday - this was possibly my initial introduction to the idea of savoury pancakes. In 2011, I met the Dutch pancake, which is massive and has amazing savoury things like bits of sausage built in, and is impossible to completely comsume in one sitting.

I can also appreciate a cinnamon pancake filled with chocolate spread and banana. Takes ten minutes to make and is a contender for the position of ultimate comfort food.

Thus we see the incredible versatility of the humble pancake.

 

An experimental pancake feast

This Shrove Tuesday, I decided to have an experimental pancake feast. And it was good.

Here are the fillings I made:

Multi-tasking

Pancake 1: tuna melt
This is simply dolphin friendly tuna in brine, drained and mixed with black pepper, real mayonnaise and finely grated cheddar cheese. It won't half fill you up if you eat it too quickly.

Pancake 2: spinach and feta
Another simple one. Sauteed spinach with crumbled feta. Popeye would be proud.

Pancake 3: bacon and spinach
The flashier cousin of the spinach and feta (because I bought too much spinach). You chop up your bacon into little bits and fry it in a little butter. You crush a garlic clove and add this to the bacon, followed by the spinach. You stir it over the heat until the spinach is good and wilted. It is ridiculously flavourful (and not only good on pancakes - it goes well over pasta with a smidge of double cream and a bit of feta added).

This was followed by sweet pancakes with syrup, lemon juice, chocolate spread and a general feeling of contentment.

 

Not sure how to make a pancake?

• Take some flour, eggs and milk, all whisked together in proportions that depend on how thick you want your pancake batter to be. More flour means it will be thicker. More milk means it will be thinner. The eggs are to give it a bit of elasticity and structure.
• Melt a bit of butter in a frying pan and then put enough batter in the pan to cover the bottom of the pan. 
• When the batter has gone solid, flip it in the air (or more cautiously with a spatula) and then cook the other side for about a minute. 

That's all there is to it. Try adding ground cinnamon to batter for sweet pancakes - you won't regret it.

Looking the gift horse in the mouth

I won't chatter a lot about the horse meat palaver that has been going on. It's been done to death and anyway I've never been massively squeamish about that sort of thing - I figure that if I'm going to eat one sort of quadrupedal, hoofed mammal, I can't get on my high horse (ahem) about the ethics of eating another. I'm also pretty sure that turkey has been sold to me labeled as chicken in the past, so I'm not greatly surprised. All the same, it does make you wonder about how interested British supermarkets are in the origin of meat and the level of humanity shown towards the animals being farmed...

Oddly, something that has made me think a bit more about the ethics behind carnivorousness is the revelation to me by a colleague that there is such a thing as a meat printer.

I was vaguely aware and impressed by an invention a while back that could be used for re-growing body parts for people who have lost them through injury. It seemed pretty cool and futuristic.

Apparently another potential use for 3D printing is the production of meat. That is, using the chemical bits and pieces that make up animals' flesh to print out, layer by layer, slabs of edible meat.  It would be unfeasibly expensive for most people at the present time, but the fact is that it is possible (in theory) to print meat.

Now, I have no idea (as someone who has never had a problem with eating meat) why I found this idea so unsettling.

I can see the benefits - land previously used for farming freed up for green things and, of course, removing the need to slaughter animals. Also, I'm told synthetic meat could be made lean which would be good news for cholesterol levels. 

But doesn't it get you thinking about whether, for example, a vegetarian would really want to eat this i-meat-ation (sorry)? Do all vegetarians object only to the killing of animals, or does it go deeper into the idea of what meat really is? Printed or slaughtered, it's still meat.

As an aside, it might be interesting to see whether the carbon footprint of printing meat is a lot lower than farming, especially if it does convert a lot of vegetarians to omnivores, thereby increasing demand.

Either way, the effect of all of this reflection is that my meat intake has gone down pretty drastically over the past couple of weeks, which is probably no bad thing even if it is completely illogical.