Gaz Cooks Crap

Hello! Did you have a Christmas? Excellent. The festive season is, of course, infamous for overindulgence and an inevitable temporary* weight gain. So before it's all over for another 359 days (2019 isn't a leap year - I checked), why not have one last blow out? After all it's a time for sharing, and no one said the things in question to be shared couldn't be type 2 diabetes and hypertension. *I say temporary, but personally I'm backdating now to around the turn of the millennium. Well at least the raspberries are healthy. Shame they're about to be immersed in sugar and an array of saturated fats. This year (technically next year, but I'm starting early), I've decided to lay off the obviously awful combos and double down on daftness. Which might mean fewer instances of me retching into my bin, but hopefully more things that people may actually try themselves (yeah, right) and less instances of me trying to say "that tasted awful'

If nothing else, I knew today's abomination would be enormously popular with someone. Namely, my cat Stouffer, who goes absolutely apeshit for tuna and would wolf it down even if it does have children's snack-themed pudding all over it. No word of a lie, he can actually identify the specific noise of a tuna tin ring pull from that of other tins from the other side of the house. Which is remarkable as he's managed to misidentify a sheet of A4 as a litter tray before. Shows his priorities, I suppose. Most people would probably be looking at this and feeling most put off by the tuna. Not me though, because I hate milkybars. Don't get me wrong - I've got nothing against juvenile borderline albino cowboys advertising confectionary. I just don't like white chocolate. Because let's face it, it's not chocolate, is it? It's just the fat out of chocolate mixed with some sugar and congealed into a lump - sugar lard, essentially. After all, no one would get aw

So what's the deal with beef and it having the monopoly on the 'corned' market? Think about it - have you ever seen anything else corned? Where's the corned lamb? Corned ham? Corned hippo, for the dandy Waitrose crowd in their perfumed wigs? Corned corn, for the vegetarians, even? Nowhere, that's where.  It's rubbish. It's also the only meat that comes in that sort of weird "for some reason our factory is still producing stuff you could have seen on sale in 1948" tin, apart from possibly Fray Bentos pies - and if you've ever had the misfortune to eat one of them and suffer the gastrointestinal aftermath you'll know it's no coincidence they come in the shape of a landmine. In fact, it's a wonder they don't come in a tin shaped like an atom bomb. And the least said about the fact corned beef tins have to have a lock and key to keep the meat inside from escaping, the better. Suffice to say, corned beef is very odd. Which made it

OK, so this was supposed to be toothpaste and corned beef, but it turns out I was missing one of the key ingredients - namely yellow food colouring. After a brief visit to Tesco I've now got some, so I'll be forcing that particular cavity-preventing beef-up down my maw tomorrow. As I've mentioned it though, I may as well address the inevitable question - is adding food colour cheating? Possibly a wee bit (as opposed to a bit of wee, which would be yellow anyway but I'm not putting that anywhere NEAR a sandwich), but then they put yellow food colouring in margarine as it's a sort of uninspiring grey lard-esque hue without it. On that basis, using it to yellow up a blob of toothpaste is arguably perfectly in keeping with what they do with real butter substitutes, and so fair play when trying to find an all new butter substitute for when you've run out of all old butter substitutes. And after that I never want to type the phrase 'butter substitute' again. N

First things first: how the hell do you spell hummus? Is it hummus, houmous, hoummus, houmous or something else again? I've seen so many options I reckon they should just call it 'chickpea paste'. Sure, they'll lose a few sales at first, but it'll make it a lot easier for everyone in the long run. Whoever 'they' are, that is - and indeed if 'they' even exist: admittedly I've made it sound like there's some sort of legume puree cartel, but honestly I can't really see anyone being arsed enough to get organised about it (which is probably why there's no consensus about what it's called). It's just bloody hummomomouss (whatever) after all - I mean, can you imagine serious business meetings about crushed lentil impersonator nomenclature, with graphs and all the usual corporate nonsense? What? Oh yes, horrible sandwiches. Sorry. TODAY'S SPECIAL Normally the prospect of an all-brown meal would excite me, as they're e

We've all done it. We've all thought there's some adequate level of marge left in the fridge, made some toast before checking, and then discovered in fact only the tiniest scraping remains. Then, of course you have to force down a more or less dry piece of toast out of sheer bloody mindedness. And by you, I mean me because what sort of monster leaves toast uneaten? Anyway, this weeks' fun (for you, not me) is about finding the best 'Plan B' in such circumstances, assuming that you're too lazy to go to the shops or your leg has just fallen off or something. I've lined up a delightful* array of choices for both sweet and savoury, so without even the pretence of a first ado given I did the actual making and eating hours ago, let alone a further one, let's dive in! *horrible TODAY'S SPECIAL To be honest, using 'best of raspberry' jam in the circumstances was probably overkill. 'Arse-end of raspberry' would have been just fi

The horror. The horror. I once had a great idea* for a comedy TV show called 'Hendon', where - due to an administrative error - the spirits of everyone good who died ended up in the London borough of Hendon rather than heaven. Likewise, any baddies ended up in Hull rather than hell. Aside from having thoughts of a bickering Hitler and Pol Pot running a Hull fish stall that's about as far as I got, what with not being paid to be a TV writer or anything, aside from stretching out an already tenuous concept even further by thinking you could have a halloween episode. In that one, everyone - due to another administrative error - has to celebrate 'Halesowen' on October 31st instead. Anyway, Happy Halesowen everyone! Today, I'm going to do a take on a traditional autumnal treat (i.e. crap compared to modern stuff - I mean who'd choose a toffee apple over a bag of mini novelty chocolate pumpkins?) that's something suitably disgusting AND potentially usef

Purple monster curry, eh? Well this all sounds very lewd doesn't it? But wait, come back you hopeless prude! Before you run off to rinse your eyeballs in toilet duck (or own-brand equivalent such as u-bend buzzard, sink flamingo or urinal puffin) I've not suddenly gone all 1990s lad mag - there's a reason this is called purple monster curry that has nothing to do with the sort of groin-based innuendo you'd find in one of the ill-advised modern attempts to reboot the Carry On films. You see, when I'm not actively creating washing up that leaves semi-permanent funny stains in the sink, I like playing video games. And one of the best video games of recent years, and indeed all years, is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild . For the philistines among you who don't know, in that game you can make yourself various foods to give yourself various abilities, and one such food is the monster curry, which is a rather awful shade of purple what with it containing mo