'99s'
Before being too old/too dead to do so, Mick Jagger and David Bowie once sang how summer was here and therefore the time was apparently right for dancing in the street. Which is plainly idiotic - if summer is here, it's hot and therefore the last thing you want to be doing is physical activity outside. Granted, "summer's here and the time is right for gentle exercise (if well hydrated) in an air-conditioned gymnasium" is a bit less catchy, but then I'm not the one flapping about outside sweating profusely just because 2 middle-aged rockers doing a Motown cover gave me some questionable advice about suitable al fresco activities to do in warm weather.
Anyway, instead of hastening the onset of heatstroke, another option of something to do when summer is here is cool off with a lovely cold ice cream. But wait! Ice cream also melts in the sun, and then goes all dribbly and sticky and is a disaster. Now, I'm aware that some people quite like ice cream when it goes a bit runny, but these people are this: utterly wronged up fibbers. And to prove it, next time they claim to like runny ice cream do this: instead of a delicious Feast or a Maxibon* serve them a great big cup of warm, sickly, flavoured double cream. When they inevitably turn it down (assuming they're not a cat) be sure to shout "Hypocrite!" at them as you chase them off of your premises under threat of violence while hurling the rapidly curdling goop at them. It's the only way they'll learn the error of their sloppy, messy ways. After all the clue is in the name - it's ICE cream, not lukewarm cream or tepid cream, FFS.
So what can you eat on a hot day that gives you the psychological sense of eating an ice cream but won't go runny? Well read on, as we've got you covered. But not literally - I'm not suggesting the solution is eating a tarpaulin.
*The official holiday ice cream. Yes I know you can get it in the UK now, but it's still about 1/2 the size of a 'proper' European one and also shut up.
This weeks delectable digestibles will require requisition of the following collectable comestibles:
4 ice cream cones (if you can't find empty ones in the shop, and assuming you're not overly bothered about the likelihood of causing enough brain freeze to trigger a stroke, you could always eat a lot of cornettos and save the cone bits)
A scotch egg
Some hummus
50% of a pepperami (preferably 50% via a vertical cut to leave you with 2 short sausages of regular girth rather than a horizontal slice where you'd end up with a pair of thin, flaccid semicylinders)
Some celery
Some coleslaw
Some mashed potato
A sausage
Some ketchup
1 or more tortilla chips
A mini Yorkshire pudding
Pretty self explanatory really - each cone has a filling and a 'flake' for the full-on 99 effect (as opposed to the full-on 69 effect, which you can probably find out about from considerably more questionable websites than this one should you wish to). I went with the combos below, but you could always try different flakes with different fillings. Or not, because to do that I'd have to assume you're as daft as me and that's a fairly big ask.
This week, all our entries will be assessed on 3 things: authentic 99-ness, 'keep cool' factor and lickability. All the important criteria Mr Softy himself probably insists on checking in the recipe labs in his ice castle at the north pole, ably assisted by all the other famous ice cream-related personalities such as Slush Puppie, Mr Frosty, the 3 hippy kids off of the Lyons Maid logo and...er...Magnum P.I.
Now before anyone asks, no this wasn't a scotch creme egg - this time I left the scotching to Mr Sainsbury, and for some reason he likes to use regular eggs. Which is probably just as well as I suspect I'd have had a hard time breaching a chocolate egg with a pepperami (I used half of one by the way as a whole one was too long and just looked like a meat aerial). Still, looks the part though so a solid 8/10 for 99-ness. It was also quite cool, given I'd kept the scotch egg in the fridge, so another good mark there of 7/10 (not a top score, as of course it needs to take into account you could serve scotch eggs warm).
Lickability though? Yeah, not so good. Grinding away at breadcrumbs isn't exactly easy on the mandibles, and pepperamis are remarkably hard (and also: unpleasant) so on the eating side it was chomping out big chunks or not at all. See?
It's only a 3/10 for the sensation of having to clean a brick wall with your tongue, giving us a respectable overall score of 20/30. Almost there, but fell at the final tastebud-rasping hurdle.
Admittedly the 99 here is more of a wafer than a flake, so only 5/10 for that. I had intended to use one of those tube-shaped tortilla type crisps they have nowadays, but the local shop didn't have any as they're obviously too fancy for us non-city types (it's a wonder we even get crisps as opposed to dirty sacks of raw turnips really). Still, it has a certain retro charm and looks a bit like an ice cream you might have paid 5p for from a newsagents in 1979. It was also cold, so a good performance there at 7/10, and lickable as well, so another 7/10.
Where it did fall down is that you don't usually eat hummus 'nude', and it's usually a dip. That meant I ended up eating most of a bag of tortilla chips to get through just 1 cones-worth of hummus, and by doing that I made myself so thirsty I was hotter than when I started. So a penalty score of -5 gives this one a feeble 14/30. Must try harder.
Now this one is a bit of an enigma. It looked fairly the part, so 7/10 there. It was also cold, so 7/10 for that too. And also relatively lickable, if a bit lumpy, but still a respectable 6/10 there. However, there were a couple of small problems:
1. Celery, being a tasteless, nasty, stringy, fibrous pipe of nebulous vegetable wetness, is obviously horrible.
2. Coleslaw has 1 purpose and 1 purpose only, and that's to take along to barbecues hosted by people you don't like as a token gesture/edible insult.
In light of these indisputable facts and the subsequent application of a lot of penalty points, I'm afraid it's an entirely unsolid 2/30 for this one. Unless you're a guinea pig, as mine thought the celery was brilliant. They didn't touch the coleslaw though, which shows you how horrible it is as even rodents have the sense not to go near it (and they regularly eat their own shit).
Clearly this week I've saved the best until last, both literally AND literally again in that this is the last one and it's the one I ate last as well. 2 days later than the others in fact, as the coleslaw one made me feel a bit sick.
Obviously I've embellished this one with the addition of a Yorkshire pudding 'ruff', but even so it clearly looks the part so 8/10 there. It's also excellently lickable so another 8/10 there. Which brings us to coldness. Granted, it isn't cold, but then they do say that drinking a hot cup of tea will cool you down as it'll make you sweat, so working on that same logic (and also: I make the rules up anyway, so who cares?) I give this a 9/10 for coolness for a record-breaking total of 25/30! As an added bonus I didn't get any sauce up my nose from this one either, which is nice. It's bad enough having hayfever as it is without finding out it's also triggered by smearing your sinuses in ketchup.
So what have we learned? Well it turns out you can't beat the classic combinations even when you ram them in a cone. Though unless you've got heatproof gloves on and a wipe-clean floor, I'd probably skip the gravy.
Anyway, instead of hastening the onset of heatstroke, another option of something to do when summer is here is cool off with a lovely cold ice cream. But wait! Ice cream also melts in the sun, and then goes all dribbly and sticky and is a disaster. Now, I'm aware that some people quite like ice cream when it goes a bit runny, but these people are this: utterly wronged up fibbers. And to prove it, next time they claim to like runny ice cream do this: instead of a delicious Feast or a Maxibon* serve them a great big cup of warm, sickly, flavoured double cream. When they inevitably turn it down (assuming they're not a cat) be sure to shout "Hypocrite!" at them as you chase them off of your premises under threat of violence while hurling the rapidly curdling goop at them. It's the only way they'll learn the error of their sloppy, messy ways. After all the clue is in the name - it's ICE cream, not lukewarm cream or tepid cream, FFS.
So what can you eat on a hot day that gives you the psychological sense of eating an ice cream but won't go runny? Well read on, as we've got you covered. But not literally - I'm not suggesting the solution is eating a tarpaulin.
*The official holiday ice cream. Yes I know you can get it in the UK now, but it's still about 1/2 the size of a 'proper' European one and also shut up.
Ingredients:
This weeks delectable digestibles will require requisition of the following collectable comestibles:
A scotch egg
Some hummus
50% of a pepperami (preferably 50% via a vertical cut to leave you with 2 short sausages of regular girth rather than a horizontal slice where you'd end up with a pair of thin, flaccid semicylinders)
Some celery
Some coleslaw
Some mashed potato
A sausage
Some ketchup
1 or more tortilla chips
A mini Yorkshire pudding
Method:
Pretty self explanatory really - each cone has a filling and a 'flake' for the full-on 99 effect (as opposed to the full-on 69 effect, which you can probably find out about from considerably more questionable websites than this one should you wish to). I went with the combos below, but you could always try different flakes with different fillings. Or not, because to do that I'd have to assume you're as daft as me and that's a fairly big ask.
The results:
This week, all our entries will be assessed on 3 things: authentic 99-ness, 'keep cool' factor and lickability. All the important criteria Mr Softy himself probably insists on checking in the recipe labs in his ice castle at the north pole, ably assisted by all the other famous ice cream-related personalities such as Slush Puppie, Mr Frosty, the 3 hippy kids off of the Lyons Maid logo and...er...Magnum P.I.
Scotch egg & pepperami cone
 |
| Stop me and buy one! Or better yet, just stop me. |
Now before anyone asks, no this wasn't a scotch creme egg - this time I left the scotching to Mr Sainsbury, and for some reason he likes to use regular eggs. Which is probably just as well as I suspect I'd have had a hard time breaching a chocolate egg with a pepperami (I used half of one by the way as a whole one was too long and just looked like a meat aerial). Still, looks the part though so a solid 8/10 for 99-ness. It was also quite cool, given I'd kept the scotch egg in the fridge, so another good mark there of 7/10 (not a top score, as of course it needs to take into account you could serve scotch eggs warm).
Lickability though? Yeah, not so good. Grinding away at breadcrumbs isn't exactly easy on the mandibles, and pepperamis are remarkably hard (and also: unpleasant) so on the eating side it was chomping out big chunks or not at all. See?
 |
| What you can't see from this image is that while taking this big bite I managed to get tomato sauce a genuinely surprising distance up my left nostril. So much so when I happened to sneeze about an hour later and dislodged some more I thought I was having a nosebleed. |
It's only a 3/10 for the sensation of having to clean a brick wall with your tongue, giving us a respectable overall score of 20/30. Almost there, but fell at the final tastebud-rasping hurdle.
Hummus & tortilla chip cone
 |
| It almost looks like it could be peach flavour real ice cream. Or I suppose freshly mixed plaster, which to be fair is a lot less appealing. |
Admittedly the 99 here is more of a wafer than a flake, so only 5/10 for that. I had intended to use one of those tube-shaped tortilla type crisps they have nowadays, but the local shop didn't have any as they're obviously too fancy for us non-city types (it's a wonder we even get crisps as opposed to dirty sacks of raw turnips really). Still, it has a certain retro charm and looks a bit like an ice cream you might have paid 5p for from a newsagents in 1979. It was also cold, so a good performance there at 7/10, and lickable as well, so another 7/10.
Where it did fall down is that you don't usually eat hummus 'nude', and it's usually a dip. That meant I ended up eating most of a bag of tortilla chips to get through just 1 cones-worth of hummus, and by doing that I made myself so thirsty I was hotter than when I started. So a penalty score of -5 gives this one a feeble 14/30. Must try harder.
Coleslaw & celery cone
 |
| Interestingly*, this is the only one I photographed with the 'flake' facing to the left. *Not really interestingly at all. Sorry. |
Now this one is a bit of an enigma. It looked fairly the part, so 7/10 there. It was also cold, so 7/10 for that too. And also relatively lickable, if a bit lumpy, but still a respectable 6/10 there. However, there were a couple of small problems:
1. Celery, being a tasteless, nasty, stringy, fibrous pipe of nebulous vegetable wetness, is obviously horrible.
2. Coleslaw has 1 purpose and 1 purpose only, and that's to take along to barbecues hosted by people you don't like as a token gesture/edible insult.
In light of these indisputable facts and the subsequent application of a lot of penalty points, I'm afraid it's an entirely unsolid 2/30 for this one. Unless you're a guinea pig, as mine thought the celery was brilliant. They didn't touch the coleslaw though, which shows you how horrible it is as even rodents have the sense not to go near it (and they regularly eat their own shit).
Sausage & mash cone
 |
| Straight out of the pages of The Beano. |
Clearly this week I've saved the best until last, both literally AND literally again in that this is the last one and it's the one I ate last as well. 2 days later than the others in fact, as the coleslaw one made me feel a bit sick.
Obviously I've embellished this one with the addition of a Yorkshire pudding 'ruff', but even so it clearly looks the part so 8/10 there. It's also excellently lickable so another 8/10 there. Which brings us to coldness. Granted, it isn't cold, but then they do say that drinking a hot cup of tea will cool you down as it'll make you sweat, so working on that same logic (and also: I make the rules up anyway, so who cares?) I give this a 9/10 for coolness for a record-breaking total of 25/30! As an added bonus I didn't get any sauce up my nose from this one either, which is nice. It's bad enough having hayfever as it is without finding out it's also triggered by smearing your sinuses in ketchup.
So what have we learned? Well it turns out you can't beat the classic combinations even when you ram them in a cone. Though unless you've got heatproof gloves on and a wipe-clean floor, I'd probably skip the gravy.
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