I CAN BELIEVE IT'S NOT BUTTER, DAY 4: TOOTHPASTE AND CORNED BEEF

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 the perfect accompaniment for something that strictly speaking isn't a food at all. That's 'perfect' as in 'perfect storm', by the way - and the rumblings I've had from my innards after this experiment are ample evidence of the remorseful accuracy of that description. Anyway, on with the post mortem.

TODAY'S SPECIAL

You know when you get that feeling of imminent dread? Like before an exam, or a horrible meeting at work? That.

As an added un-bonus, today one of my slices of bread was the crust so this was going to take even more chewing than usual and thus linger in my mouth more. That said, I reckoned the toothpaste was going to be a sod to spread so the extra turgidness of a crust may be no bad thing - after all, you usually eject a tiny blob onto a brush and have it turn to foam in your gob. Smearing it relatively thickly on a dry hunk of loaf with no saliva to lubricate things isn't exactly what it was designed for (and the prospect was bad enough as it is - I wasn't flobbing on my bread even if it would make it slide about more easily).

But in the end, it turned out not to be anywhere near the slice-ripping cement I was expecting. Truth is, it spread better than Nutella does normally! Observe:

Just to add insult to injury, with the yellow food colouring in it looked a lot like mustard - and corned beef and mustard would probably be delicious. But I don't think it's much of a spoiler if I say this: this was not delicious.

But now, of course, the bit you've all come for. How did it taste? Well, surprise (not)! It was fucking terrible.

To be honest, it's one of the worst things I've ever eaten in the history of this blog. Horribly gritty, unpleasantly salty with a desperately unwelcome subtext of gelatinousness (like someone had made salted caramel, but used snot to provide the salt), and just too, too minty - but in that sense when they add a strong taste to something medical to stop you immediately retching it back up again. It was so awful, as soon as I had my first bite my mind stopped working properly and the only thought I could formulate was "I've done a bad wrong in my mouth". And by my second bite, having forced down the first, I was done - I had to spit it out or risk redecorating the worktops.

Obviously it's going to be hard to give you a frame of reference, but if you can imagine finding a packet of out-of-date spearmint rennies that have washed up out of the turd-filled North Sea onto the beach in lovely* Jaywick, and you subsequently shove the whole packet into your mouth, sand and all, and wash it down with a big mouthful of dirty spume? There you go.

*not lovely

With that sort of review, clearly it's not going to be setting the chart on fire so let's see where it slots in.

Obviously you can't have a negative taste, so I've given it the lowest score possible: -0. What? What do you mean that's not a number? Who died and made you Carol Vorderman, eh?

This is going to be a hard one to top. But for some reason (rampant stupidity, mostly), I'm going to try!

NEXT TIME: MILKYBAR DESSERT AND TUNA