Butcher breaks out of own freezer using black pudding

A butcher channelled the power of Ecky-Thump to escape being locked in his freezer when he saved his skin by using black pudding. Seventy-year-old Chris McCabe, of Totnes, Devon, England, found himself stuck when the wind blew the door of his outdoor freezer shut. He then discovered that the internal emergency release button …

[Anonymous Coward]

"Black pudding saved my live [bacon]"

Come on Editor, it's not Friday yet.

[Mark 85]

It's Thursday. " Close enough for government work" (as the saying goes).

[TRT]

Alternative approach...

Use some English mustard to melt the ice.

[EddieD]

Black pudding

One of those things you don't realise are so good or useful until you really need it.

[Pen-y-gors]

Ee, bah, eck etc

Makes you proud to be British.

Of course, no evidence in the article about origin of said life-saver. Might have been Lancashire, but excellent black pudding comes from many parts of the British Isles.

Foreign rubbish like Blutwurst obviously wouldn't have worked.

(Ooooh, thinking of yummy offal, only two weeks to haggis-blowout day!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

I applaud your dedication to local cuisine, but do not mock the smoked Grützwurst mit Rosinen with a side of applce sauce and mashed potatoes, that's fighting words. (Or maybe do, just shows that you'll leave more for me.) Dankeschön, bitteschön.

[Pen-y-gors]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

@AC

"do not mock the smoked Grützwurst mit Rosinen with a side of applce sauce and mashed potatoes, that's fighting words"

Sounds delicious when served hot on a plate. (with gravy?) - but I doubt whether it's up to full martial combat and battering-ram standard.

[FozzyBear]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

whether it's up to full martial combat and battering-ram standard.

Read that as Marital Combat and Battering Ram Standard. That got me thinking what kind of sex dungeon have you got ?

[Mark 85]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

That got me thinking what kind of sex dungeon have you got ?

I don't think we really want to find out... Now where's the mind bleach?

[Roo]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

"do not mock the smoked Grützwurst"

Quite frankly this Black Pudding enthusiast is salivating rather than contemplating mockery...

However I might be tempted indulge in a bit of mockery if I honestly believed I could convince someone to give up their Grutzwurst - allowing me to swoop in and scoff it before they realised their mistake. :)

[Montreal Sean]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

Anonymous coward,

Would you happen to have trouble sleeping because you keep hearing a train outside your window?

:)

[jake]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

HM Sheridan can't be real butcher. They advertise gluten free black pudding and haggis. Catering to the post-modern psychosomatic illness crowd[0] is a sure way to let standards slip.

That, and the fact that black pudding has been around a lot longer than HM Sheridan (or indeed Aberdeenshire!) kinda suggests someone's telling porkies.

[0] NOTE! I'm not poo-pooing Celiac (Coeliac) disease! I know a couple people who are affected. It's a very real, and very serious problem for them. This is a very small percentage of the general public, thankfully. The people I am talking about are the never diagnosed idiots who are convinced that gluten is evil, and the cause of all their digestive issues, because they saw it on TV ... all the while subsisting primarily on fast so-called "food".

[Roo]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

"They advertise gluten free black pudding and haggis. Catering to the post-modern psychosomatic illness crowd[0] is a sure way to let standards slip."

Sir, I think you are being somewhat churlish. Another way of looking at it is that the Butcher is making the joys of Black Pudding & Haggis available to all. :)

[Oh Homer]

Re: "psychosomatic illness"

I.e. hypochondria. Or actually, given the transmission vector of this particular disorder, it'd be more appropriate to diagnose it as mass hysteria.

As for gluten-free haggis and black pudding, neither recipe is supposed to contain wheat anyway, so the fact that explicitly "gluten-free" versions are available is a bit comical.

The reason for the gluten-ified bastardisation of this or any other type of sausage is usually the unwarranted addition of rusk, a cheap filler material used to "bump" any sort of stuffing mix, solely for the purpose of ripping off customers.

This was such a huge problem in the past, most typically with pork links sausages, that the government actually had to intervene and force sausage producers to meet or exceed certain minimum proportions of the primary ingredient before they could legally sell it as "meat".

As far as I can tell, the last bastion of legacy "mostly rusk not-really-sausages" in the UK exists only in Northern Ireland, which sells what they refer to as "white pudding", a dish that bears no resemblance whatsoever to its namesake on the mainland, but is really just a poor-man's "pork" sausage. They manage to get away with this simply because they refer to it neither as pork nor sausage, although that's really what it is, albeit in its absolute minimal form.

However, bumping processed "meat" in general with rusk (and many other things - primarily water) is sadly very common, albeit heavily regulated to ensure that consumers receive something that is mostly meat.

I believe that Stornoway Black Pudding is widely recognised as the best in the UK, and contains no wheat at all as per the traditional recipe, not because the producers are pandering to hypochondriacs.

[EddieD]

Re: "psychosomatic illness"

As the son of a Lancashire lass living in Scotland the origin of the best black pudding is often the subject of intense debate.

I don't think it will ever be settled, but I'm willing to keep sampling more black pudding to see if a resolution is possible.

[David O'Rourke]

Re: "psychosomatic illness"

Actually, both delicacies traditionally contain oatmeal, and oats contain gluten.

[Pompous Git]

Re: "psychosomatic illness"

"Actually, both delicacies traditionally contain oatmeal, and oats contain gluten."

You'll need to provide a reference for that. Oatmeal is gluten-free. Oats contain avenin, a protein similar to gluten. Research shows that most people with coeliac disease can safely eat avenin.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "psychosomatic illness"

Unless they are milled somewhere that doesn't also handle wheat, barley or rye, then oats have the potential to contain gluten. This is why gluten free oats exist.

And as for hypochondria, go felch* yourself anyone who feels that there aren't real diseases that require GF diets and its all made up.

* see todays Android vuln post.

[Oh Homer]

Re: "milled somewhere that doesn't also handle wheat"

Wheat-infected oatmeal is not typical in Scotland, nor I assume in the rest of the UK. It mostly seems to be common in the US, where one very seldom finds natural, unadulterated food products, since nearly everything over there is heavily processed, genetically engineered and saturated with chemicals. I believe the most common contaminant is an abomination called HFCS - banned in the EU and elsewhere, a synthetic and sickly-sweet syrup made from genetically engineered corn, which is added to pretty much everything, including supposedly savoury dishes.

Over here I think you'd need to buy "instant oats" type products to get oatmeal that contained anything other than pure oats, and generally speaking such things are never used as ingredients for other dishes, such as haggis or black pudding. Plus no true Scotsman would ever ... etc.

[jake]

Re: "milled somewhere that doesn't also handle wheat"

"in the US, where one very seldom finds natural, unadulterated food products, since nearly everything over there is heavily processed, genetically engineered and saturated with chemicals."

BWAHAHAHAHAHH!!!!

You truly are deluded, aren't you? Ta for the laugh! Best I've had in ages.

[Pompous Git]

Re: "milled somewhere that doesn't also handle wheat"

@ jake

Oh Homer may be overstating the case, but not by much from what I'm told. My best friend was from the US and when he returned his sister prepared the family a Thanksgiving feast "from scratch". Almost everything was processed, even the potatoes. He said he couldn't wait to return to Tasmania and have a real feast at my place. The chicken came from the hen-house, the vegetables from the garden...

When the American artist Alan Gussow visited us he remarked on the rarity of food such as we served up in the US. Vermont market gardener Eliot Coleman remarked that small-scale market gardens like his are extremely rare. I frequently browse the Internet looking for recipe ideas. A very high proportion of those posted by Merkins include proprietary processed foods, even such simple things as a vinaigrette.

[David O'Rourke]

Re: "psychosomatic illness"

The Wikipedia page on gluten cites three papers that talk about the toxicity of some cultivars of oats for patients with coeliac disease. I would hope that a GF black pudding contained only suitable oats.

[Pompous Git]

Re: "psychosomatic illness"

"I would hope that a GF black pudding contained only suitable oats."

It's a bit more complicated than that.

Coeliac disease and oats: a systematic review

[Pompous Git]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

"HM Sheridan can't be real butcher. They advertise gluten free black pudding and haggis. Catering to the post-modern psychosomatic illness crowd[0] is a sure way to let standards slip."

Black pudding is a blend of onions, pork fat, oatmeal, flavourings and blood, so by definition is gluten free. For there to be gluten in black pud, there must be wheat, barley, or rye.

[Lars]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

@Pompous Git

"wheat, barley, or rye".

According to on the Wiki, "mustamakkara" black sausage what we have in Finland.

"Mustamakkara (literally black sausage) is a type of Finnish blood sausage traditionally eaten with lingonberry jam. It is nowadays available in many stores across Finland, but is held in the position of local delicacy and speciality of Tampere. Mustamakkara is at its best when bought and eaten fresh at market stalls, to which it is delivered hot in styrofoam boxes from the factories directly after baking. A typical practice of reheating the sausage is to just fry it in a pan.

Mustamakkara is known to have been eaten as early as in the 17th century and was generally cooked over a small fire, in a hot cauldron or in an oven. Mustamakkara is made by mixing pork, pig blood, crushed rye and flour, "

But as always people use what they have available, be it oatmeal, wheat, barley, or rye if they do it themselves, which they don't these days.

And then there is "Verilätty" in Finish, "Blodplättar" in Swedish, according to the Wikipedia used only also in Norway which cannot be true as it's such a quick way of using the blood.

Of course "modern" people don't like to eat blood, which in a way, is a bit silly, as you will always eat blood too if you eat meat, no matter how you kill the animal.

On blood pancakes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blodpl%C3%A4ttar

Blodplättar, or blood pancakes (veriohukainen, verilätty or verilettu in Finnish), are a dish served in Finland, Sweden and Norway made of whipped blood and other ingredients. It is similar to black pudding, but is thinner and crispier.

Blodplättar may be fried in a frying pan. The pancakes are occasionally served with pork or reindeer meat.

In Swedish, the word may also be used to refer to blood platelets."

What else, my deity how much oat porridge one had to eat as a child, and now it would probably be all for the good to day too.

[Pompous Git]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

@ Lars

I believe we were talking about black pudding, a specific blood sausage popular in Northern England, rather than blood sausage in general. I can recall a particularly fine dish I had at a restaurant in Hobart and the sausage was made with hare's blood, the dish French. My sister-in-law is Swedish, though born in Norway and yes, she incorporates ingredients in her blood sausage that would not be countenanced by black pudding aficionados.

[Arthur the cat]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

They advertise gluten free black pudding and haggis. Catering to the post-modern psychosomatic illness crowd[0] is a sure way to let standards slip.

Although the "gluten free because I'm sensitive" crowd can be intensely annoying, they have done genuine coeliacs a great favour. When I first met my wife 30+ years ago the only gluten free bakery and pasta products she could get tasted disgusting and the pasta turned into wall paper paste unless you cooked it just right. Mostly she just did without. Nowadays the "free from" aisle in the supermarket has stuff that's near enough in taste to genuine gluten containing products that I'm prepared to eat it rather than put on two pots for pasta like I used to, and she can have a decent sarnie when she feels like it.

[anthonyhegedus]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

I think there's a market for gluten-free water.

[jake]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

Don't laugh too hard. This stuff is all the rage among the "high tech" crowd in San Francisco. It sells for about $6 per 375ml bottle. In San Francisco, where almost all taps have water from Hetch Hetchy reservoir. For those who don't know, Hetch Hetchy is the only major above ground water source in the USofA that is allowed to be delivered to consumers without treatment ... it's that pure and uncontaminated. I guess there really is a sucker born every minute. Time to capitalize ...

Next year, I'm planning on selling gluten free, dairy free, non-GMO, unfiltered, organically grown xmas trees with no tree nuts. After a little quiet test marketing this last Marketing Season, I'm fairly certain the morons will snap them up at eight to ten times the cost of "regular" xmas trees ...

[Pompous Git]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

"I think there's a market for gluten-free water."

But not as big as the market for gluten. In SE Asia there are many vegetarians who eat a meat substitute called seitan. Seitan is made from gluten extracted from wheat flour.

What Is Seitan? All About the Popular "Wheat Meat"

Amusingly, my vegan nephew and his Merkin wife won't eat seitan "because it's too much like real meat". I often wonder how many vegetarians are aware that the mock chicken/beef/pork they're eating is actually gluten.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

Seitan looks remarkably like the stuff Sainsburys sells as vegetarian chicken style protein cubes. They're easy to use and they keep, and I had the pleasure of seeing my celiac boss's face when he read the packet.

[Lars]

Re: Ee, bah, eck etc

The Black is blood and used around the world from the beginning of time.

The Wiki on this mentions:

"Black pudding is also eaten along the North Sea coastal regions of Fryslan and Drente (both Netherlands), in Lower Saxony from Ostfriesland to Bremen and Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein mostly Nordfriesland, France, Slovenia, Italy, Finland, Luxembourg, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Ireland, Sweden, Estonia, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Latvia and Lithuania.[clarification needed]".

And I would add the rest of the world too without feeling like a trump.

And the butcher and his saviour (not the original?) is here;

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-42648624

PS. stay proud, I doubt you ever had a choice, most of us are similar in that respect. And the alternative is silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure other meat would have worked if he had given it a good chop.

[kryptonaut]

The blackest black pudding...

Even t'white bits were black.

[batfink]

1.5Kg?

That's some pudding.

Is that why they say "Once you've had black, you'll never go back"?

[jake]

Re: 1.5Kg?

At roughly 5" per link, and 5 links per pound, that's only 16 or 17 links. I can easily triple that with a single natural casing. With artificial casings (not in MY larder!) the sky is the limit. If you don't twist them into links, you get a single, massive sausage. Diameter depends on the casing, large or small intestine, hog, sheep or cow, how old they are, how hydrated they are, etc.

A "Tom Thumb" (sausage stuffed into a hog's appendix) is usually well over 1.5 kilos. It's not the traditional casing for black pudding, but any port in a storm ...

[Pen-y-gors]

Re: 1.5Kg?

It's a fairly standard size for a 'slicing' pudding - like what is usually served with a fry-up.

Of course there are the smaller ones for cooking whole or, in the case of Scotland, deep-frying in batter.

Aaah, happy memories, black pudding / white pudding / red pudding / haggis pudding plus chips - perfect after a night on the beer. The Scots really understand the philosophy of the chippie - I regularly used one that deep-fried the meat pies.

[Spacedinvader]

Re: 1.5Kg?

There's another way to cook a meat pie??

[Anonymous Coward]

Tastes like chicken...

So this butcher legs it out to the freezer, chop chop, then discovers there's more at steak this time! But before he can meat his fate as part of his own stock, black pudding saves his *ahem* bacon. Hot dog! I knew there was a use for that stuff.

Heh, bet he'll get some ribbing for this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Tastes like chicken...

You've overcooked it with your use of puns there - cutlet it out at once

[tony72]

Re: Tastes like chicken...

There seems to be either a pun-hater, or possibly a vegan, down-voting you guys. Whichever it is, if I find him, I'm not going to mince my words.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Tastes like chicken...

The missteak is to over ham it.

[jake]

Re: Tastes like chicken...

I suspect it's not a pun-hater or Vegan doing the downvoting. It's someone much worse. It's probably someone who doesn't know what Bootnotes is. BURN THE HERETIC!

[Pen-y-gors]

Re: Tastes like chicken...

Downvoting? Look at the downvotes on today's Brexit thread - I reckon someone's been writing a bot.

[jake]

Re: Tastes like chicken...

The Brexit thread downvoting is the usual religious idiocy in Brexit threads. No bot needed.

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

Re: Tastes like chicken...

Stop hamming it up

[Michael Thibault]

Re: Tastes like chicken...

Big John, that was just offal!

[Suricou Raven]

This is a serious problem.

The emergency release button, inside of a freezer, is disabled by prolonged exposure to freezing temperatures?

That's the type of life-threatening design flaw which should have the manufacturer fitting replacement buttons to every freezer in the field, at their own expense, before the freezer owners start a class action suit.

[Baldrickk]

Re: This is a serious problem.

They shouldn't freeze - I've had experience in a few walk-in freezers of various sizes.

If you are to get it to freeze you need excessive liquid present that can then freeze in the button - if that happens it's because of poor maintenance or spillages.

The buttons work fine in the standard humidity of the freezers

[TRT]

Re: This is a serious problem.

I suspect he let frost build up around the control which physically prevented the mechanism from moving. It would be near the door of course, and thus subject to frequent bursts of warmer, moist air. Melt, refreeze, repeat for years on end.

[Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese]

Re: This is a serious problem.

I suspect he let frost build up around the control which physically prevented the mechanism from moving. It would be near the door of course, and thus subject to frequent bursts of warmer, moist air. Melt, refreeze, repeat for years on end.

Could have been made worse by not shutting the door fully each time he was in...keeping it only slightly ajar wouldn't hurt the temperature inside too much, but would allow moist air from outside to settle around the control

[pleb]

Re: This is a serious problem.

So you are saying there could be contributory negligence? Maybe not an open and shut case then?

[Pen-y-gors]

Re: This is a serious problem.

Probably they shouldn't freeze if used properly. But for safety critical systems they shouldn't freeze. Full stop. The design should still work even if you chuck a bucket of water over them.

[jake]

Re: This is a serious problem.

If the seal on the outside of the mechanism is faulty, and the outside air is quite humid, hoar frost can build up to the point of the inner release sticking. This shouldn't happen with modern doors, but I've seen it in more elderly examples (1960s and earlier), as often found "out the back" of small, family run butchers. As noted, a good (ecky) thump will shift it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: This is a serious problem.

The walk-in I used once had a huge iron mushroom protruding 6 inches from the inside face of the door as the door latch. I felt safe.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: This is a serious problem.

You have that the wrong way round, they don't need to replace the button but supply black pudding to all the fridge owners. Problem solved.

[Michael Thibault]

Re: This is a serious problem.

"life-threatening design flaw which should have the manufacturer fitting replacement buttons to every freezer in the field, at their own expense, before the freezer owners start a class action suit."

Probably cheaper pudding some of that black stuff in each free-zer. Everyone happy. Job done.

[TRT]

Re: This is a serious problem.

I suppose a small heating element wound into the button would do the trick.

[Charles Calthrop]

pudding jokes aside for a minute..

he's on thin ice here. I can't devon fathom the consequences

[jake]

Those of you who think that black pudding is purely british ...

... should probably not order a Sundae in Korea.

That said, whenever I harvest a hog or sheep I make a fair copy of the Stornoway variant, and another version that would feel quite at home in Bury ... although I would probably horrify the locals in those places because I've been experimenting with cooking them in my smokehouse, instead of the more traditional boiling. The results are quite tasty. I'm also working on fully cured and dried versions, in the tradition of Lap Cheong. So far, the results are promising.

Sausage is gawd/ess's gift to those of us who like playing with our food.

[Palpy]

Ecky thump?

Lancastrian... I had to Goggle it on the Online.

Uncyc entry

[Len Goddard]

Re: Ecky thump?

Now you are making me feel old. I remember the Goodies episode it came from. You could tell the rank of an Ecky Thump practitioner by the size of his flat cap. The grand master was a wizened little guy with a hat almost as broad as he was tall.

[handleoclast]

Re: Ecky thump?

almost as broad as he was tall.

Almost as broad as 'e were tall.

FTFY.

[BoldMan]

Re: Ecky thump?

Goodies, goody goody yum yum

[Blofeld's Cat]

Re: Ecky thump?

See also: "The Goodies" Series 5 - "Kung Fu Kapers" (1975)

[jake]

Re: Ecky thump?

This Yank was in Yorkshire when KFK was first aired. About halfway through, the meter ran out of shillings ... My cousin, visiting for six months, still refers to that evening as the one where she fully realized she wasn't in California anymore.

[MudFever]

Re: Ecky thump?

@ed can you not get any comment from Bill Oddie?

[JLV]

I knew there was a reason why I am not vegan*

* one of many reasons anyway.

[Ken Moorhouse]

Let's hope that the button manufacturer...

...has been supplying the White House and North Korea.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Let's hope that the button manufacturer...

But that just means there'll be a slight delay before nuclear armageddon, while the President sits in the Oval Office, furiously beating his sausage.

Your idea is close, but no cigar.

[jake]

Re: Let's hope that the button manufacturer...

"no cigar"

Ouch.

Beer :-)

[vcayenne]

Wonder how this combat pudding would fare against dwarf bread?

[jake]

Strangely enough ...

... unlike dwarf bread, black pudding isn't fiction, no matter how much the heathens of the world wish it were.

[Len Goddard]

Re: Strangely enough ...

I've a local baker who I swear makes dwarf bread. I can't get the breadknife through the crust.

[Mark 85]

Re: Strangely enough ...

Try hardtack then.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardtack

[Anonymous Coward]

I was unger the impression that he ate 1.5kg of the black pudding, there by producing enough gas to blow the door open

[Anonymous Coward]

"Black pudding saved my life, without a doubt."

And now he's the spokesman for the British Black Pudding Association.

[John Brown (no body)]

Shake yer bum!

I can't beleeeeeive it! No one has linked to the ultimate destination for this story's theme tune.

Viruses and bugs get web sites and logos, but none of them get a theme tune.

Standards are falling ever faster around here. Sad!

[hatti]

Lips and aholes

Meat derivatives from each end of the animal can prove useful it seems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Lips and aholes

The only animal parts in black pudding is blood.

[Pompous Git]

Re: Lips and aholes

"The only animal parts in black pudding is blood."

Wrong! You won't find much pig fat in blood. Or intestine (sausage casing).

[Pompous Git]

Gluten sensitivity

As jake pointed out early in this thread, coeliac disease is a nasty thing to have and is fortunately rare. Not rare is digestive upset following consumption of food containing gluten; typically bread. Gluten is a protein responsible for giving bread dough elasticity and trapping the bubbles of "carbon pollution" that give leavened breads their texture.

The period of allowing the yeast to do its work in the dough is called proving. Modern breads use accelerants to reduce proving to its shortest possible duration, two hours or less. Traditional bread makers like Mrs Git allow bread dough to prove for 24 hours. A friend in the USA who makes award-winning pizzas proves his dough for 48 hours. The longer proving improves the digestibility of the baked product.

I suspect that many who think they are sensitive to gluten are reacting to crappy modern bread.

[Steve the Cynic]

Re: Gluten sensitivity

Indeed. The late Mrs Cynic used to make sourdough bread, where all the yeast in it was whatever happened to be floating by ("wild" yeast) and consequently both proving and rising were unusually slow (around a week in total), and it is normal to put a bit of this batch's dough into the mix of the next batch. It tastes sour because of relatively elevated levels of metabolic acids from the yeast.

[jake]

Re: Gluten sensitivity

"It tastes sour because of relatively elevated levels of metabolic acids from the yeast."

Sourdough sometimes tastes sour because of the activity of one variety or another of lactobacillus, which has a symbiotic relationship with the yeast. I say "sometimes" because different strains of yeast & lactobacillus produce different flavo(u)rs in the finished product.

[collinsl]

Re: Gluten sensitivity

If you think modern (or Chorleywood) process produces bad bread, look at some of the adulterants the mid-Victorians put into the bread:

Chalk (for whitening)

Alum (again for whitening) - some said this caused ricketts as it could prevent the digestive system from pulling nutrients from other foods consumed

Arsenic - by accident made it's way into some loaves. The baker claims he was adding Alum but mixed up the containers

Millers routinely put "rotten" or sour flour into the mix to sell off gone-off stocks with no one noticing

Bone meal (whitening again)

Whatever the brewers had adulterated the yeast with - beer brewing created yeast, which the bakers purchased as there was no such thing as dried yeast at that time. Brewers adulterated beer too, and that made it's way into the yeast.

Potatoes

Plaster of Paris

Sawdust

[jake]

Re: Gluten sensitivity

"Chorleywood"

Derogatively known to us kids in Yorkshire as "plaggy bread". About the only thing it was good for was catching carp and eels.

[Pompous Git]

Re: Gluten sensitivity

"About the only thing it was good for was catching carp and eels."

I find it sticks to the roof of my mouth, a rather strange place to go fishing for carp and eels I would have thought ;-)

[Reticulate]

Fridge light mystery solved.

So now we know: the light doesn't go out when the door is shut.

[jake]

Re: Fridge light mystery solved.

The light switch is next to the door in walk-in fridges, just like in most unrefrigerated rooms. In fact, many (mine included) have a switch on the inside, and on the outside ... with an indicator light on the outside to show if the interior light is on or off without opening the door.

Strangely enough, walk-in fridges are designed with (temporary) human occupation in mind. Imagine that!

[goldfish]

Wot !!! No haggis ??

I can't believe a butcher would not have a good sturdy haggis in the freezer.

One blow with that, and he'd have knocked the door off it's hinges

[anthonyhegedus]

On the other hand, if felt troubled with the freezing temperatures and pain associated with outer extremities freezing solid, he should consider himself lucky that that wouldn't have been troubling him much longer if he just lay down on the floor and waited an hour or so.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, a specific gluten free black pudding option.

I keep meaning to try a vegetarian black pudding on the same plate as a regular black pudding to see how they compare and how many people I can drive insane by the simple act. I wonder if GF is also exotic enough to add to the list...

I mean hey, more black pudding.

[Dave Lawton]

Poor Caption Picture

Gawd help the butcher if he'd had to use the black pudding in the caption picture.

The one he used (a frozen one) was straight, so he had no problem aiming at the release button.