A Poet's Last Meal

In an attempt to stir some appetite into my gin soaked stomach and to satisfy the morbid urge which permenantly resides in me, I am going to compile a list of foods I could never live without and which would certainly be on my last meal wish list should I ever find myself on death row.

1. Welsh Fry Up

An obvious first choice for me as my life would be unlivable without this fantastic meal. Scientific fact right there. But the bacon MUST be crispy and not undercooked so that the rashers look like pale straps of leather and NEVER under any circumstances 'cooked' in a microwave. Thats just committing a terrible culinery sin. Not to mention wasting perfectly good swine. Eggs must be done 'sunny side up' too as our American chums call it. None of this frying on both sides like I have witnessed in some cafes. Why do it? I want my yolk yellow and runny not resembling a burnt offering. Nice premium pork and apple sausages of course. And a few black pudding pieces and a slice of fried bread to complete the job. Never add hash browns because contrary to what some believe, hash browns DO NOT go with a Welsh Fry Up. Ever.


'Thats enough for me love'

2. Cawl

A Welsh dish and strong contender to be our national food. It contains lamb or mutton (with the fat trimmed off the broth during cooking), beef, pork or bacon. Vegetables used also vary, though leeks are often included, as are potatoes and carrots along with celery and onion and parsnip or turnip.
'Cawl cennin' on the other hand is a leek cawl that is made without meat but using meat stock. Cheese is a delicious addition. Cawl is best made by grandmothers and old aunts as they have the right skill required to make the sacred stew. There is truly an art to cooking it. Get it wrong (as young 'uns usually do) and you end up with a watery bowl of soup. That is not cawl. Cook it correctly using the old traditional way and you have a broth fit for God Himself.

3. Roast Dinner

Sundays were the highlight of the week for me (food wise) when I was growing up. We would go to my grandmothers house for Sunday dinner and boy the beautiful aroma would hit you even when walking up the garden path! It could be roast chicken, beef or pork with mashed potatoes, roast potatoes and the offending veg like swede, parsnip, carrots and sprouts. (I tended to eat the vegetables first in order to get them out of the way quickly.)
Pork was my favourite. One of the reasons was because my grandmother made great pork crackling/rind. Im not sure why but Christmas dinners were never the same as these dinners and of course all a festive dinner is is a Sunday roast on steroids. Maybe thats the answer, too big.

4. Roast Duck With Mushrooms

Get this dish from a Chinese restraunt and its a cracking eat. The giant mushrooms compliment the fleshy, juicy pieces of duck perfectly. And never go the chips route with this meal, always egg fried rice. Putting chips on the plate makes it 'feel' wrong because all the food is chunky. Big pieces of duck and mushroom with rice go much better.

5. Fish & Chips

The great British seaside favourite! You cannot go wrong with fish and chips when done well. Nice golden, crispy batter which melts off the fish to reveal white flakes of cod or hake. (And indeed a lot of other fish too.) If the chip shop gets the chips right and they are not the soggy type offered usually at funfairs, then all the better. I am certain I can smell vinegar even as I type this! Ah yes, vinegar is ESSENTIAL to this meal.
I went through a time of ignoring fish in chippy's, opting instead for pie and chips. What a fool I was! Cod is far superior and healthier too. (In terms of fish meat and the beef in pies not the batter and pastry.) Happy to report that my ignorant palate is now cured and I am in love with fish and chips these days.
But be warned! The shoddier places can make this fine dish a mushy, horrible mess where the batter is soft and the chips are swimming in grease so always choose a chip shop that don't have dead flies on the window sill or slabs of battered fish which have been left in the heated part of the counter for what looks like the best part of a week. (Every town has one of these chippys.)
My personal recommendation is Park Road chip shop in Tenby. I can guarantee you the BEST fish and chips here. Honestly they are divine.

6. Lamb Moussaka

This is a relatively new meal for me having only discovered it 2 years ago but as soon as I tried it I absolutely loved it. Different countries have their versions of moussaka but its the Greek type which sirens my tongue to the dinner table. The dish includes layers of meat (lamb is my preferrence) and aubergine topped with a white sauce. Also thrown in are courgetes, part fried potatoes andsauteed mushrooms which is all then baked to make a mouth watering feast. Delish!

7. Cheese On Toast

An old favourite of mine since boyhood days, a timeless classic that I have never (could never) get bored of. And as simple as boiling a kettle. Toast a slice of bread on one side, turn over and put sliced cheese on top and grill until the cheese has melted and the edges of the toast are...well toasted. Ive tried a few different types of cheese but mature cheddar seems to work best. For added flavour you can also put a dash of Worcester sauce over the melted cheese.

'four slices ta!'

8. Lamb Vindaloo

Can you tell im a big lamb lover yet? (And im Welsh too, ooer!) And this is another newbie for me since I only tried one at the beginning of this year. Amazing stuff! Its famous for its ability to scald the linings of your gob off and do severe posterior damage when on the exit route, but to be honest thats one of the reasons I enjoy it so much. I love extremes. The lamb is tender, the sauce and chili tingling with every bite. This is what curry should be all about, not those lightweight pretenders.
It would also be hilarious to order one of these as a final meal before execution as the clean up crew and autopsy lad would have an 'interesting' time.

9. Welsh Cakes

The only sweet thing on my list and it has to be the beautiful Welsh cake. In Welsh they have many names like Picau Maen, Picau Bach, Teisen Radell or Cacen Gri, depending on which part of Wales you are in. (Picau Maen is the commonest here in West Wales.) They are one of the few cakes that, in my personal opinion, go well with a cup of tea. (Glengetti of course!)

10. Noodles In A Scotch Egg

This is one that you won't find anywhere else. Its a concotion that I myself came up with a long time ago. (Roughly 200 years. Or feels like.) I was rummaging in the fridge during a rare break from drinking and upon noticing nothing more enticing than a scotch egg I grabbed it from the shelf. Now being a man of LARGE appetites (both drink and food) one puny scotch egg just wasn't going to cut it. So I headed to the cupboard and the first thing I clapped my famished eyes on was a Pot Noodle. (Chicken and mushroom flavour for the record.)
The idea hit me in an instant; pull the egg from the....er scotch and fill it with freshly boiled noodles! Don't waste the egg of course, just pop it in your mouth like a yolky gobstopper. And believe me, it tastes great! You only need to cut a small hole in the breadcrumby scotch shell, just enough to get the egg out and then simply tip in the noodles.

N.B. ive not tried any other flavour Pot Noodles so don't know if the beef or curry flavours would work.

A Man In A Witches Hat

The pope is visiting Great Britain this week. Should I be happy? Should I be falling over myself to touch his hem like tone deaf idiots did with The Beatles in the 1960's? No I should (and will) not. The man has so much evil under his collar that its a wonder he is not crippled. Not him personally of course but the Catholic church as a whole.
I find the whole organised religion thing quite sour, and where there are organisations like these there will always be trouble. What shocks (frightens too) me more is that these papal visits draw crowds in by the hundreds, if not thousands. Granted they have pockets of protestors but there are more yelling as if a successful rock band has just hit town.
Funny thing human beings. A species that, while technologically advanced from apes and hippopotamusses, are really very backward in most other ways.

Words On Fire

Two words to send me to the valium cabinet - Political and Correctness. Put them together and they have me running to the hills, shotguns in both paws and looking for targets. Does anyone really get upset over descriptions that 'don't fit right'? If so there are some seriously insecure people wandering around.
Pull yer socks up you feeble minded and soft centered people! To think we are not 'allowed' to call tramps tramps or a drain a manhole is actually insulting. Remember the gollywog debacle? Hundreds of hairy women (it was probably them) decided that the name 'gollywog' was offensive to black people and thus not to be used. What happened? Black people admitted it was ridiculous and much hilarity ensued. The supposedly offended party wanted NOTHING to do with it.
Where do these people come from? Do they sit around knitting yoghurt all day while trying to decide what other words are offensive to people? We can't even sing nursery rhymes anymore because these wallies have said that lines like 'ba ba BLACK sheep' might be derogatory to black people. Yes this nonsense is what Britain has come down to. Pen pushers with degrees in sociology (probably) puffing up their wimpy chests and demanding we dumb down to everyone. Nothing can be said anymore before checking up that every word is acceptable to everyone.
Well im sorry (actually im NOT) but I for one will not stand for it. Get your silly little heads from out of your lentil spewing backsides you liberal horrors, a tramp is a f**king TRAMP and my GOLLYWOGS are gearing up to kick your petty suggestions straight into touch.
Its actually insulting to the minorities they speak up for but of course these cloth eared fools will never understand this.

Only Stone Lieth Here

Allow me to say before I start that I do not believe death to the End, quite the opposite in fact. I believe there is a rootin' tootin' howler of a party when one crosses the veil into the Afterlife, a place where I can personally thank Coleridge for his wonderful poetry and ask Freddie Mercury what he was doing in Queen. I really do believe in that stuff regardless of what my fellow poets and writers have written so it may not come as a suprise to read what im going to say next.
Graveyards. Why do people visit them? Is it because they are the place which holds a loved ones bones? Or is it because in this ever increasingly busy world, a cemetery is one of the few places left one can find any semblence of peace?
Allow me to set my stall out fully here. Two years ago my mother passed away at an early age. Naturally I was devastated but since she crossed over to those platinum pastures I can count on two hands how many times I have visited her grave. Heartless? Hardly, I weep for dying deer in the middle of the road, it is simply because I know (really know) that she is not in her grave. Sure a shell of what was once my mother lays there but her spirit is now enjoying a very different plateau. She is with me every day so why would I want to visit a slab of marble? That makes no sense to me and in fact looking at cold stone only serves to make the mourner even more miserable (if that were possible) because nothing echoes sadness better than stone.

Mister Ed Burger and Lassie Curry

By now you will realise dear reader that I am more carnivore than omnivore and today im willing to push the boat (or cleaver in this case) out further and suggest adding horse and dog meat to my already bulging at the seams diet. And why not? I know we have a close relationship with these animals through work (farms, police, etc) and entertainment (My Little Pony, Lassie, etc) but would it be so wrong to dine on them also? Afterall meat is meat and some countries do partake of these meats so its not entirely taboo.
Different places have different attitudes of course; for instance in Ecuador guinea pigs are eaten much like chicken is here, whereas we British keep them as pets but I wouldn't turn my greedy nose up at a guinea pig casserole. In fact it sounds delicious. But going back to horse and dog, is it so wrong to make curry out of doberman or shire horse? There are certainly plenty of them and I would feel more comfortable snacking on horse than say alligator.
I know that dogs and man have been living together, helping each other, for more than 30,000 years. Some studies say its actually closer to 100,000 years. But so have chickens. And cows. Ditto pigs. Oh and sheep. And living with an animal for close to 100,000 years? This is probably why I am so utterly sick of the creatures and do not find my Labrador Lasagne idea the least bit offensive.
Look im already snacking on the rest of the natural living world, I might as well add more variety to the menu. Cats don't taste too bad as it happens, similar to rabbit but more 'livery'. Bit of onion and thyme would sort it. Horse meat is okay, enjoyed the meat in burgers that ive tried but that was smothered in sauce. Another meat I kinda ruined with sauce (tobasco) was snake and I regret that.
I don't believe there is anything I wouldn't at least try. (Perhaps bat soup or buttered mice.) And im keeping good company with another animal lover here too.
What gives some countries the right to try and stop other countries from eating what they want? YOU might not like the sound of Alsatian, egg and chips buy THEY do. I find it downright bad manners. They are not savages just because what they eat offends your precious 'morals' (or whatever it is that gives you the urge to interfere.)
Iys quite simple ~ eat a pig you might as well chow down on ANYTHING else.