Nascent Vomit
Culled from my food review on www.rascwriters.org.uk, but hey, it kicks things off.
“Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Popping Corn: Honey Butter” is what it says on the packet. “Hot and Fresh Microwave popcorn - No hydrogenated Fat”. I happened upon it whilst browsing the aisles of my local Sainsbury’s “corner shop”. This shop is probably quite similar to the small but well stocked branch of Sainsbury’s that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall must have in his basement, assisting him with his “self sufficient” menus. Ahem.
I anxiously scanned the list of ingredients on the back of the packet, which is something that I’m very wont to do since I started trying to lose weight. I remembered the Madonna quote about what she used to eat when she was poor: “Popcorn’s cheap and it fills you up”
Imagine my horror then, to read down the ingredients and see “Flavourings: Contains Fish, Milk”.
A popcorn flavoured with fish.
Fish?
I decided that I had to find out what it tasted like, so I took it to the checkout.
“This popcorn contains fish. It shouldn’t be allowed”
“Well. You don’t have to buy it”.
Yes, it was the Surly Bastard of a manager. No sense of humour.
“Well, I think it’s terrible, Just terrible”, I said, shaking my head with mock disdain.
We took the popcorn home and put it in the microwave, as instructed. We gathered round to find out just how bad it was.
It was pretty bad. Aside from “Orville Redenbacher’s® Gourmet Popping Corn (Maize)” and fish, the only other ingredients were vegetable oil, salt, and various E-numbers. Oh, and it was sweetened entirely with sucralose.. No honey, and definitely no butter. We felt cheated.
Opinions were divided. The paper bag in which you pop the corn gave off an extremely artificial smell after cooking. Graeme pronounced it “tasty”. Me and Bel were somewhat more dubious. Bel hardly ate any at all, she was too afraid of the fish content. She really, really, doesn’t like fish. I found it to be perfectly edible, but also completely uninspiring, with a nasty chemical aftertaste.
Luckily for us, we went to the pictures a few days later, and bought some popcorn with genuine butter and sugar. Mmmmmm.
Verdict: it was cheap, but it didn’t fill us up. Graeme even wanted to eat more. I decided to give it a miss.