Interesting, tankgeezer. Quite recently, a survey was done (I think by Britain’s Trading Standards Authority) of pizza restaurants and takeaways in the region of a North of England town/city. I cannot quite remember which - it may have been Scarborough. Since this is not a very prosperous place, pizza restaurants and takeaways are almost as common as bookies’ shops in the area. They discovered, among other things, that almost all of the restaurants and takeaways were using a “chicken” pizza topping of “mechanically-recovered meat” with quite a similar composition to that of your “Mock Chicken”. The one thing it did not contain was actual chicken. We do not have a Trading Standards Authority here in the Emerald Isle, more’s the pity. Since I read an article on this, I have not gone near a chicken pizza. Or, indeed, any pizza … Yours from Napoli, in mourning, JR.
I thought it was “Roosevelt Sausage”… :mrgreen:
Soylent Red… Hormel is probably close to selling their 8 billionth can of the stuff.
It was rabbit here, during the 1930s Depression. Sold in pairs, presumably because you can’t get a feed off one of the stringy little semi-rodents. Still sold a bit in butchers in my childhood in the 1950s, but my parents’ and grandparents’ generations generally wouldn’t buy them because of the ‘poor man’ stigma, although none of them were so poor during the Depression that they had to survive on rabbits.
Which, despite grand stories by various people of living on rabbit alone during the many years of the Depression, just ain’t possible. http://www.raising-rabbits.com/rabbit-starvation.html
Shot and occasionally trapped or snared my share of rabbits as a kid to young adult. Now, as testament to how ageing transforms one to a gentler person, I like looking at them as they bounce around my beach shack, with no desire to hurt the cute little bunnies. Although from time to time I do visualise a head shot on one of the really fat ones, then I think of the blood and flies while gutting and skinning them which confirms my aged preference for meat served up on polystyrene trays in supermarkets rather than killing my own.
Quite possibly the fat, which is very rich. And yummy, yummy, yummy when concentrated in crispy meat.
I love lamb, especially the crispy fat on roasts and chops, but it doesn’t love me. Poor consequences are proportional to fat ingested. Oddly enough, pork crackling is similar. Which is a pity as I’ve found a place on the way to the beach shack that does pork roast dinners for $14, with a miserly bit of pork crackling on it, but also sells crackling slabs about 4 inches square for $2. Gee, which one is better value to sustain me until I hit the bakery 40 minutes down the road which does the world’s best lamingtons with strawberry jam and fresh cream?
The best lamb is Greek spit roast over charcoal, on its own or in a souvlaki on pita bread warmed on a grill with olive oil then filled with tzatziki or garlic sauce, tomato, lettuce, lemon juice and herbs.
Bunch of numbnuts animal rights protesters here some years ago tried to stop a ship sailing with live sheep for Arab countries.
Genius protesters bought large quantities of pizza ham; invaded the ship; and sprinkled the pizza ham liberally over the sheep, believing that the sheep contaminated by pork would be rejected by the Muslim countries for which they were destined.
Slight problem for numbnuts. “Pizza ham” was in fact a beef product treated with various non-pork products to make it ersatz pork, much cheaper than anything containing even a trace of the real piggy stuff.
This is what happens when you don’t eat enough meat, especially pork in my preferred forms of bacon and crackling, to maintain sound brain function. 
Fats are an essential part of a well functioning brain. Aside from those owned by the majority of Politicians.(this according to my doctor) which is why I enjoy two strips of Bacon daily. Besides, any good purveyor of BBQ will tell you, the flavor is in the fat. 
I’m a relative newcomer to Spam. I never had it growing up, but was curious about it from seeing it referred to in all things WWII related and of course the Monty Python skit. :mrgreen:
But it was maybe 10 years ago I picked up a few cans on sale to use as a winter iron ration should I have been snowed in, which I never was leaving me with lots of surplus spam to eat the following spring and summer. Unless of course I just left it for next winter. But in any case I tried it several different ways, including Hunter Thompson’s infamous fried spam sandwiches he would make after finishing a new book. I finally found that I actually sort of like Spam with eggs when fried in thin slices. That salted, fatty meat-thing seems to accompany eggs pretty well for some reason so I guess that’s the main way I can tolerate it…
I bought some original recipe Spam, they call it Classic Spam, have tried it sauteed in olive oil, garlic, and a bit of ginger. If not cooked too long, it’s a bit bland, but has a good texture, reasonably juicy. Too much cook time renders it a tough, unpleasant piece of shoe leather . Diced with scrambled eggs its fine, but had a slight bitter edge in the taste. I made an effort to discover the faint nuclear glow many might expect from highly processed food like substances, but could find no trace of this mythic property. (Although my camera did act up a bit when used in proximity to the Spam without the shielding of its metal can ) :mrgreen:
Getting back to books, might I suggest “Eva Braun - Life with Hitler” by Heike B. Gortemaker ? This is a remarkably well-researched, revealing biography, going well beyond a limited account of Eva’s life. There is an increasing amount of “background”/homefront scholarship breaking into the popular history literature that is well worth reading to obtain a broader view of the context of WW2. Best regards, JR.
As far as non fiction, The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan followed by Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose. I honestly can’t think of a book of fiction that I have read on the War.
The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945, by Max Hastings