Veran's odd approach to chicken (2)

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

23 August

For the record (though somehow we are already in summer, following the last Futile Bulletin):

* They are chicken nuggets - devotees can doubtless explain what they have (or lack) that distinguishes them from 'dippers' (and the like)

* Strictly as a layman, and never having considered the question before, how a disc-shaped item can be a 'nugget' now escapes me, but perhaps it is too late to challenge this convention

* I have looked at a packet: below the stated 23 appears 'APPROX.' - which prevents me complaining, because, when I opened it, there were 28

* If it had been 53, maybe I'd have more of an argument about surface-area, and whether it would mean a disproportionate amount more (or less) coating

* At any rate, all of this aside, the packet is sold by mass - its contents are 450g, however many or few of these alleged nuggets there are

* And, quite frankly, the only thing of which they taste is the coating!

* Unless I should take some delight in the visual appearance of the chicken (in a sandwich between one side and the other), the only sensation (they make no noise, and let's pass over the cooking smell) is of something that is hot and can be chewed, coupled with the crisp[i]ness of the outside

* Perhaps those devotees can tell me that this is all bound up in the usual expectations of the word 'nuggets', so more fool me...


PS The packet that the nuggets came in* not only shows that they can be beautifully served by tipping them into a deep white ceramic bowl (cunningly accompanied, in a matching ramekin, by what only looks like a portion of strawberry mousse caked in that quick-setting gel so beloved of those, such as my mother, who used to render bought sponge flans fruit laden with something highly processed from a tin), but assure me that the largely bland product has been 'made with 100% chicken breast'.

Damn, could have sworn it was (a) turkey!


* At around 1mm in thickness (designed, doubtless, to keep in that gorgeous chicken flavour that I so signally failed to detect - or, probably, to stop the 23 items cascading all over Veran's freezers so often), the packets have a much higher specification than the free shopping bags (which are so keen to biodegrade - and earn green credibility - that they have started before you come to use them), but then these terms 'supply side' and 'demand side' do have a meaning.

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here