They started early this year.

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The Daily Mail are once again surprised and horrified to find Lidl selling reindeer steaks – as they were surprised last year and the year before. Goldfish have far better memories than Mail reporters, as do most of their commenters.

Once again, a bunch of animaloons have decided it’s bandwagon time.

However, animal welfare groups have accused the company of making a mockery of the Christmas season by putting Rudolph on the menu.

Animaloons are now objecting to a fictional cartoon reindeer being eaten at a festival that actually has nothing to do with Christianity and nothing to do with reindeer either – added to which, any link between the birth of Christ, or even the Pagan gods, and a reindeer will stretch the meaning of ‘tenuous’ to breaking point. They genuinely expect to be taken seriously.

I object to this. Lidl have not ruined Christmas. I did that with ‘A Christmas Contract’. The reviews prove it. According to the reviews, I ruined it a bit more with ‘The Sweet Man’ and more again with ‘Cold Turkey for Christmas’. This Christmas I should put all those stories into one volume and send it to the Mail. The shockwave of outrage should produce a tsunami that will swamp Brussels, with any luck. Lidl and their reindeer steaks? Pah. They aren’t even trying. No mention of that five-pointed star, not a peep about the effect of the smoking/drinking ban on Santa’s down time, no toxic candies handed out with a smile, no elves coming back thirty years later with an invoice for goods ordered and supplied (whoops, that’s for this year’s Christmas-wrecking outing).

Just some meat in a bag. And that causes offence? I bet it doesn’t offend turkeys. They’ll be all for it. This is one Lidl Christmas the turkeys will all vote for. A steak with a halved fried tomato on top.

I note they also say they have caviar at £1.49 a pot. It must be a very small pot. I’ve never tried it but at that price for a taster I’d give it a go. The whole thing is the most effective annual Lidl advert ever. I’ll visit tomorrow, I’m in the mood for some more Glen Orchy anyway and a whole cooked lobster at six quid sounds good too.

As for the animaloons, this is what they think –

‘All that seemingly matters to this cut-price supermarket is delivering sick novelty and the pursuit of profit this Christmastime.’

Have they not been in Tesco this past month or so? Or any other supermarket? Or any other shop of any kind, brick or online, at any time ever? This ‘pursuit of profit’ they decry as evil is the only reason any shops exist at all. Including all the activist ‘wear this anti-profit logo and pay us for it’ shops. If there was no ‘pursuit of profit’ nobody would ever have anything for sale.

As for ‘sick’, Ruduplh is a cartoon and Santa’s reindeer were invented by a poet. They do not fly and pull big sleighs at faster than light speed. Sorry, animaloons, Santa isn’t real and neither are his magic reindeer. We can’t buy them in Lidl because they do not exist.

All branches of Righteousness have now fully entered the Absurdity Zone and all are likely to collapse at once. That will require a lot of popcorn when it happens. It’s going to be a riveting thing to watch.

Animaloons, the only advice I can give you now is – send not to ask for whom the bells jingle…

 

110 thoughts on “They started early this year.”

        • Caviar is actually okay. But their Lump Fish Eggs are nearly as good, and very cheap.
          But I sometimes think of the days of yore when these people battled Sturgeon from dangerous waters. That was the real thing. I sometimes think that I missed out on real survival. Although I would be dead by now if I had. Nowadays we just play at it.

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      • My local Lidl’s Reindeer steak was sold out today, so I asked staff if they will restock them. I was told that Lidl sure will although staff did not know exactly when. (I’ll try again in a week or so). So there is still a good chance for Christmas dinner consisting of reindeer steak!!!

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  2. Jesus Christ. [Whoops, sorry} What the hell do they think happens to Reindeers? I mean, who buys Reindeer Milk?
    Sadly, my Lidl in France doesn’t seem to get their share. Very strange for a nation that eats horses. And I haven’t got anything against that either. Although they have gone a bit prissy about that. The Burgers just don’t taste the same anymore.
    Now there’s a thought. Minced Reindeer, anyone?

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      • I have to admit to teling drones on their way to France that the French for ‘best steak in the house’ is steak cheval. I tell them how to order it for themselves and their wife/girfriend/husband/boyfriend – ‘Steak cheval, plaisir, pour moi et pour mon sange’.

        Aren’t I just the helpful one?

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  3. I think reindeer are lovely but haven’t yet tasted one and don’t have an animaloon view of those who might. As elena asks, what do the Daily Mule think happens to reindeer? Maybe they think the Sami run a home for retired reindeer so they can sit around not watching daytime television until they shuffle off their mortal coil and get a decent funeral . . .

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  4. Do Eskimos and such eat Reindeer? I really don’t know. But they certainly wear their skins. And as for the little swines waiting for Father Christmas, just don’t tell them what they are eating until they can at least read. Or dump the packet in the trash before they get home.
    Lying to them about Father Christmas is okay, so what’s another lie going to do to them?

    “Sorry, Kiddos, There ain’t any Father Christmas. Oh,and by the way, you ate Rudolf, several times.”

    On the other hand they could always dump the carcasses on a bonfire. That’ll help third world starvation, I don’t think.

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    • When kids are eating pork, it’s best to explain it gently.

      You know that film ‘Babe’, when it starts out in the piggery and Babe’s mum is taken away? Well… guess where she went? The takeaway! Why do you think it’s called that?

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      • You are a very wrong person, LI, however truthful.

        I don’t eat baby lambs or piglets or calves, but in the autumn I can convince myself that I am saving these animals from the hardship and misery of a freezing winter.

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        • So what do you do with them? Just keep them hanging around. Or perhaps you are forced to eat them. Well, that’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Although I do have to say that baby lambs are fast on their way to becoming Mutton by Winter. But then Mutton is good.

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          • I let them enjoy the summer.
            Apart from which on the few occasions I have eaten such things they strike me as tasteless compared to the older ones.

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            • Good. I am very pleased to hear this. And you are quite right. The older the better.
              Me? In a perfect world I would not eat meat, but I am horrifically allergic to carbohydrates so without meat I would probably starve to death. If I didn’t die of boredom first.

              On a new note. I do so love baby Fox Cubs. They are such fun if you ever get to see them playing. They deserve a good Summer. After that, fair game for hunting.

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              • In a perfect world I would not eat meat

                I’m just not hard-hearted enough to be veggie. Yes, I kill and eat individual animals, but to eradicate entire species just to have a place to grow corn or beans or rice? Habitat destruction. That’s what leads to species extinction far more often than overhunting.

                But far be it from me to force my views on others. If they can look into their hearts and justify vegetarianism, so be it.

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                • I don’t have the mentality or the ability to be Vegetarian. Although I have absolutely nothing against them. But how do these people think we get milk, not to mention the by products. Sheesh, can you imagine a chip sandwich without butter?
                  Yer, yer, I know I shouldn’t eat chip sandwiches, but give me a break.

                  And where was God when he made animals fit to eat?

                  I just have an idea that it might be better for us if we didn’t. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know. But we were born with an appendix which is now obsolete. Why was that do you think?

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                  • Ach, come ON! Chip butties, with lashings of New Zealand butter, and salt by the handfull. With a LARGE pipe of baccy and a pint of rum to make it complete.

                    REAL healthy stuff! My Grandfathers and Father(s…?) lived until WELL into their 80s, or even 90s on such a diet!

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                    • Yer, but I am allergic to carbohydrates. They make me feel ill. So now you see what a terrible hard time I go through.

                      To have or not to have? Whether or not it is more sensible to deprive myself of my one great love, and by refusing stay feeling half decent, or to have a chip sandwich and finish up feeling ill, with a head worse than a hangover.
                      But please don’t misunderstand me, I have nothing against hangovers. I just like to deserve them. And a chip sandwich doesn’t quite fit the bill.
                      And anyway, no one believes me. Swollen face and looking like shit.
                      “Had a bad night last night, did you?” “Yep, I ate a chip sandwich.” “Oh really. Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.”
                      So I really have to be desperate for a chip sandwich to do this to myself.

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                    • Started a new question thread here, as the origional was gettin a bit thin.

                      XX elenamitchell on November 2, 2013 at 4:30 am said:

                      Yer, but I am allergic to carbohydrates. They make me feel ill. So now you see what a terrible hard time I go through. XX

                      O.K. Not come accross that before.

                      So how DO you take in Carbs?

                      You obviously DO, or you would be dead.

                      How does rice, sugar, pasta, etc effect you?

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    • XX elenamitchell:

      Do Eskimos and such eat Reindeer? I XX

      Depends what you know as “Eskimos”. Many different tribes live in the area you may know/call “Eskimo land.”

      Saami certainly (As I said elswehere on this thread, my Grandmother, etc were Saami). Inuit (North Canada) as well.

      My Grandmother had a “polar bear allowance”. One polar bear per year was allowed. THAT tastes quite good (DON’T eat, or even BURST the liver!! HIGHLY POISONOUS!)).

      We had walruss, Seals, Elephant seal, sea lions. All very good but extremely fatty. (Walruss/Elephant seal nose is a delicacy). Shark. (YES! They DO swim there. Just that they do not EAT in cold waters.) Whale (Fatty again).

      Dolphin….which was an error. Caught in the fishing nets, and it was either eat it, or get fined by the fishing ministry.

      And any amount of various sorts of sea birds. (Puffin eggs, Seagull eggs are much better than hens eggs!)

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      • Furor, I remember vaguely that the Inuit were simply forbidden to eat most of what is their stable diet due to “new” protection laws and that the inuit fought this law. I never heard of the outcome.

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        • The Saami regained the righzt, and I think it was forced on the Scandivnavian Governments by something like the U.N native tribes department, or whatever they call themselves.

          So I should imagine they won….. Half.

          Thjere are heavy quotas.

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      • The Chinese tried to scare me by serving pig stomach lining. I told them what was in haggis and then ate a raw garlic clove and they went all pale. They served dog. it wasn’t bad, actually.

        Although when they produced a small one roasted with its little legs in the air I admit to a shudder.

        I still ate it though.

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  5. The Saami herd reindeer up near the Arctic Circle. You can buy many reindeer products in Norway and Sweden. The sausages are good.
    Oh, and Santa does exist, his sleigh is pulled by reindeer and it does fly round the globe delivering presents. I shall have NORAD’s Santa Tracker running at the appropriate time this year, too.
    http://www.noradsanta.org/

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  6. Screw Christmas, it’s Halloween! Spent the last two months working hard to traumatize the snot gobbling little b*stards. For every kid reduced to tears, I’m gonna cut a notch on Satans staff! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

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  7. [offtopic] Enzyme tabs just came.
    *holds bottle at arms length and squints*
    FYI the ingredients are (pro tab):
    Betaine HCI 100mg
    Amylase 20mg
    Cellulase 5mg
    Lactase 40mg
    Lipase 20mg
    Protease (Really? There is a chemical called ‘Pro tease’?!?) 40mg

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    • Just an update : My first attempt to ‘ferment’ with enzymes and a slo-cooker has not gone according to plan. I sprayed each leaf with the 2 tab/500mg solution , let them soak it up for about an hour and then put the slo-cooker on it’s lowest setting, put the lid on, lit blue touch paper and retired to nurse the stinking cold my Granddaughter so kindly passed on to me.

      After about 7 hours the leaves were baked solid,falling to dust, starting to burn. They had gone a darker brown and were giving off dark brown steam. I’m guessing the low setting on my Slo-cooker is still far too high. As Dougie spoke of taking some leaves out after 24 hours and DRYING them, I decided to try pouring in a litre/4 tab solution so they would cook in the fluid. Now, some 6 hours later, I have a Slo-cooker full of what is basically Brown Cavendish (you can make cavendish in a Slo-cooker as well as in a steamer I’m informed).

      Pretty sure that the enzymes didn’t get much of a chance to work due to the cooker baking them and unless Doug-The-Barber had a Slo-cooker with a much lower setting than mine, he may have mistaken ‘cavendish’ for ‘fermented’. Or maybe he incubated the leaves, as opposed to cooking them, by putting them in a container in the slo-cooker and surrounded it with water ….bain marie like. Dunno.

      I’m going to turn the slo-cooker off now and leave the leaves sitting until the morning, then I’ll try drying them etc …see what they come out like.

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      • Lipase breaks down fat, protease breaks down protein. The last one must be important – the ammonia smell of curing baccy can only come from protein breakdown.

        The Barber definitely said 50C – so he must have had a control that gave him a temperature. My pills have not arrived yet but when they do I think I’ll try it on top of the hot water tank first. You are right to add more water, enzymes are dead when they’re dry. Not too much though, you’ll soak out all the nicotine.

        Also I must order more leaves. I’ve nearly smoked the last batch and they’re much better than my own. Obviously I have not pinned down curing yet.

        Barber smokes a pipe so maybe Cavendish is good from his view. A thread of it in a ciggie is good too – none will be wasted.

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  8. I’m far too busy to worry about Rudolph. I’m currently injecting Lidl’s chocolate bars with liquid laxative – I do love Trick or Treat.

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  9. I went to a pub in the next village for lunch yesterday & thoroughly enjoyed a local venison burger with chips & beer or two. Delicious.

    Chatting to the landlady, she told me of an experience with a family who had been in earlier in the week. Apparently a small girl child had asked; “What’s venison?”. Miranda, trying to be helpful replied; “Bambi”.

    Result = child reduced to tears, parents all indignant . . . nobody gave the brat a slap or told her to eat what’s in front of her.

    There is so much PC bolleaux & nannydom out there that we’re all doomed I tell you! Doomed! Still, my bit of Bambi tasted just fine.

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    • The parents’ logicval response would have been ‘It’s not Bambi, Bambi is a feckin’ cartoon you dozy shite’ but that might only happen in Glasgow. Or further North where Bambi is also known as ‘roadkill’

      What’s next? Father bringing home a paper-wrapped meal of Nemo and chips?

      Oh, wait, where’s the nearest fish-eating child? I have a riddle . Can you find Nemo?

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  10. I blame Walt Disney.

    Though in my humble opinion, anyone who tells a child that they are eating a cute, cuddley cartoon animal instead of explaining that they are eating meat from herd animals that live in the far North is looking to agitate, not educate.

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    • Children should go fishing or snaring, catch, kill and gut their own meals. If they want to go veggie after that, fine, but if they wnt to eat meat they must know where it comes from.

      I like meat. It means something else has to die. It does not mean something else has to suffer its whole life so I won’t knowingly buy battery chickens or their eggs. I do not ‘play’ fish, I use a bastard-sized reel to haul them right in and they go from ‘free’ to ‘lunch’ in seconds.

      Meat does not equal cruelty but it does equal death, blood and guts. If the child can’t face that then it’s best they know early on.

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      • When my daughter named her pig (rural kids raise animals), she named it ‘Porkchop’. At supper one November night (you slaughter after first frost) she asked, “Is this Porkchop?”. Answered in the affirmative, she responded, “He always was a good pig.”

        It is now deer season where I live. I’ll take three this year (on average we eat just over two deer per year, so one year I kill two, the next year I kill three). I’m a bit particular about venison, so I process my own. I want the critter out of his hide and the meat on ice within an hour, so I do it myself.

        I hope, when I die, I go as quick as those deer. One instant in time they’re going about their business, the next instant in time 180 grains of copper-jacketed lead traveling at over 2200 feet per second explodes their heart. I’d take that death, since someday I’ll have to die anyway.

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        • During my time at Edinburgh uni, I lived, and worked on a farm just outside Bathgate, which had pigs.

          I was “pig man”.

          One of the Ferkels we got (A batch of 200 from market,) followed me around like a pet dog.

          Made a GREAT Jule dinner.

          Tell that to people in the middle of Berlin, and they think you are either making a sick joke, or are Hel incarnate….. as they pop their pork steak into their mouth.

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          • I once traumatised a student. We had to kill pigs to get their guts out for microbiological things. an expert in injecting instant death did the killing part then I had to cut off the head to be absolutely certain it was an ex-pig.

            Holding up the head and singing ‘I… aint got no bo..dy’ was when I took it beyond the pale, apparently.

            Whe she came to, I removed the pig’s kidneys without instruments. When she came to again, I pointed out that merely changing the type of starch had a profound effect on the structure and integrity of the colon. She managed tpo stay upright that time.

            I avoid wheat.

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        • This is good, but not too many people can actually shoot to kill a rabbit or anything else on the run. I have only ever seen one such person. A gypsy boy of about thirteen. And it was stunning for me. Such art was absolutely perfect. I will remember that boy until the day that I die. All in the flash of a moment. Seared on my brain.
          And No, I don’t expect all hunters to be that good. But actually, they should try to be.

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          • This is good, but not too many people can actually shoot to kill a rabbit or anything else on the run.

            Really? I am surprised to hear so. I would imagine that any shotgunner able to take a bird from the sky would find taking a rabbit on the run quite simple.

            That’s been my experience, anyway. Your mileage may vary, as the car adverts say over here.

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          • Rabbits will first of all freeze if they hear something. They’ll sit upright and listen. If you don’t get them at that point, they’ll be undergound in a the next second.

            Birds in the air are different, they aren’t going underground and you can fire at them all you like – there is nothing important behind them that you could accidentally hit.

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            • Prey animals run for their lives, but they have to know in which direction to run. Many species will startle, then momentarily freeze in place to determine the direction of the potentially-threatening noise, then flee.

              You can often freeze-frame a running deer with a coach’s whistle. Not for long, but it’ll hesitate in attempt to identify the potential threat.

              Do not think yourself terribly superior. If you observe the behavior of humans you’ll see the same thing.

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  11. XX any link between ……. or even the Pagan gods, and a reindeer will stretch the meaning of ‘tenuous’ to breaking point.XX

    Hello, Miss!

    Ullr, the winter God, and therefore the Jule God, has a chariot pulled by Reindeer.

    And, as my Great Grandmother was a reindeer herder, it was ALWAYS on the menu at Jule along with Boar.

    GREAT stuff!

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  12. Reindeer steaks at Lidl? I shall hurry there before it’s all gone! Thanks letting me know!! And one more turkey shall live at Christmas…. (?)

    I have eaten reindeer before, it’s very nice, indeed! Lidl ruining Christmas? Quite the opposite! I take it these reindeer have been living in a herd and were in fields grazing away before being brought in and slaughtered. How many cows have this kind of life?

    The Daily Mail writers might want to do a reality check alongside the 30-ish year old parents who suffocate their offspring with and in cotton wool. This offspring is supposed to grow up and become the workforce paying for their parent’s pension. (30-ish year old parents start to worry now….)

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        • I’m a duck man myself. There’s Mallards frequent the stream next to my allotment, if only we lived in a sensible country where I could take a gun with me when I go to dig the parsnips, I could have a free Christmas dinner.

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            • Well I live in a very urbanised area, not far from open countryside but it’s water and therefore duck free, not much opportunity for gathering any roadkill in fact as the few roads out of the town are very busy and I’d join said roadkill if I tried to retrieve the dead foxes that constitute most of it. The allotment is a little bit of rus in urbe with one of the few open streams in the area, no driveable road near it though. Apparently a couple of blokes did have permission to shoot the woodpigeons there some years ago but I wouildn’t fancy anyone’s chances of either getting the council to agree to that now or of avoiding the attentions of plod if they started banging away at the local avians.

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            • I’ve thought about it but dismissed the thought as I’m not up to a longbow physically – back problems – and I should imagine if I went stalking about the allotment with any sort of bow some poor soul would have a fainting fit and run crying to the council or the cops. Anyway I’d probably miss, wonky eyes too.

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              • You’d have questioned me if you’d seen the way I used the thing in what might loosely be termed my playing days, more like turning up and quickly making an arse of myself days actually. If you wanted to see a real comedy turn you’d pay me to attempt to brain a Mallard on the allotment stream, if I didn’t drown myself I would fully expect the local adders to lunch on my ankles, it’s a bit wild in there. The ducks would have long flown before I got anywhere near them.

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                • Ducks are not as stupid as pigeons. Pigeons assume anyone feeding them is their friend. Ducks seem to have grasped the concept of ‘bait’.

                  Pity. Ducks taste a lot better than the flying rats.

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    • Ach, but come ON! The Finns?

      Saami/”Laps” (Which is, to us, like saying Nigger(!)) and Finns are basically different language groups of the same people.

      (YES! I KNOW there are differences, but I said BASICALLY.)

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  15. I bought a Battery Reared Rabbit to make a pie for my Christmas Dinner. I bought this from Lidl because they are very cheap. Not the same as wild rabbit, but you can’t get those for love nor money around here. The natives keep those for themselves.
    I have in the past had a bit of Road Kill, although I would never kill them myself. Just not Cricket in my book. Get out there and shoot the little feckers.
    But then I am a hunter and there are rules by which we should abide when it comes to wild things.

    Checkout Lidl Rabbit, or anything else for that matter. Lidl is really good.

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    • Battery reared rabbits? Do Duracell know about this?

      Seriously, I had no idea there were battery reared rabbits. The ones I caught were snared, the ones I used to buy in Cardiff market I had to pick the buckshot out of.

      Some friends used to hunt them with powerful airguns. That was better. The .22 pellet was much easier to find and you knew there was only one to look for.

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  16. Has anyone read Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow? I wasn’t really interested in the detective story. Just in what happened to The Inuits, and the feeling for snow. And what the modern day world has done to these people.
    Perhaps an inadequacy that the world has tried to save them from, rather than to help them be who they are.
    Every society has inadequates. We just go the wrong way about helping them. And The Inuit were never our business in the first place. They were always perfectly capable of dealing with their own misfits.

    Sorry. I can’t imagine what came over me. But put your own house in order first.

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  17. Furor Teutonicus on November 2, 2013 at 7:40 am said:

    Started a new question thread here, as the origional was gettin a bit thin.

    XX elenamitchell on November 2, 2013 at 4:30 am said:

    Yer, but I am allergic to carbohydrates. They make me feel ill. So now you see what a terrible hard time I go through. XX

    O.K. Not come accross that before.

    So how DO you take in Carbs?

    You obviously DO, or you would be dead.

    How does rice, sugar, pasta, etc effect you?

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    • Just a thought here – might not be ‘carbs’ as such, but associated proteins. There’s no such thing as pure carbs unless you use purified starch and sugar.

      Wheat especially has some potentially allergenic proteins associated with it. Me, if I eat too much wheat, I pebbledash the pan. Small amounts are okay but an overload means trouble. Pizza and garlic bread, guaranteed inverse firework. With bangs and whizzing noises and a lot of groaning. There’s no fire, but it feels like there is.

      It’s a pity I really like pizza and garlic bread. Fortunately the effects are not long-lasting.

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  18. All this talk of hunting/shooting/fishing malarkey reminds me to watch my “Out Of Town” set with the late, great Jack Hargreaves, he imparts such knowledge of country living which greenies (add any political party here) and others could not even begin to countenance or fathom.

    That’s the nearest I will get to the country way of life (as was), being a city-boy myself!

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