Happy Easter

Hi everyone,

I took a bit of a break from blogging for Easter. I hope you all had a lovely time and holidays.

Just to recap, I spent most of the days still working at the lab. I was in the pretty deserted lab on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, trying to desperately get as many results as possible. I enjoyed the sun by feeding ducks in the park at lunchtime on Friday, which was very relaxing and fun.

Over the past weekend, I ate in McDonalds more time than I had in the previous three years (or more). I went with friends on Friday night and as we needed food at 11pm at night and most restaurants turned us away, we ended up in McDonalds. I would have preferred almost anything else, but a friend wanted McDonalds.

I tried their new Chicken wrap, and a medium portion of fries. The chicken wrap was passable, if containing virtually no chicken (two small pieces of breadcrumbed batter with a hint of mystery meat in the middle), but the fries were inedibly salty. I wondered if it was oversalted to try and encourage you to purchase their insanely large soft drinks. However, as I won a free Big Mac in their promotion, I returned the next day at dinner time to sample a Big Mac.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's first article in his book "Hugh Fearlessly Eats it All" is a description of his attempts to recreate the classic Big Mac. I thought his anti-McDonalds bias was coming to the fore, with descriptions like "the burgers had no flavour of beef: it was as if they did a deal with Bovril to buy the meat after all the flavour had been removed". However, I couldn't actually believe the food was as bad as it was. The burgers did indeed taste nothing like beef, just something with the texture of meat, but no flavour. The cheese and sauce are slimy and flavourless. The burgers were tiny, and the amount of meat was tiny. The salad was limp and lifeless.

Basically I think McDonalds can't be described as a restaurant, just a toilet that happens to serve "food".

Compared to my jaunt down to London with my brother and sister today (I took today off as it was a bank holiday) where we went to Rico Rodrigo. It was an all you could eat Brazilian buffet where they brought round meat to your table. It was very nice, except everything was a bit too salty. It was good fun though, and mum and dad rang halfway through lunch from holiday, so we all had a chance to chat to them.

A lovely easter, hope you all had a good one!

AcidCat

PS. Delay your easter egg purchases till the day after Easter Sunday... all the eggs are half price!