On Sunday morning I cooked pinhead oatmeal in some newly steeped chai tea, milky and sweet. I threw in some raisins, and topped our bowls with some perfectly ripe (and well-selected) pears courtesy of J's run to the store. The pinhead oats became a something like a gutsier rice pudding; spicy, hearty and soothing, with the added goodness of a stimulant. Good for a drizzly day when I want to be reading under the covers but instead have to drag myself into the studio to make work for a deadline that is closer than I like to admit. I was pretty smug about this complete-breakfast-in-a-bowl, but it immediately brought to mind a food item I had always been sickly curious about:
Yup.
I know.
This can compacts beans in tomato sauce with chopped pork, button mushrooms and egg, bacon and cereal nuggets. I bought it for the sake of a scientific experiment and made a D help me eat it while we watched six hours of period drama on BBC1.
The first thing that struck me when I opened the can was overwhelming nausea.
The little cresting sausages and mushrooms just looked too much like guts. I was expecting more visible beans.
After cooking it until it was warm, I made up some bowls. Despite having a number of elements, the can isn't chock full of different stuff. Each bowl got one mushroom, one sausage, half a pork disc and one egg/bacon/cereal nugget with a scoop of beans on top. I think one could have honestly expected a couple more mushrooms at the very least.
These are our tasting notes:
The Beans
I thought they tasted pretty normal. Beans cooked in tomato sauce don't really do it for me. I like the maple kind with pork products better, but they didn't make me gag.
D thought they tasted a little meaty and weren't the best out there.
The Chopped Pork Disk
Sort of like thick and cheap salami, this was definitely the winner in terms of flavour and texture. Too bad there was also the least amount of it in the can.
The Mushroom
Was not messed up, but was ruined by the rather rank tomato sauce that everything was brined in.
The Sausage
Perhaps one of the grossest things I have ever put in my mouth. Tasteless and almost white, but with a texture akin to very soft and moldy foam. If you pressed down on this sausage, your fingerprints would have been visible in its horrifyingly yielding surface. I spat out that one mouthful with all of the dignity of a celebrity chef consuming the food of the latest loser they are trying to convert.
D ate his quietly, but acknowledged that the texture was absolutely unacceptable in a food.
The Egg/Bacon/Cereal Nugget
I like that they say 'cereal' in the description of this nugget. It made me think of some kind of toothsome wholegrain that would be snug in there with the fluffy egg and bacon bits. Instead, this tasted like...a matzoh ball. In fact I think some people would kill for their matzoh balls to be so light. It's incomprehensible how something so very, very far away from kosher could bear such a resemblance. Once again, though, in case you were contemplating it, don't be tempted to cook your matzoh balls in rank tomato sauce.
Once everything had been tried, I ate another perfect pear to get rid of all of the icky tastes. My bowl was left mostly full. D's was empty, but after he reasoned that you could get beans and actual sausages that would taste better and last longer for not much more money, he was officially not a fan.
In summary,
Breakfast-in-a-can wins for:
- Convenience
- Ability to Make a Smiley Face while Cooking (much stronger features than one with raisins would have produced)
- Novelty
Smug Oatmeal wins for:
-Taste
- Health Benefits
- Ability to Satisfy Addictive Dependencies
- Ability to Make You Feel Smug
They came out pretty even for cost.
Please take this to heart if you are ever wandering the tinned food aisle of the local grocery store desperate for a all-inclusive meal. This can is not your friend.
Love this blog. I've laughed out loud a few times already :)
Posted by: liz | March 14, 2008 at 06:12 PM