EATS SHOOTS AND LEAVES

Aubergine bacon

My attempt to stay well-informed with world politics is at odds with my attempt to stay sane these days. It’s increasingly necessary to distract my head from translating Trump’s policies and brain farts.

I console myself with spectacularly weird recipes, such as this plant-powered bacon. The more arcane the recipe, the longer I spend away from US politics. It’s kind of like hacking into my own synapses, and writing in a new antiviral code to stop my adrenal glands from imploding. I highly recommend it.

Back to plant-powered bacon. Yes. Meat-free rashers. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy meat. But I find myself wondering whether future generations will look back and yak at the idea of supermarkets selling solid lumps of animal flesh. If you arrived on Earth today and saw how we dismembered other living creatures, then sold them in plastic boxes, you’d think that we were greasy psychopaths. (Some of us are. See first paragraph).

But for now, the mass manufacturing of meat limbs seems perfectly acceptable. Strange, eh? (Come to think of it, we’d probably find our obsession with Wow Brows and golf equally disquieting).

If society’s relationship with factory meat seems disturbing, could we start buying less of it? Give sales a massive wedgie? I’d love to see footfall directed back into our local butchers, where it mindfully and respectfully belongs.

We’d also be doing our wallet, our health and our environment a great service. Look, I’m pretty caffeinated right now, and this aubergine bacon is making me disproportionately emotional. Try it.