A Discourse On Toast Muffins

A brief post for the sake of my nerves.

Judy sat down with her Slimming World magazine a few minutes ago and thumbed through it as I mixed some pancakes with the joyful air of a man who has just had the all clear on his stool sample.

‘They have a fantastic recipe in here for a poached egg on a muffin,’ said Jude. ‘Only, instead of a muffin, they’ve cleverly cut a piece of toast so it looks like a muffin.’

‘In which case, it’s not a muffin,’ I replied. ‘That’s a recipe is for poached egg on toast.’

‘No, it’s poached egg on a muffin,’ said my dear deluded wife. She was clearly in no mood to argue the point -- I could tell because the veins were standing out on her forehead -- and I was left to silently mix my batter, otherwise seething with an unexpressed rage towards toast ‘muffins’.

Which is why I’ve come here to vent.

My problem is that I can’t accept these random redefinitions of the things around us. You cannot cut a piece of bread into the shape of a muffin and then say it’s a muffin. It’s a piece of toast with the edges trimmed off. Confectionery companies try this trick of redefining products more than anybody and, unless you're diabetic, you probably fall for it. Take, for instance, Cadbury’s Creme Eggs. They are repulsive balls of cheap chocolate packed with sugar but I understand that some people like eating them. They are usually sold and eaten at Easter. So much so that Cadbury clearly believe that they can market the brand name all the year round. And this is why you can now buy a Cadbury’s Creme Egg bar.

But it begs the question: but if it’s a bar, why is it called an egg? You see my point? You might even argue that a chocolate egg is not technically an egg since nothing is likely to come from it except tooth decay and large hips. But if you do, at least, accept the premise that something shaped like an egg can be called an 'egg', it still doesn’t make any sense that chocolate shaped into a bar can be called a ‘Cadbury’s Creme Egg bar’. They've now even gone a stage further and released the Creme Egg Twisted. (How you twist an egg, I have no idea but when I hear the name, I think of that most dreadful medical condition, feared by schoolboys everywhere: 'twisted testicles'. How you twist a testicle, I also don't know. But I I've always lived in the fear that it might happen to me. However, I digress...)

I know you probably think that your dear beloved Richard has finally lost it. You might even be sitting there, considering writing to the authorities to ask that my stools be resampled. However, I think you’ll find that I’m merely unnaturally sane in this crazy world.

Right, I’m now going back to my batter. I’m going to make myself a pancake hat, which I’m going to wear until Judy sees sense.