Shopper’s ‘Hopper Shocker Just Not Proper

M@
By M@ Last edited 220 months ago
Shopper’s ‘Hopper Shocker Just Not Proper
grasshop.jpg

We saved this post until after lunch for a reason. So if you’ve yet to tuck into your sarnie, look away now.

Lynsey Saunders of Putney, or Vegetarian Lynsey as she seems to be known, had a ‘crunchy surprise’ whilst tucking into her organic spinach pasta.

I thought nothing of it, as all my food is prepared from scratch, and being a vegetarian I know there could not possibly be any nasties in my food. I presumed it must have been an uncracked peppercorn, or a bit of uncooked pasta? (Punctuation [sic], story [sicker])

Turns out her 12 years of strict vegetarianism were at an end, thanks to an unlabelled ingredient of the arthropodal kind.

A few mouthfuls later I picked up something else on my fork that at first I could not identify. I looked a little closer and to my horror it was a dead grasshopper.

Lynsey has requested some form of compensation from Waitrose, who sold the offending spinach. We’re all for consumer rights, but surely if you buy organic food, you can expect to find these occasional extras. No pesticides = lots of pests. No fertiliser = lots of cow poo. Or are we hideously misinformed? Anyhow, a Waitrose spokesperson described the grasshopper incident as ‘Just not cricket’…we like to imagine.

If you like the idea of cooking with insects (no more fighting over who gets the leg – plenty to go round), why not try some of these tasty recipes.

In (extremely tenuously) related news, Tilbury dock worker finds large snake. On ship. From Africa. Where large snakes come from. BBC decide this is somehow newsworthy. Interestingly, the python was found in the vessel’s ‘rope locker’. Rope/snake mix-up gag possibly ensued.

Last Updated 15 November 2005