Proof you can blog about anything...

Suffering from the usual mid-week bloggers block this evening, I was inspired to see my Mother in the kitchen wrestling with an trapezoidal chunk of steel whilst attempting to prepare Dad's pack-up for tomorrow. Then the thought hit me - what the hell is corned beef anyway?

I'll happily confess that I love it and have been eating the stuff ever since I was a kid (well, not consistently, but you know what I mean) and not once have I ever bothered to stop and wonder exactly what corned beef consists of. Is it a bovine equivalent of corn fed chicken? How exactly do you treat beef with corn? How do they get it to turn the same colour as your legs do when you sit in front of the coal fire for too long?

Just in case you were interested (ok, not likely), I've discovered this evening that it refers to cured beef; originally rubbed with pellets of salt (alledgedly the approximate size of corn kernels) in order to preserve it. These days, they choose to use brine rather than dry salt, so effectively, what you are buying is a tin of pickled beef. Hmm, suddenly not so appetizing eh?

Then of course there is the pre-war tin design that they still insist on merchandising the stuff in. How many times have you got home from the supermarket to find the key has fallen off the bottom of the tin? I am famous for hoarding rubbish, but would never dream of keeping a spare key "just in case". Worst still when you've got the key, just got the little band started and it snaps. Now how the hell do you get into it now? Having said that, even with the fully functioning container (which you always seem to have to pierce at one end in order to release the contents), once emptied it becomes the sort of weapon that any self respecting ninja would be proud of. The last DTI stats I could find at short notice were from 1994 when there were a staggering 9216 injuries caused by people opening corned beef tins. Assuming we spend 8 hours per day either sleeping or in another non-corned-beef-related activity, that's one accident every 38 minutes. Apparently, there are a few companies selling ring-pull cans now, but why not all of them?

My main fondness for corned beef is that it always reminds me of an amusing incident during my shelf filling days as a youth in our local Presto supermarket. Busy topping up some display or other, I was stopped by an elderly lady who asked whether we sold corned beef. With my most customer-focused head on, I left what I was doing and accompanied her to the tinned meat section where we had a fine selection on display. "Oh no", she said, "I can't eat any of that tinned rubbish - I like to buy mine fresh from the Deli counter..."