Rare Breed Week: Happy as a pig in wotnot

For our final post in our week-long special celebrating our trip to the South of England Rare Breeds Centre (SERBC), we're going to continue our stroll through the centre's extensive grounds, through wild woodlands, open fields and well-maintained orchards.
As I mentioned before, here and there along the route, there were notices, giving information about various plants and animals, both domesticated and wild, that could be found in that area. Furthermore, there was a series of fun questions for younger children, based on pigs.

In Wednesday's post, Julie seemed to be under the impression that pigs were mute until someone had popped them into the oven and begun to roast them. Yes, we were being silly (no change there, eh?).

A little further into the woods, we found another sign, one which was concerned with how pigs protect themselves from the elements...

Damn... now I'm hungry...

Rare Breed Week: Oh, those delicious noises...

Welcome back to the South of England Rare Breeds Centre (SERBC). Today, we are going to be going for a little stroll. The farm is really rather extensive, and stretches out for a fair distance beyond the immediate environs of the buildings.

There are a number of ways you can go exploring, and one of the most fun methods is via a tractor and trailer ride

The driver is a joker, but very conscientious and kept up an enjoyable, but not patronising patter. Oh, and you don't pay anything extra for this. The same goes for the bird of prey displays.

Alternatively, you could take a leisurely stroll around the property. Or, like us, you could have a ride and THEN go walkabout. There is a choice of three routes, varying in length, although even the longest will get you round in no more than an hour, unless you stop along the way for some reason or other.

While you walk, there are information points here and there. And, for the younger ones, there are some fun quiz signs to keep an eye out for, all based on pigs, of which SERBC has a few breeds.

Piglets: much cuter than their adult counterparts.

As we can be childish now and then, me and Julie decided to look for these quiz posts and answer them as 'well' as we could. This consisted of me reading the question out in a mock-posh BBC accent, and Julie replying as only she knows how...

Bwahahahahaha!
Nice one, love!

Vegetarian Pork II - revenge of the pigs

WAY back when, in the dawn of our existence, before I started adding fun images to the Gems, Julie came up with a question about vegetarian pork. Little did I know that my darling wife was channelling a truth that was even stranger than fiction...

Ladies and gentlemen, I have the dubious honour of presenting to you actual vegetarian pork - but chicken flavour!

Courtesy of Lamyong, a company that specialises in vegetarian foods, this has to be the most confused delicacy in the world...

According to the product page, these are the ingredients:

Water, vegetable oil, textured Soy Protein (27%), whey protein, wheat flour, salt, soy sauce, vegetarian seasonings 

Contains soybeans, gluten and dairy. May contain traces of nuts and seeds.

Now, what gets me is that I showed the allergy warning to Julie, and she reckoned that they must come from the pigs' bones. Apart from the possible nuts, that is...

I can't believe it's not pork (tm)

Now, given that there are various products for people who like to get their protein, such as Tofu (bleh), Quorn (yum) and - whisper it - Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP - or low grade soy mince to you and me), and even some pretend meat products such as vegetarian bacon (tastes ok, but feels like cardboard), this doesn't actually look that much of a malapropism.

However, consider that this one arrived in the middle of a conversation about roast dinners and specifically big lumps of meat that you carve into slices and have lovely bits of crackling coating them. Only then does it become something of a show-stopper.
Apparently, what Julie had meant was this, "Can you get vegetarian pigs?"
This, as you can guess, is a whole new thing.

There then followed a brief lesson - with diagrams - on the whole carnivore/herbivore/omnivore thing. Interrupted with frequent questions asking whether such-and-such an animal was carni/herbi/omnivore. I think she's got it straight now, but I'm still waiting for the follow-up cock-up...