Indoctrinated Beans : The Not So Perfect English Breakfast

Indoctrinated Beans : The Not So Perfect English Breakfast

I thought I would share a recent experience with you that troubled me greatly. It was of a culinary nature involving an early morning breakfast order in a London cafe.

It was a little roadside cafe near Victoria Bus Station that I entered and where I ordered a 'Full English' with coffee to set me up for the day.

Not for nothing is it said that breakfast is 'fuel not fat' and a fine meaty fry-up can stoke the engine ready for the busy London streets. After a few sips of coffee, my meal duly arrived from the friendly, smiling waitress along with the condiments and a freshly opened bottle of ketchup.

But sadly, as is more often the case with these traditional morning feeds, the cook made the universally fatal mistake of placing the beans right next to the fried-egg. Disaster beckoned, as I well know from painful experience. Bean and egg should never be conjoined cheek by jowl on the same plate.

They just don't belong together and centuries of diplomatic brokering won't change that, they're too different, too incompatible and are best kept well apart. Admittedly the problem is usually caused by the beans, unless the egg is either a neo-con reactionary or particularly runny.

As soon as the plate is on your table they gather ranks and launch their assault on the unfortunate egg.

Massive waves of Communistic baked beans, conformist, disciplined, totally lacking in free-will or individuality, mercilessly plough through everything in their path.

Don't be fooled by that Stalinistic propaganda about the attraction of 57 varieties, H.J. Heinz just made that up in 1896.

They're all the same, completely brainwashed and any dissent smothered in tomato sauce. Even before I can raise my butter knife in defence they start encroaching on the vulnerable outer fringes of my egg-white with totalitarian efficiency. They are ruthless, inhuman monsters who need to be stopped at all costs.

Thank God then for the heroic link sausage, a must for every meal, stalwart and true and ready to lay down it's life to stop the rampage of the maddened vegetable hordes.

It's my only real defence to thwart the attack and is immediately commissioned into a defensive action placed as a meaty barricade between the two combatants.

This tactic was such a roaring success that I did actually roar in triumph, attracting strange stares from two Japanese tourists leisurely eating pancakes at a corner table.

But please don't get me started on syrup my friends, that's an altogether different horror in the annals of culinary conquest.

So the tide of the Red menace was stemmed with the peace-loving, free-range egg being saved from peril. The sausage did it's job remarkably well and was a fine specimen for this mission of mercy. It was thick, strong and at around 4 inches just the right length to dissuade the fiendish swine from sneaking around the side of the plate and conducting the classic miltary pincer movement.

Beans belong with the meat anyway, many of them are even hermetically sealed together inside a metal container until the great can-opener of liberation grants them their ultimate freedom. Sausages, burgers, bacon, corn beef and even black pudding can all live in harmony with the dreaded bean so why do irresponsible cafes insist on planting them next to the innocent and unassuming eggs, not to mention potato scones or hash browns.

Keep them apart, social polarisation is the only answer, however regrettable that may seem in this multi-cultural age. Some ancient emnities can't be resolved and nor should they, not where beans are concerned, it's an historical truth.

US Senator Joe McCarthy had the right idea in the 1950's.

Flush them out, as well as their fellow travellers, expose them for what they are.

A little known fact, kept secret for many years was that the real reason for McCarthy's downfall was his attempt to subpeona a can of spaghetti hoops to his 'House of Un-American Activities' investigation.

Needless to say this never happened and was hushed up by officialdom but it ended his career for ever.

The spaghetti hoops were still blacklisted in the USA although they did gain fleeting fame on a British TV commercial. This early success didn't last as they were well past their sell-by date.

Although heavy rock legends Guns n' Roses did later dedicate an entire covers album to their memory when they produced the album 'The Spaghetti Incident' in 1993.

How appropriate that an infamous band would remember an infamous pasta.

So remember my friends, the next time you order a fried breakfast, be sure to insist that any beans be contained behind the meat.

If need be, bacon slices, hamburgers or flat cut sausages will suffice but ideally the little brutes should be coralled behind the link sausage as it enjoys a distinct height advantage.

Of course, you could refuse the trepidations of the red menace altogether. Chopped tomatoes are harmless enough, or so I'm told.

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