Squeezed from the beefy teat

I had the most bizarre conversation while at lunch in Starbucks with Yaz today. It started when she announced that she was planning a family dinner. I knew we were going a little off-centre when we had this brief exchange of words.

"I've made a trifle and chicken pilau."

What? You've made a chicken trifle? That sounds a bit weird."

Before you rush off to vom, let me point out that I'd simply misunderstood what she'd said. She'd actually made a trifle, as well as a chicken dish (and never the twain shall meet, apparently).

Then she went on to explain that as she's gelatin intolerant or something (quite frankly I couldn't be too bothered to ask why), she has to use some sort of special, fake gelatin for the jelly in her trifle. Magic jelly, I assume, one that can no doubt gather into a special jelly cloud and whisk you off to a faraway land.

Erm, anyway, she added that the special ingredient in this magic jelly was something that sounded like it was called 'arrrgh arrrgh,' 'ugh ugh,' or 'har har' ... maybe 'Hagar' ... Hang on! Hagar? Hagar the Horrible? In jelly form?!

That got me started thinking about vegetarians. Do they have to eat magic Hagar jelly because of normal jelly's meaty animal origins? That's probably why it's called 'ugh ugh' then - my limited experience of vegetarian dishes usually lead to a fair bit of 'ugh ugh' while residing face down over the toilet bowl.

The thing is, there are so many variations of vegetarians, although for arguements sake I'm leaving out the lazy ones who will eat anything living so long as it doesn't breathe oxygen. I've always been slightly fascinated by the ones that rule out ANYTHING that comes from an animal - milk, cheese, butter ... basically anything that's been squeezed from the beefy teat (and please, I do not mean Ian Botham).

If I tried to live life like that I'd be dead within a day. And c'mon, we all know they're lying if they say they've never thought about chowing down on a cow's bum when no one's looking.

Anyway, coming full circle - I seriously think someone slipped something into our Grande Mistos.