The cumin disaster

West Bridgford Marks and Spencer Simply Food emporium...

I signed the petition against planning permission several years ago. We already had plenty of food shops in West Bridgford and the addition of an alien invader would surely damage the local shops. I think the plans were modified somewhat, but the out-of-town councillors couldn't wait to get an M and S they could park next to.

I still make a point of not buying things there which I can get at the local greengrocers, newsagents, Co-op etc. But they do have some stuff you can't get elsewhere locally, which I don't feel guilty buying.

Recently C has fallen into the routine of buying such extravagant delicacies as Arbroath Honey Roast Lochmuir Salmon Flakes, just for her lunch sandwich.

Well after a week of C being off her feet and me making 5 am cups of tea etc, there I was collecting the M and S yoghurts she likes, salmon, a bottle of wine for someones birthday present ...and I think to myself "why not a treat for the carer?" I look along the fridge shelves for something that looks tasty. My eye stops at something exotically entitled "Roast Butternut and Toasted Pine Nut Dip". Wow! Surely a suitable vegetarian alternative to Lochmuir Salmon Flakes!

Lunch the next day. C has her salmon salad and I've assembled a fine platter of rocket, lettuce, tomatoes, spring onion, fresh bread, and the dip. I deposit a dollop of dip onto the bread and take a mouthful ...urrgggghhh!!!

Rather than the subtle flavour of roasted butternut squash and toasted pine nuts, my unsuspecting tongue is blitzed by the vile smack of cumin and coriander.

Now coriander I get. It's horrible. Three or 4 grains impart quite enough oomph to any dish you care to name. But I get that, to some palates, it could be agreeable.

But cumin is something else. I know I am at odds with a large part of humanity who don't seem to want to taste their food. But I suspect that the human who first decided the seeds of the cumin plant were edible must have been a sociopath of the first order.

Either that or it was someone just conned into spending his or her life savings on a olive-oil well which turned out to be a barren hillside covered in scrub, most of which consists of Cumimun cyminum plants.

To recoup some money they then used black arts or some kind of mass hypnosis to convince people to buy the dried cumin seeds and add them to their food. All I can say is that the food in question must have been so vile that it was inedible prior to being cuminned: think last year's yak stomach pickled in camel urine and hung for 4 weeks in the Glastonbury toilets.

So somebody pulled off the biggest delusion in human history and was so successful that people started actually started to cultivate the stuff, an act which could reasonably be prosecuted as a crime against humanity.

To get back to the euphemistically named "dip". Admittedly 'ground cumin' and 'coriander' were listed in fine print on the bottom of the pack, but such is the strength of these ingredients that it should be illegal not to declare them in big letters on the front, like the health warnings on cigarettes.

But next time I will stick to bog standard hummus. And will check the fine print.