Every Day Is A School Day
04/02/26 20:35
Every day is a school day, even for an old dog like me. At the weekend I got a Too Good to Go bag from Mattas (a locally famous international food store in Liverpool city centre; for those who don’t know it).
Obviously getting a Too Good to Go from a takeaway is more defined in advance. At least it’ll defo be a meal—always a bargain, even if the meal is not the one you’d prefer. Getting a random bag of ‘stuff’ from a shop—be it an Aldi Or Mattas) all bets are off. The contents could be anything, from breads and pastries through fruit and veg to flour and eggs. Anything the shop sells.
Last week I went for a TG2G from Mattas and left in the dark in more ways than one. When I opened the bag to peek in a few minutes after leaving I saw there were a few things, including an instant (2 mins in boiling water) noodle pack (Korean), a Korean noodle bowl, a lettuce, a soybean dip, and something that in the light of the street I assumed to be a plantain—from it’s shape at the bottom of the plastic bag.
When I got to the pub—the Red Lion, a short walk along from Mattas—I took out the plantain and discovered my supposition was wrong. Whilst it had the girth of a—very—large fruit, it wasn’t yellow away from the street lights, oh and it had green growth out the top of it. It was patently a root vegetable. One that I’d never seen the like of.
This aint no plantain.
I questioned the bar staff in case everyone knew what it was, and it was just a glaring gap in my eduction. They were as bemused—and amused—as me. No answer was the loud reply. Later I asked a group of nearby drinkers if they knew. They didn’t know either (and even asked for a photo of it). But one guy suggested a radish. I laughed. They’re tiny compared with this behemoth.
I ended up asking Dr Google and looking through some image of large white veg. And I discovered it was a Daikon. A Far Easttern veg, which was indeed from the radish/parsnip stable. It is often thinly sliced and eaten raw in salads, or else cooked in stews and treated a bit like carrots. It's common in Japanese cuisine and south east Asia in general.
You live, you learn. Every day IS a school day.
Obviously getting a Too Good to Go from a takeaway is more defined in advance. At least it’ll defo be a meal—always a bargain, even if the meal is not the one you’d prefer. Getting a random bag of ‘stuff’ from a shop—be it an Aldi Or Mattas) all bets are off. The contents could be anything, from breads and pastries through fruit and veg to flour and eggs. Anything the shop sells.
Last week I went for a TG2G from Mattas and left in the dark in more ways than one. When I opened the bag to peek in a few minutes after leaving I saw there were a few things, including an instant (2 mins in boiling water) noodle pack (Korean), a Korean noodle bowl, a lettuce, a soybean dip, and something that in the light of the street I assumed to be a plantain—from it’s shape at the bottom of the plastic bag.
When I got to the pub—the Red Lion, a short walk along from Mattas—I took out the plantain and discovered my supposition was wrong. Whilst it had the girth of a—very—large fruit, it wasn’t yellow away from the street lights, oh and it had green growth out the top of it. It was patently a root vegetable. One that I’d never seen the like of.
This aint no plantain.
I questioned the bar staff in case everyone knew what it was, and it was just a glaring gap in my eduction. They were as bemused—and amused—as me. No answer was the loud reply. Later I asked a group of nearby drinkers if they knew. They didn’t know either (and even asked for a photo of it). But one guy suggested a radish. I laughed. They’re tiny compared with this behemoth.
I ended up asking Dr Google and looking through some image of large white veg. And I discovered it was a Daikon. A Far Easttern veg, which was indeed from the radish/parsnip stable. It is often thinly sliced and eaten raw in salads, or else cooked in stews and treated a bit like carrots. It's common in Japanese cuisine and south east Asia in general.
You live, you learn. Every day IS a school day.
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