Weird Offal

Every country has peculiar elements of cusine. The other day whilst carrying out my usual post workout shop I discovered two cracking examples of bizarre meat products:
The first was grisknorr:



Although they look quite phallic, they are (I'm assured by the gf) in fact pigs tails. Note the very reasonable price, approximately 95p for anyone from the UK. Once I'd got over my initial revulsion I tried to inconspiciously snap a picture. I then continued to browse the meat section desperately trying to think of a suitably bland meal that would satisfy my pregnant girlfriend who is still suffering from morning sickness.

As I journeyed past the border of the pork cuts, I happened across this wonderfully named beef product:

Elefantöra or elephant ears seems to be some sort of large beef steak cut, and I trust not anything to do with actual ears. Needless to say neither appealed.



I also found this exciting retail opportunity, a wonderfully kitsch box of chocolates, decorated with a picture of Sweden's princess victoria and her fiance Daniel, who are due to be married next month.

Over half the cost of their lavish wedding (estimated at 2.6 million dollars) will be paid for by the Swedish tax payer. The king has nobley stepped in and picked up the other half.

I find it amusing that although Sweden is very keen to portray itself as an extremely modern nation state where equality is vital principal, the presence of a monarch seems somewhat of an anacronism. Princess Victoria's fiance is apparently an ex-personal trainer, perhaps that's the advertisement for the open society. Still he's married well hasn't he?

On the study front, as you can tell from this rambling post, we had most of last week off. This was because of a combination of public holidays and one of our teachers taking a few days off to entertain her mother. We've also reached the end of our current theme (the world of books), and we had to submit our folder containing everything we'd worked on for the past five weeks. This week is also shorter than usual because we each have a meeting with our homegroup teacher to review our progress, identify our weaknesses and to set some targets for the next study theme. I'm pretty sure I'm going to sit the D course exam in June, so I expect to be told I'm going to have to work hard on my grammar for a few weeks.