Has to be the best value for money chippy in Tameside - bar none! Being a glutton for MSG and all things fattening I try to avoid chippy’s and fast food outlets but every now then I cannot resist the temptation to pig out. I went into Ray’s earlier this evening and ordered a prawn omelette and chips. It was good value at £4.80, especially when you consider the amount of chips included. I took a photo of the chips to prove the enormous size of the portion, I should have placed a phone or other recognisable item in the picture to give a truer representation as to the actual size. I do not exaggerate when I say the portion was easily enough to satisfy two adults. The cooking oil they use is called Frymax which could not be described as healthy, but at least it is not heavily laden with trans-fats and hydrogenated elements. All in all Ray’s is a great local chippy and Ray is a local personality as well as a gentleman. If you don’t want to take my word for it just take the queue challenge and check out Ray’s as you pass through the village. The only time you will see Ray’s without a queue is when it is closed which surely says something about this local institution.
14 comments:
I wouldn't want to get any grease on the chairs in that car TC.
Greasy, fat, floppy, cheap, brown, smelly and totally bad for you. That reminds me of a few Labour Councillors in Tameside.
True, but despite all of the above they are actually nice – unlike any Labour councillor I can think of! While on the subject of chips I might as well pass on this piece of info which may be of absolutely no use to anybody, but here goes anyway. As well as being a failed vegetarian, as already explained I have a weakness when it comes to junk food. This was recognised by many as my girth increased and I was bought a totally wonderful device which actually does what it says on the box – it makes perfect chips which are virtually fat free. Not rubber abominations which go by the name of oven chips, or greasy (but nice!) chips like you get from Ray’s. The chips cooked in device are non greasy and crispy, plus the potato used still actually contains useful amounts of vitamin C. And what is this miraculous device called, it is a Tefal Actifry . The chips can take up to 40 minutes to cook, but they are well worth the wait.
Re vegetarianism, red meat is an essential part of the homo sapien diet as it is extremely high protein and a vital 'brain food' which gave stone age man more resting, and thereby thinking time - with protein improved brain function - between meals, which played a crucial part in the commencement/development of the use of tools which led man to where he is today.
Mr Yates, I used to subscribe to that theory and would go further by arguing we are natural born carnivores - hence the design of our teeth which are designed for tearing as well as chewing meat. However, those were in my less enlightened days. When I used to view cattle and animals in general as dumb beasts whose only purpose on this planet was to provide us with food - I was happy and contented. However, having spent time studying the animals we designate as food, I started to become increasingly disturbed when I discovered that they are intelligent social creatures who are the opposite of what I once viewed them to be.
If I were to invite you to my house for dinner then proceeded to kill my dog, skin him, gut him and then cook him before presenting him to you as food you would rightly say this guy is insane and needs locking up. In oriental countries eating dog is as socially acceptable to them as eating cattle is to us and using the dog scenario in a country like Korea it would not necessarily raise eyebrows in a rural village - just as killing and eating a cow in certain rural communities in Britain wouldn’t be considered unusual or barbaric.
In Western culture a dog is regarded as mans best friend and we are sickened at the thought of them being consumed as food. In India the cow is a sacred animal and they would find eating a cow as abhorrent as we would find eating a dog or cat.
The fact is, we have become detached from nature. It is so easy to sit in your favourite Italian restaurant and order a medium cooked fillet steak. In supermarkets it is routing for millions of people to glide down the fresh produce aisle looking at all the nice cling film and polystyrene wrapped beef, chicken and pork. It is so easy - choose, pay, transport home, cook and enjoy. Most people would never even give a second thought as to how that lovely piece of meat they had just consumed was once a living creature who was part of a family, who had feelings and who had their life ended in a bloody and violent fashion so they could fulfil their role as part of the food chain.
In my mind ignorance is indeed bliss. As I have already said I used to really enjoy eating meat. I still do eat meat but in far smaller quantities than I once did. The difference is now I eat meat because I am addicted to it - but I no longer enjoy it like I used to. I used to scoff at ’tree huggers’ when they used to preach about meat = murder, now I agree with them but I can never sign their petitions or join in their activities because they are lead by PC fanatics who consistently fail to condemn or even talk about the most vile animal torture in existence - religious ritual slaughter.
To conclude; next time you are tucking into a joint of roast beef, a leg of lam or a good old McDonald’s burger - just remember that what you are eating was once a living creature and if you were born in another country you could just as easily have been eating a dog or cat.
TC, you make some interesting points but I think you've failed to grasp the only really significant one which is how the animal is treated before it dies. The animal should be treated humanely during its lifespan right up to slaughter. Britain should be proud of its scrupulous animal cruelty laws. Deliberate, negligent or gratuitous cruelty to animals should be stamped on and the perpetrators severely punished. This is essential as such brutal and barbaric behaviour demeans and lessens man as a species and as with all crime, if conviction and appropriate punishment do not follow it expands and worsens.
However, moralising about the 'rights' of animals is but a short step to absurd cults like Jainism that had far more influence before the age of reason. I totally agree with you about religious ritual slaughter. Halal butchery is deliberate and extreme suffering inflicted upon animals to satisfy chronically outdated, bloodthirsty mumbo-jumbo and is totally UNNECESSARY. Your comments about the animal rights lobby's spineless and deliberate avoidance of this issue is also spot on and also applies to the Government and organisations like the RSPCA.
The truth is we are the dominant animal on this planet, meat is extremely beneficial to us and there is no REASON to stop eating it.
The killing of animals is sometimes necessary for man's general good. All meat, eaten in sensible moderation is extremely good for you and is an essential part of a balanced diet. Mass killing like seal culls also has to be done. The fact that the seal can experience distress similar to when it's being attacked by a polar bear is no reason to let the seal population get out of control. Similarly with the extermination of trillions of locusts. The fact that they are aware their existence is under threat but do not experience stress the way far more evolved creatures do is irrelevant to whether or not such extermination is necessary.
having studied halal slaughter and non halal slaughter I fail to see a significant difference that warrants the hysteria.
In both cases the animal is hung upside down, has its throat slit and is bled to death. does its matter to the animal that there is a bit of chanting and singing first?
and TC, a medium cooked fillet is a over cooked!
Anonymous, here's the differences.
1) Under humane British animal cruelty legislation the animal is pre-stunned and is unconscious when killed.
2) In Halal the animal MUST be conscious when its throat is cut massively increasing stress, pain and suffering. This is utterly gratuitous, unnecessary and against the best principles of this country's humane treatment of animal. Every large scale impartial study has proved beyond doubt that this is the case which is the very reason it is a legal requirement to use pre-stunning, UNLESS you have a religious exemption, an utterly absurd situation implemented by the spineless PC liberals who now infest the corners of power.
If Mr Smith the slaughterman does it he gets arrested for cruelty. If Mr Mohammed does it nothing happens. This is one law for one person and one law for another, a recipe for chaos.
Lets take a chicken for example, the mass produced version
The bird is first hung upside down, then inserted into water, electrocuted in order to stun it and then its throat is cut. Having seen the reaction of birds to this process I can say that the apparent stress on the bird is very similar to the halal process. And for this pupose I am ignoring factory farming methods which can hardly be described as humane.
With the larger animals some of the issues are different. Ask a slaughterman and they will tell you that the larger animals know they are going to the slaughter house, it is their sense of smell. Imagine the stress of that, it is not just the bleeding process that is the issue.
Killing animals in an organised way causes them stress, whatever the process adopted. so why the hysteria with halal?
Pre-stunning is designed to minimise stress, pain and suffering on the animal, the evidence and all impartial large scale studies says this is the most humane method, that's why it is the law. Halal slaughter deliberately and for no reason increases suffering. If a British secular slaughterhouse did not use this method they would be prosecuted for animal cruelty, an Islamic, Jewish slaughterhouse would not, a totally unfair and unsustainable situation.
The largest and most recent studies into factory farming have proved that the livestock concerned and chickens in particular suffer LESS stress in properly run units.
You're right animals do suffer stress when being lead into the slaughterhouse, pre-stunning relieves them of that stress as quickly as possible, cutting their throats and then being allowed to bleed to death makes it much worse which is why pre-stunning was introduced in the first place. My near neighbour was Chief Engineer in a large slaughterhouse in th Midlands for twenty years and has given me a great deal of information on the subject.
Make no mistake, the sole purpose of religious sacrificial slaughter is to make the poor condemned beast suffer as much as possible in the perverted hope it will please Allah or whichever god the bloodthirsty they are torturing it for. It certainly isn’t a Christian god who would wish excruciating pain and torture inflicted on a defenceless animal. The reason the organised ‘animal rights’ lobby totally ignore these vile medieval practices is because they are to politically correct to mention it in case god forbid they get branded racists or intolerant. For anyone with a strong constitution who wants to see what goes in these medieval displays of barbarism watch this You tube clip. It is bloodcurdling and not good for the mind to watch such acts of gratuitous animal torture. But if you do have the stomach to watch it you will understand that being opposed to animal torture going by the name of Halal or Kosher is nothing to do with ‘racism’ and all to do with a genuine love of animals and genuine opposition to outdated mediaeval practices which have no place in a modern progressive society.
Here is another clip graphically showing the savage torture of animals. And to think this is legal in Britain in 2009. It is a disgrace and I would vote for any political party who outlaw this savagery.
Animal torture, thank you for posting those graphic clips. Anyone defending such utterly barbaric practices is an apologist for coarse medieval savagery and gutless. Organsations like the RSPCA and the anlmals rights lobby betray themselves as pure and spineless hypocrites by merely mumbling a few weasel words about Halal and Kosher while simultaneously talking about things like 'cultural sensitivity'. Cultures based on practices like this should be eradicated.
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