Mr Speaker

It makes me sad every time, but summer is drawing to a close around these parts. Not that the cold days ahead won't be filled with merriment and valid excuses not to do anything on the weekend, but winter does put a stop to festive times of the summer staple: a good old barbecue.

Of course, the communal nature of a BBQ means your not-products can be in danger of being infected by the fats and flavours of the not-so-not-products that surround them. This means you can enjoy the taste sensations enjoyed by the normal person, yet still take the moral high-ground of the vegetarian! Win-win!

Not-chicken wings

A BBQ had been organised whilst on a weekend away at the Gold Coast. In preparation I had set out in search of something that wasn't not-sausages. And I found something that was in almost every way not not-sausages: Not-chicken wings.

It was like striking vegetarian gold - out of the millions of products for sale in the shop the wings were the weirdest, the coolest, and the only product not passed it's used-by date. Conspicuous in it's ridiculousness - the bag of wings had me giggling for hours after the purchase.

Prepare your own!

An ingenious plan was implemented to increase the already crazy-goodliness of the wings: marinate them. There just aren't enough marinated not-products around. Here's how you go about making your own:

To prepare the wings for the impending BBQ, pour a generous amount of Generic Brand™ Marinate-Stuff Sauce® in to a stylish and available container. Tumble the wings lotto-ball-ishly in the sauce until they are covered evenly.

Seal the container ominously with an impenetrable covering of Glad Wrap, and leave the whole shebang to marinate. Maybe in the fridge. I don't remember now.

After a suitable period of time, let's say 5 hours 23 minutes, the wings can be freed from the fridge in preparation for BBQing. By this time they should look something like this:

But maybe with more solar-flare.

Wing Cooking

I'm sure I don't have to tell you how to cook a BBQ, but you do need to remember that as not-products are made from cardboard they only need to be "heated through". Just try to leave them as long as you can to soak up some of the animal fat from the chops.

Summary

Like Chicken Feen, it's a bit unfair to compare Marinated Chicken Wings to the other not-products reviewed so far. But I will.

Taste : -7- This is the overall taste - the wings, plus the marinade, plus that cheese cube and carrot cube and white lettuce salad you see. I can't remember exactly what it all tasted like. But it didn't make me sick, and that's good for a not-product.

Texture : -9- Good stuff here. Really something to get your teeth into. That's what you want in a BBQ product. The marinade stuff gave them a kind of "skin" which certainly added to the experience.

Similarity to the original : -4- Nah, chicken wings are all bone-y and sinew-y. These things were just gluten.

Overall

I'm going to go ahead and give Marinated Chicken Wings a 7 on the TVP-o-meter. Not the best score so far in this series. To be fair, it is always good to have something ludicrous to chuck on the barbie and they certainly made a pleasant change from the standard not-sausage - it's just unfortunate that although it is a food product, the highlight was seeing them in the bag on the shelf.