notonthehighstreet.com have done a TV ad, and we like it! Sappy but then everything is these days. Tomorrow we’ll bring you a video or men fighting or something.

Christmas Sandwich Reviews 2011 – The UK Munch-Off

Christmas is good for one reason and one reason only. CHRISTMAS SANDWICH TIME. All year we have to eat the inferior ‘chicken and stuffing’, desperately trying to remember what a proper sandwich should taste like.

But our time has come, let us eat cranberry sauce and cover our bodies in stuffing and bacon like the filthy bird-worriers that we are…

Get in touch and let us know what your favourite is!

One thing to make clear first off. Salad should not exist in a Christmas sandwich. Salad and Christmas are not friends. Therefore, in the scoring we have given more points to the sarnies with the least green in them.

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Boots

Medical-looking packaging hides a gem of a sandwich, although am I over-excited due to the fact that they are the first to release it? Getting one of these in at the end of October was quite the treat.

Excellent stuffing, easy to eat, not the biggest around and could do with more turkey but at £2.60 you can’t go wrong.

Bread quality: 6 (wholegrain flat standard bread, meh)

Bread to filling ratio: 7 (not huge but not bad either)

Stuffing: 9 (Excellent, sliced, flavoursome, a highlight)

Turkey & cranberry: 7 (Good cranberry but could do with more turkey)

Bacon or ham: 7 (bacon, reasonable volumes)

Size: 7 (a good middle ground, bigger than it looks)

Salad: 10 (no salad)

Juiciness: 8 (we like mayo, stuffed to the arse with mayo…)

Depravity level (what would we do to get another): 7 (Steal the lead off a church roof)

Overall taste: 8 (Better than the sum of its parts, excellent balance with a fine vintage)

TOTAL RATING 76/100  A DECENT START TO THE CHRIMBO SANDWICH SEASON

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M&S

M&S have 3 sandwiches this year.

LIGHT CHOICES… TURKEY, STUFFING & CRANBERRY

The initial feedback we got on this was from someone who bought it by mistake. However intrepid sarnie tester JA has given it a proper go…

Bread quality: 7 (soft and tasty, but too thin)

 Bread to filling ratio: 5 (not great, but it is supposed to be ‘healthy’)

Stuffing: 9 (really good stuffing surprisingly)

 Turkey & cranberry: 8 (strong cranberry and smooth turkey)

 Bacon or ham: 0 (none)

Size: 5 (again it’s ‘healthy’ which means ‘less’ of course)

Salad: 10 (no salad)

Juiciness: 7 (surprisingly juicy)

 Depravity level (what would we do to get another): 4 (buy one)

 Overall taste: 7 (a good flavour but not much to write about)

 TOTAL RATING 62/100 (FOR ‘HEALTHY’ IT’S QUITE GOOD AND THE FLAVOURS SAVE IT)

M&S Turkey Feast (the standard Chrimbo sandwich)

Stuffed to the brim with turkey and stuffing, bacon as opposed to ham. Truly a great sandwich, made for those with a deep hunger.

Initial feedback we’ve had so far: ‘Better than last year’

So much filling it won’t fit in your mouth (more than Boots), fresher too by the feel of it and no scrimping when it comes to turkey either. The volume of mayo might not be to every one’s taste but your standard sarnie eater will deal with it fine.  We prefer the Boots stuffing but it is still a goodun.

Bread quality: 7 (wholegrain flat standard bread, seems fresher than Boots)

Bread to filling ratio: 8.5 (they don’t f**k around)

Stuffing: 7 (not quite the quality and flavour we would hope for, gets lost)

Turkey & cranberry: 9 (Good cranberry but could do with more, seems like it has an entire turkey in there)

Bacon or ham: 8 (bacon, reasonable volumes)

Size: 9 (large uuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhhhhhh)

Salad: 10 (no salad)

Juiciness: 8

Depravity level (what would we do to get another): 8 (mug the elderly)

Overall taste: 9 (Better than the sum of it’s parts, excellent balance with a fine vintage)

TOTAL RATING 76/100

M&S Posh One (I have named it that…): Turkey & bacon with cranberry and port stuffing

Clementine infused turkey? Port and cranberry stuffing? They chucked in some spinach too, the bastards.

Bread quality: 9 (Simply awesome)

Bread to filling ratio: 9 (Stuffed to the brim)

Stuffing: 8 (hard to tell that it has port in it, nice though)

Turkey & cranberry: 6 (You can actually taste the orange in the turkey, over-powering if you’re not a huge citrus fan. Could do with more cranberry too)

Bacon or ham: 8 (bacon, reasonable volumes)

Size: 9 (large uuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhhhhhh)

Salad: 2 (contains spinach. Waste of valuable chewing energy)

Juiciness: 7 (not sauced up enough for us)

Depravity level (what would we do to get another): 5 (lie to charity workers)

Overall taste: 6 (if you want your turkey sandwich to taste like an orange then this is the one for you)

TOTAL RATING 69/100 AN ASPIRATIONAL SANDWICH BUT ORANGES ARE FOR FRUIT SALADS…

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Tesco

TESCO ‘CHRISTMAS TURKEY WITH ALL THE TRIMMINGS’ SANDWICH

Quite a shock is this one, 2 of the sandwich team tried them and were disappointed. Can’t make a decent Christmas sandwich?? Tesco pioneer taster John Ashton gave us the numbers…

Bread quality: 7 (wholegrain flat standard bread, but very soft)

Bread to filling ratio: 6 (sausage bulks it up a bit but not great)

Stuffing: 8 (one of the few flavours that gets through)

 Turkey & cranberry: 6 (5 for very good cranberry, 1 for the ‘formed’ turkey)

Bacon or ham: 3 (didn’t realise it was there)

Size: 6 (on the small side of standard)

Salad: 10 (no salad)

Juiciness: 7 (surprisingly juicy)

 Depravity level (what would we do to get another): 4 (Do a small dance in public)

Overall taste: 7 (Despite its failings, the addition of sausage made it ok and it was peculiarly moorish)

 TOTAL RATING 57/100  Nothing to shout about, barely acceptable.

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Pret

We had high expectations for this one, but how did it fare? No bacon, yes I said it, no bacon. They try and compensate with onions but that is, frankly, and insult.

Bread quality: 8.5 (usual Pret, nice and squishy)

Bread to filling ratio: 8 (A good fill as with all Pret)

Stuffing: 8 (disappointingly hard to taste, but the addition of crispy fried onions brings it right back)

Turkey & cranberry: 8 (excellent, cranberry in every crevice)

Bacon or ham: 0 (no pink meat. NONE. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuu)

Size: 7 (Similar to Boots, could have done a 3rd half…)

Salad: 2 (contains spinach and lettuce. Double bulls**t)

Juiciness: 9 (excellent moisture no doubt)

Depravity level (what would we do to get another): 7 (steal candy from a baby)

Overall taste: 8 (if you want your turkey sandwich to taste like an orange then this is the one for you)

TOTAL RATING 65.5/100 A SHOCK RESULT FROM OUR FAVOURITE COFFEE OUTLET. IT HASN’T GOT WORSE, BUT THE OTHERS HAVE UPPED THEIR GAME.

More info on the Pret sandwich here.

More reviews to come as the other sandwiches get released, photos to come soon too.

We will announce our ‘Best Christmas Sandwich’ results at the beginning of December.  I can tell you’re excited.

Yes I have a job and I should be doing it instead of writing about sandwiches.

Expedia Please Take Me Away!

We know the site has turned into a bit of a travel site recently, we will start featuring actual products soon I promise.

But back to Expedia…

We decided to try and find the most obscure holiday we could on the site to see what you think, here at RS we have ended up in some odd countries and cities so it seemed like a fun thing to investigate.

Our first in the (possible) series lead us to find…….

The city of Astana, Kazakhstan

Why do we want to go there?

It looks mental.

It is a city built from the ground up, planned by a Japanese dude called Kurokawa and growing by the day. You can read loads more about it in a far better written article from the Guardian than this will ever be.

Check out Expedia for more exciting holidays to places you might not have heard of before.

So we heard that London Bridge Experience are doing a special event on Saturday for Halloween and it sounds too fun! Definitely worth a blog post. It is called PhoboPhobia 2011 and it looks like it’ll scare the 2 pairs of socks off me (it’s cold today…).

Tickets are available from Ticketmaster and a few other places and there are tours at a number of different times. Get to it and have a happy (but hopefully terrifying) Halloween!!

You’re in your twenties and you have a job – potentially a career – and a standing order for your council tax, but you want to play this cool twister game and you need an excuse. I would suggest you use it to squash into oblivion, this feeling called ‘The Fear’. So you’re either going ahhhhhhh. Or you’re dreadfully confused. If the latter, read on – I shall explain.

Okay, so imagine this. You go out for ‘one glass of wine’ on a Friday after a hard week in the office, or the ward, or the building site, or the classroom or… you get my drift. SO! Off you go, I’ll have a small Pinot Grigio please! Actually, wait! I’ll have a large one, sure the queue is massive! And so it begins. One, two, three. Then, cos you’re well hammered (due to the fact that you’ve now had a FULL bottle of wine by 6.30) you say, I’m a bit drunk, so I’ll have a beer! Now you are mixing your drinks which of course is a terrible idea.

Anyway, so it continues until it’s 10pm, you’re asleep with a broken glass of squash all over your new boots, knowing, just knowing, that you will wake up with the fear.’ The Fear‘. Now, for those of you who aren’t Irish, or for those of you who are but are from Dublin, the fear needs to be explained. You wake up with a racking guilt, some argue, this is actually a racking Catholic guilt. You spend the early hours of the morning feeling sorry for your other half because ‘they deserve better’. You worry about that mortgage that you won’t get because your bank will have seen the 25 transactions on your debit card for the ‘Hoxton Pony’. Then you worry about your family, your parents, who invested so much in you for you to go to said establishment and make said 25 transactions. Then, your health, your liver, kidneys, skin, the wrinkles you’re going to get! Then, oh no! My received calls! Christ on a bike. My mother rang me at 8.30pm and I ANSWERED! What did I say? Now I have to do damage control there! Oh god! I have a headache!

So…what do you do? You could have a cry and hide your head. But nah, you’re in the fear, so a bit of self flagellation is the only way forward. Face the music. Punish yourself that little bit more! Up you get for a few strawberries, natural yogurt, a 10k run? But what if the fear just isn’t bad enough to punish yourself that much. (10k, hehehe)

You can get Twister!So, I know it sounds random, it is, not as random as a cat on a turtle (Robbie Williams in that camera ad – I LOVE that ad!). Back to Twister!

Twister

Okay, so, Twister is bright (this will act as your punishment as will make your headache worse and may even make you feel more nauseous). Excellent. Then you will have to stretch  on top of people, this will be painful as you will have sore weak legs from all your silly moves on the dance floor. This will be even more punishment. Followed by flashback of why it’s sore (the silly moves), more punsihement. Afterward, you will feel hot and sticky. And THEN!. A hot shower, a detox juice and some reassurance from your loved ones and you’re ready for an evening of X Factor and Jonathon Ross. Perfecto! Next Friday though, I’ll only have a small one. But just in case we don’t and we have 10 instead – stock up now!

Twister game at Amazon

Virgin Atlantic’s Sale is now on so check out their fantastic special offer fares! Take advantage of our last minute deals to worldwide destinations below, whether you’re looking to travel in Economy, Premium Economy or Upper Class.

The best airline (in our humble opinion) for great value and great service. It’s the ideal way to start off your holiday where you can fly off to some great destinations like the US, Caribbean, Australia and Asia…

But hurry as the you need to book before September 20th in order to receive these amazing price deals from Virgin Atlantic!

Visit the dungeon, scare yourself a small bit, get a bit flushed, have a deep and meaningful with yourself as to why you ever thought is was a good idea to scare yourself into uncontrollable giggles and then pop off to have your photo taken with David Beckham! (If you smoke, don’t light up beside him, he may melt – as he is wax – (that’s why he may melt!) .

So, order your tickets and save up to 20%! An amazing deal for a fantastic day out in London!

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