State senator John Whitmire demanded an end to the practice after learning of the meal request of Lawrence Brewer, who was executed this week.  Brewer asked for two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound (450 grams) of barbecue meat, three fajitas, a meat lover’s pizza, a pint of ice-cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts.

"It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege," Whitmire wrote in a letter to the State Corrections department, which quickly agreed with his views, and determined that the last meal choice by the prisoner would cease immediately.  From now on they are just going to get whatever meal is on offer to the other inmates that day.

So no longer can a prisoner try to cheat the executioner by clogging his arteries.  Others have tried just as hard as Lawrence Brewer. 

Last week, inmate Steven Woods’s request included two pounds (one kilogram) of bacon, a large four-meat pizza, four fried chicken breasts, two drinks each of Mountain Dew, Pepsi, root beer and sweet tea, two pints (one litre) of ice-cream, five chicken fried steaks, two hamburgers with bacon, fries and a dozen garlic bread sticks with marinara on the side.

Another one went for two fried chickens, French fries and a five-gallon (19-litre) bucket of peaches.

No wonder there’s an obesity problem in America!

I wonder if its possible for a prisoner to delay his death by:

• ordering shitloads of food and eating it very slowly, savouring every bite
• ordering obscure foreign foods that take ages to find
• sending the meal back and complaining to the cook that its over or undercooked?

I can understand the sentiment behind stopping the last meal privilege, but it strikes me as petty.

On the subject of executions, that of Troy Davis by the State of Georgia leaves me feeling uncomfortable.  From what I’ve read of the case there seems to be plenty of doubt over the verdict.  I’d have thought the condemned prisoner gets the benefit of any doubt – considering the execution is irreversible.  Hey, but what do I know … much better to pretend the justice system is infallible than admit something may have gone wrong.

That’s what England rugby captain Mike Tindall did on a night out in Queenstown in New Zealand.  Mike is of course Mr Zara Phillips, and thus a minor member (by marriage) of the British royal family.

Throw in a bit of kissing and groping with a local blonde woman, including burying his head in her breasts, and it sounds like he had a heap of fun.

Team management has, sensibly, come out and said to the press, basically “move on, nothing to see here”.  Coach Martin Johnson I think also takes a sensible view of things:

"When I started playing rugby at senior level you were dealing with blokes,"

"They treated us like adults and there is no reason to change that now they are professionals and things are far more organized in the game.

"They are there to make sensible decisions — if I can’t trust them, there is a simple choice for us to make."

All very good, and what happens on tour stays on tour etc.

But I wonder if the wife is as relaxed about it?

A New Zealand man choked to death on his dinner on a Jetstar flight from Singapore to Auckland.

Don’t order the beef next time you fly Jetstar.  Better still, don’t order any of the food.  Better still, avoid Jetstar.

Galia Slayen, an American high school student, made a life size model of a Barbie doll, in the same proportions as the doll. The Barbie stands about 6 feet tall with a 39" bust, 18" waist and 33" hips (and I can’t be stuffed trying to convert that to metric).  I’m also trying to figure out if she’s got an unnaturally small head, or is that just by comparison to her ginormous boobs.

Slayen made the doll replica as a school project about eating disorders – she herself suffered with anorexia for a year,  She said:

“Talking about eating disorders is taboo to many people, and this made people talk about it,”

“It’s a shocking image. A lot of people have seen it, and it’s started debates,”

Talk about a freakshow.  I can only assume that there must have been some sort of major nuclear accident in Malibu (wherever Barbie is from?) around the time Barbie was conceived, and that this mutation is the result.

New to KFC, a burger that does away with wasteful things like bread and salad.  2 bits of chicken are used instead of a bun, and between them is cheese and bacon.

A mere 1939 kilojoules, 22.3 grams of fat and 1681 milligrams of sodium.  Yummo, can feel it clogging the arteries just thinking about it.

Can’t see myself rushing to to try one … my usual experience with KFC is that I regret it afterwards, even if the idea appeals to me for some reason beforehand (usually some reason like I’m starving, too lazy to cook anything and haven’t had it for ages).  It’s only after eating it that I remember the grease level in it – not to mention that the KFC near us is the world’s worst. (To narrow it down it’s in Belconnen, and isn’t the one at the mall.)

Food Authority chief scientist Lisa Szabo said food debris and cockroach activity at the store increased the risk of customers developing dangerous food-borne illnesses.  Authority investigators found the floors covered in dirt, grease and decomposing food, and drains were blocked and putrid.

The investigation was undertaken following customer complaints of becoming sick after eating pizza from the store.  Susan Waihi made a formal complaint after her husband and three sons got food poisoning in 2008.  Her youngest son Manaia, now four, began vomiting soon after eating a slice of Hawaiian pizza.  Her husband and 2 other sons also got sick.

Now there is a valuable lesson here – pineapple does not belong on pizza – Hawaiian pizza is an atrocity to good taste.  So too are pizzas with cockroaches, hair, dirt, rat turds and the various other things the Domino’s at Quakers Hill seems to have specialised in.

He obviously had a very big night out in Johannesburg on the weekend.  He had fallen asleep, and was later woken up, in the driveway of a local politician’s house.  Apart from being cold, as he was wearing only a soccer shirt, shorts and sandals, he was lucky to have escaped being a victim of Johannesburg’s notoriously high violent crime rate.  Not only that, he was apparently under the impression he was in Cape Town rather than Joburg – a mere 1,450 km away.

Now that is pissed out of your skull!

Wrong!   People who ordered a 3kg turkey for Christmas Day are likely to find themselves battling to get a bird that will fit in the oven.

"It’s a nightmare,"

said butcher Shane Mundy of Hill Street Gourmet Meats. Customers are really upset and many are cancelling their orders.  Many people obviously do have issues coping with what you’d think is a fairly minor problem, as he went on to say:

"It’s caused mass panic and hysteria. People don’t know what they’re going to do”

Mr Mundy said he and his staff would work all through the night on Wednesday boning and rolling turkeys.  He also said they’d have to freeze a lot of turkeys and that they’d be making lots of turkey sausages.

The turkey farmer claimed the problem was a cooler than expected year, which helped the turkeys grow.  He said:

"They don’t tend to sit around as much as they do on a warm day, they get up and eat a lot more,"

He said his company was forced to sell a more premium boned and rolled product to butchers for the price of a regular turkey.

About his own Christmas, Shane Mundy had this to say:

"We’ll have a nice standing rib roast of beef on the Weber, the last thing I want to see is turkey on Christmas," 

As for me, its chicken and ham plus lots of salads for Christmas lunch with the family.  We’ve never been great fans of turkey.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

"We need to protect the culture of the valley that brings us so many tourists. We have to keep working on the Barossa as a gourmet destination. For me, McDonald’s would be like a thorn in the valley’s side. We would be seen as talking the talk, but not living the life."

said Ms Beer.  Ms Lehmann, of Peter Lehmann wines, said the burger joint would just be "out of place".

"I think it’s sad.  We have a wonderful, unique food culture but McDonald’s is exactly the same everywhere in the world; it irons out all the differences that regions produce."

she said. Ms Beer also said she would

"love to see a hamburger joint in the Barossa that uses local produce, proper meat from our butchers, fresh lettuce, free-range eggs from the markets, smoked bacon.  It’s not fast food I’m against, it’s about (supporting) using local food".

Another person working to brand the Barossa Valley as a gourmet food region, Jan Angus, the founding chair of Food Barossa, said nearly a decade of work was threatened.  She said:

"The only way to keep that and preserve it is to continue to have that as a viable enterprise and that usually doesn’t come about through globalisation."

I think the crunch of the opposition to the McDonalds is most likely to be found in the following views expressed by some of the locals.  Philip Lehmann, a winemaker, said it would be difficult for the region’s restaurants and cafes to compete with the low prices of McDonald’s.  Rachel LeBherz fears her family’s business, the Barossa Roadhouse, could be forced to close if it went ahead.  She said:

"McDonalds would crush them and many other small businesses. People don’t realise it’s not just the takeaway stores that will suffer, it’s our local suppliers and many other connected businesses."

Personally, I reckon the locals against the Maccas are being quite precious.  If people want to eat McCrap that’s their choice.  Equally if they don’t want to eat it, nobody’s force feeding it to them.  I doubt very much that there is much leakage of customers from the gourmet food end of the market to McDonalds, or vice versa.

Anyway, McDonalds in the Barossa will be good for the wanker in the current McAds on TV – he would really be able to enjoy a glass of red with his Grand Angus.

• lemongrass chicken
• beef rendang
• orange, lime and ginger chicken
• beef bolognese.

All come with penne pasta, which strikes me as an interesting choice – I would have thought rice for all bar the bolognese.  Pasta is obviously easier to heat up and keep warm in bulk than rice, or harder to screw up.  I suspect these things will be like pre-made frozen meals heated up in the microwave.  Can’t see myself rushing out to get one.  Anyway, I don’t go to Maccas to eat healthy … I go for junk.  If I want proper food I’ll cook it at home, or go to a proper restaurant.

How lame are some of those frozen meals?  I see spaghetti bolognese, and think I could make myself a home cooked batch in not much longer than the time it takes to microwave a frozen one.

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