Super Sludge

 

Sludge must be one of the most mysterious things on earth.

That’s the whole thing about sludge, it can be made of anything at all and you haven’t the faintest clue.

Sludge is at the bottom of the pond… a silent slow conglomeration of dead stuff – animal and vegetable – fish and frog poo (I’ve never seen a frog poo but they must do it)* and general ooze. It stinks.

There’s sludge in the filter of my washing machine. It’s a horrible grey viscous goo which looks like something that could creep up the stairs, into my bedroom and suffocate me in the night.  No idea what it’s made of but it smells a bit.

And now, there’s the sludge I drink every morning. It doesn’t smell too bad but it looks very very sludgy indeed. It’s a kind of super-sludge.

I never meant to drink sludge. That wasn’t in my life plan at all until I bought a Nutribullet machine at Christmas.

I thought the Nutribullet would pep up Capt Sensible’s plain ol’ freshly squeezed orange juice.  It would add fibre and pith (or am I just taking it?). I imagined it would pep up his early morning drinks rather like the arrival of the Xbox transformed our gaming from potting cute ducks on the Wii shooting range to driving extremely fast racing cars around amazingly accurate representations of world-famous racing circuits.

I was wrong. Turns out he doesn’t like smoothie-type things but is now fixated on doing sludge-based experiments on me.

The first one didn’t look exactly appetising – a glass of bile-green liquid with a consistency only slightly runnier than Polyfilla. It had black bits through it and the swirl on the top was so dense that it was raised and three-dimensional.

I tasted it with caution.

“Can guess what it is yet?” he said in a creepy Rolf Harris-kind-of-way.

Hmm. I tasted banana… plus something a bit acidic.. then more banana.

Turned out to be banana, blueberries, grapes and spinach. Yes. I had drunk a green vegetable.

The Nutribullet book is full of sludge recipes including exotically-alien ingredients like kozo and goo-goo berries, Norwegian kumquats and Indonesian star-fruit, which I’ve never heard of **but what’s more never want to buy.

So the experiments continue. Peach, banana, melon and spinach is the best yet.

I’ve been drinking mystery sludges for a month now. I don’t feel any better or different but on the plus side, at least I haven’t turned green.

It hasn’t been a miraculous protection against infection; I caught a streaming cold which annoyingly, I had over a weekend. I can’t even claim my daily sludge shortened its duration as I hit it hard with Lemsip Max.

Some sludges have turned out to taste even more disgusting than they look – which is going some. Avocado, banana and spinach was especially slimy, thick and brown and to be avoided like the plague because was much worse than the plague.

Then there was the glass of blueberry, banana and grape sludge which just tasted of mould. I fertilized the viburnum with it.

A pal at work whose husband is fantatical about avoiding wasted food said “You sure he’s not just using the old stuff at the bottom of the fridge salad drawer?”

I laughed.

He can’t be.  I’d definitely detect Ye Olde Spring Onione and Wrinkly Ginger in my sludge.. er……..       wouldn’t I?

_________

* I looked up frog poo. It’s a big thing. There are disgusting You Tube videos.

** Don’t go looking for them. I made them up.