Bloatermog Now They've Changed Our OXO: For me, there's nothing like a Sunday lunch with the roast spuds cut up and soaking in an ocean of strong OXO gravy. But our humble OXO cube has been changed, so we're not getting quite as much as we used to.
And the 'X Factor' TV show is to blame!
OXO are no longer the friendly little cubes which mother, grandmother, and great grandmother crumbled into the hotpot, stew, or the gravy jug; oh no! OXO have taken it upon themselves, (probably after consulting some spin doctor's who cost them thousands of £'s to come up with the idea), to re-shape it similarly to the 'X' on the show. It looks quite fancy, I'll grant you, and it now has a sort of 3D effect; but we are being cheated out of the slivers of cube they have shaved off to make it look so trendy and 'cool'!
But it tastes the same, and I can tell you that from personal experience last Sunday when my tatties were submerged in that succulent ocean of OXO gravy which I couldn't eat a Sunday lunch without.
Wife, Jane, likes the thick 'Bisto' stuff which sets on your plate like a piece of chocolate coloured tarmac, so she makes us seperate gravies, knowing what a big baby I will be if I don't get my OXO gravy.
So it's changed, but not drastically. And it has been that friendly little cube for so long we can't remember* when, but often see the enamled metal railway station adverts for it in most episodes of 'Poirot.'
*HISTORY: The OXO cube was 'invented' in 1840 by Justus Leibig, and started out as a liquid. In 1899 it became commercially available, and was trademarked 'OXO' because the meat extract in the cubes came from an Ox; which is mixed with seasoning, herbs, spices and salt. In the UK it is now manufactured by the Premier Foods group, and in South Africa, by the Mars Group.
It's also very nice crumbled into a glass with hot water as a drink.