Well, I’m in Canary Wharf again and I decided today’s the day to got to Eat. So I went to Eat. And it is now Veggie Pret. Which I hadn’t noticed for around six months of being in Canary Wharf twice a week. I noticed the Veggie Pret when it opened, but never realised that it had replaced Eat. Is it just in Canary Wharf? Or have Eat gone bust? To be honest, I simply cannot be bothered to find out.

But this is all fine, I’m in Canary Wharf and there are thousands of food options. But not thousands of sandwich options. Sure, there are thousands of Prets but most of the other food places specialise in over-priced salads or other “healthy” options. There is Costa, but I genuinely hate going into coffee shops just for a sandwich and it was packed to cunting point with coffee arseholes. There is also Paul, but please see the previous point. And I haven’t seen a Starbucks but again see the Costa points. So, there I stood in Canary Wharf like a lost child unsure of what to do next. And then I remembered Boots.

Fun fact: if you go to the family planning section in the Boots at Canary Wharf, there are loads of vibrators on the shelf! I guess they help reduce pregnancies if you just spend the weekend strumming yourself whilst watching Ben Shepherd on Tipping Point. Pretty ironic that they stopped using ‘Here Come The Girls’ on their adverts and started stocking these. What an ad campaign that would’ve been!

The Boots in Canary Wharf is also one of the busiest shops in the whole world (I think, there hasn’t been a study on this to my knowledge) but the queue moves pretty quickly because everyone is only buying one sandwich, one box of Lemsip or a couple of vibrators, so problem solved and here we are.

Turkey breast with cranberry chutney, mayonnaise, pork sage and onion stuffing, smoke flavour sweet cured bacon and fried onions.

This is good! The bacon is very smoky (which we all know I love), the stuffing is great and there’s a nice little hit cranberry pulling it all together. I feel like all of the sandwiches are good this year. Maybe it was the year off turkey sandwiches, maybe it’s the fact there isn’t spinach in everything, or maybe it’s just the past six months of eating mainly food that isn’t mainly made of fat and salt, but I’m enjoying myself again.

Just a quick one today (matron). I’ve gotta get going to the Christmas party and I’m eating this ridiculously late.

I went to Greggs today but they had run because it was after 11.30, and then everything in Nero needing cooking and I didn’t have time so I ended up in Aldi. I didn’t even know they did sandwiches! There seems to be quite a difference between Canary Wharf (Waitrose, Pret) and Tooting (Lidl, Aldi). Let’s get on with it.

Turkey breast, pork, sage and onion stuffing, cranberry chutney, mayonnaise, smoked bacon and fried onion on malted bread.

This is good! For once you can taste the cranberry. Has the fact it is a chut-en-y made the difference? I don’t know. It’s pretty basic but hits all the right notes. Look at Aldi and Lidl jumping onto the blog and making a splash.

Right, I’m off to get drunk, byeeeeeee.

It’s Thursday! And you know what that means? It was Slimming World night last night. After eating a Christmas sandwich for lunch Monday to Wednesday, and drinking a ridiculous amount of booze on Friday and Saturday (not to mention drunken junk food), I figured I’d be putting on some weight this week. And to be honest, if I’m getting fat again from these sandwiches, the blog will be cancelled. So, braced for the worse, I got on the scales and…

-1.5lbs

Boom! The blog lives on. If I only have beer and sandwiches for the rest of the month, I’ll be fine. And don’t worry, I’ll keep you posted on my fluctuating weight as the month drags on. Anyway, Slimming World is next to Lidl and I was getting some shopping and lo and behold the sandwich gods shined upon me and they had some Christmas sandwiches! A first for the blog. Are you excited? I am! Let’s get this over with.

British turkey breast, British pork & onion sausage, British streaky bacon, British pork, sage & onion stuffing,  with caramelised onion & sage mayonnaise, cranberry sauce and fried onions on malted wheat bread.

Once again I have no idea how much this cost because it just got bundled in with the other shopping. Sometimes this blog just isn’t as professional as it should be. Anyway, go through the list of ingredients again. Is it important to you that all of the meat ingredients are British? Is that why you voted to leave and why the country is in a mess? Do you really like Boris or have you just backed yourself into a corner and can’t back down? But that’s not why we’re reading the ingredients again. There’s sausage in there! A bold move.

And I like it – this is a good sandwich. Big hits of sage and onion, the mayonnaise saves it from being dry like all of the other sandwiches so far, and that sausage just adds some extra meaty goodness. Sure it looks a bit grey, but I’m okay with that. My only gripe would be that you cannot taste that cranberry sauce at all but otherwise, this is high on the list. A fine debut for Lidl.

It’s the one you’re all waiting for (except the one person who has requested Greggs over Whatsapp).

I’m in Canary Wharf today, and they have a Veggie Pret. But before you get your Brexit voting knickers in a twist, fear not! There are 478,000 normal Prets here as well, so I’ve gone for their traditional favourite. And do you know what? I didn’t have one last year because I was trying the vegan stuff, and I didn’t have one the year before that because for some inexplicable reason I couldn’t find any (see posts from 2017 for more info – Ed). So the excitement is palpable. Except it isn’t really because I’m secretly writing this in a room full of clients and they have no idea I have been running this wretched blog on and off since 2012.

So without further ado – WILL YOU START THE FANS PLEASE?!

£3.95 – Thick slices of free range turkey with port & orange cranberry sauce, herby pork stuffing and baby spinach leaves. Finished with a dab of free range mayo and crispy onions

Turn the god-damned fans off! There’s stuffing and crispy onion everywhere! Yep, like a ghost of Christmas sandwiches past, the first thing that happened was that this motherfucker went everywhere when I opened it. There are crumbs on the client’s floor, mother!

It’s only 5p below that dreaded £4 threshold, but I am in Canary Wharf so if anyone can find one cheaper, write a comment below (and guys, don’t forget to like and subscribe). Although 50p of that did go to charity, I guess. You can’t really see the sticker in the photo I sneakily took in the middle of a meeting, but the writing on the box says “50p donated to help the homeless”. Why is “the” in italics? Is it a particular homeless? You know, that homeless. Or is it a bad translation like “Die Bart, Die”? Le homeless? My graphic design degree from the now-defunct Kent Institute of Art & Design finally comes to good use as I criticise sandwiches boxes to boost up my word count on this thing I do for free.

Back to the eating. The stuffing is very crumbly and dry. And there’s a lot of rubbery spinach buuuuuuuuuut…. it’s really good. Great flavours and big chunks of turkey, not like Sainbury’s wafer-thin slices of things yesterday. I’m glad I had a break from this one for a couple of years, it tastes great. Have Pret cheated their way to the top of the list so far simply because I haven’t had this sandwich for a few years? You bet baby, absence makes the heart grow fonder. And eating one of these sandwiches every day also makes the heart grow fatter. And weaker.