A reader tipped me off to this bizarre paragraph in an article in last month’s New York Times called “England’s Culinary Wild West“:
Mr. Fearnley-Whittingstall hasn’t gone so far as to use blood as a flooring ingredient, but almost nothing goes to waste. In the kitchen, sheep’s intestines are soaking in cold water for making sausage, and the fridge is a Chaucerian chamber of innards.
Attention, media. I’m willing to cut you a little slack on the word “medieval” if you keep your grubby little hands off Mr. Geoffrey Chaucer. And don’t tell me you needed him for the alliteration. Dude was a poet and a pencil pusher for the Plantagenets, not some battle-axe brandishing barbarian. He’s no byword for brutality, that’s all I’m saying.
Unless, perhaps, you meant to indicate that Chaucer was overly fond of sausage–then we’d be cool. Chaucer loved a good fat joke at his expense.