Food News, with Christine Rutter

FANCY spring onions with After Eight mints or cabbage with raspberry ripple ice-cream?

They are the kind of curious culinary combinations you would expect to see in a pregnant woman's recipe book.

But you would be wrong. These wacky mixtures are the sort of unusual meals enjoyed by people all over East Lancashire.

Most people adhere to a strict code of consumption which would never see them serving up liver with lashings of custard or carrots with a slice of Red Leicester. For these people, the sight of a chocolate covered Brussels sprout could turn them off their food for a week.

But for the others, anything goes! Variety is the spice of their diet and they are prepared to ignore the "rules". Take KAREN KEIGHLEY, who adores raw sausage meat. She has been sucking the stuff out of the skins of bangers for years.

She said: "It started when I was about three years old. I loved the taste of raw sausage meat. My mum would open the fridge to get the sausages out for tea and would find an empty plate of skins.

"I would have eaten the lot."

Karen, of Bonsall Street, Blackburn, is also partial to raw bacon and partially-cooked chicken skin. But she added: "I don't eat things raw now, after learning of the dangers, but I still crave raw sausage meat."

ANNE RIGBY, 46, is a connoisseur of cheese and jam sandwiches, her favourites being Wensleydale cheese and strawberry jam or Red Leicester cheese and apple jelly jam.

"I love them," said Anne, of Prospect Avenue, Darwen. "I can't remember when I first ate such a sandwich but I did eat them at school."

Wacky snacks are a speciality of the Jones family, from Entwistle. IRENE JONES' mouth waters at the sight of fruit salad between chunks of bread and her daughter SOPHIA is a Marmite and banana sandwich junkie.

"This sort of thing is quite normal in our house," said Sophia, of Overshores Road. My mum has always served us up strange combinations and I always thought everybody ate the same sort of things.

"The sandwiches in Marks and Spencer at the moment, such as walnut bread, brie cheese and grapes, are delicious!"

"My mum is in the Lake District at the moment. She will probably be enjoying Cumberland sausage and jelly," joked Sophia.

Cheese spread on toast dipped into a bowl of hot chicken soup is popular with 25-year-old ANDREA BURY.

"I had no butter for my toast one day and it was too dry so I dipped it in some chicken soup and I thought 'Mmm, that tastes nice.'

"I've been doing it ever since," said Andrea, of Laburnum Drive, Oswaldtwistle.

Tell us about your wacky food combinations. Write to Wacky Foods, Editorial Department, Lancashire Evening Telegraph, Newspaper House, High Street, Blackburn, BB1 IHT

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.