Let's dine

Those of you wondering what you might like for an evening repast today may like to take some inspiration from the 1976 book Chinese Cooking For All. This was either published by Octopus or written by an octopus, the book doesn't specify. Either way, there are some delicious oriental treats for everyone to enjoy. Observe:

Full of eastern promise

Everyone's favourite meat: live, angry, bull

CHINESE CHILD: What's for dinner?
CHINESE PARENT: Cauliflower.
CHINESE CHILD: What, again?

Radioactive clouds from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continued
to affect Chinese pork farms for decades afterward

CHINESE CHILD: What's for dinner?
CHINESE PARENT: A bowl of diarrhoea.
CHINESE CHILD: CAN I HAVE BROCCOLI WITH IT?
CHINESE PARENT: Only if you finish your angry, glistening, sienna-coloured knackers.

CHINESE DINNER PARTY HOST: Under the "fleece" of deep-fried noodles is shit-braised lamb
and atomic carrots, oh wait, you've died.

Angry stools on a nest of uncooked noodles, with tapeworms

What lurks in the Yellow Sea and Pacific Ocean? No-one can say for sure, but it can't necessarily be killed by cooking alone.

Raw fish pickled in sherry with pineapple. Yummers.

CHINESE CHILD: What's for dinner? Lobster and beansprouts?

Dinner party treats. The Chinese like nothing more than a banquet, unless it's a banquet that glows orange with the energy of a thousand suns.

Almonds and celery, two noted tastes of Chinese cuisine

Glow in the dark, glow in the duck, glows coming out

Chinese people love eggs and vegetables, but being a mysterious and inscrutable bunch they don't like to give the West any idea as to why that might possibly be.

CHINESE DINNER PARTY HOST: How do you like your eggs?
CHINESE DINNER PARTY GUEST: Beige.

Omelettes in a rich tincture of ebola virus

Sweet and sour cabbage: beware of aeroplanes landing on your dinner

But Chinese food is not the one-trick pony that many people whose only experience of it is Western-style restaurants and takeaways think it is. There are also an array of alluring desserts and sweet treats to cap your evening and cleanse your palate.

Cubes of wobbly jellied almond milk with terrifyingly crystallised things

Eight treasures rice: the eighth treasure is AIDS