With only a few hours left before Valentine’s Day (if you regard more than a hundred as a few) here’s some of the latest ways you can show your love and increase your chances of getting a quick bout of ramalamadingdong without burning a hole in your all-important pocket area.

If it wasn’t for HotUKDeals, there would be no love anywhere, ever. Know this.

First off comes that traditional symbol of what we all know and love to call luuurrrve – it’s the dozen of the red roses. Not only are they beautiful and romantic but they taste great too! (note to self – research this before publishing)

But I can’t afford a dozen red roses we hear you roar. Ah, but what if they were only £2.00? HotUKDeals reader sausage25 is right behind such affordable blooms, saying: “Cheap and nasty tiny-headed roses which will droop within two days. These roses can’t be produced at this price without exploiting the growers.” So, erm, there you go.

Next up comes the romantic meal, and you can’t swisher and seductivlier (it’s sort of a word) than a Harvester restaurant. For God’s sake, there’s the infinite salad bar, the Kickin’ Garlic Chicken and the Original Spitroast. It’s all there!

Now you can get a £4.99 early bird meal deal with a FREE Sundae Best ice cream thrown into the bargain. If that won’t win the heart of your fair maiden/rugged manbloke of choice then we don’t know what will. Rohypnol?

Finally today, one for all you long-distance lovers – the kind who can only stay in touch by getting on the net and having long, lingering web chats together. Now you can ‘look’ at each other in a higher visual quality.

It’s all thanks to the Microsoft Lifecam Cinema HD 720p widescreen webcam, which is only £39.94 delivered and a right proper bargain. But if you’re an ageing Eastenders legend who decides to indulge in a game of the Mr Sausage puppet show with a fan, take care – it could cost you your job.

(deals found by HUKD members craigk8163, ianshona and 888)

Some vegetarians are fine scoffing eggs and milk, cheese and fish, while others won’t stand for that sort of stuff and are picky in the extreme – they’re vegans and we don’t understand their sort whatsoever. The general rule is that vegetarians don’t like to see animals harmed to produce what they eat, so most are comfortable with dairy products and the like.

What about ice cream, then? Avid Bitterwallet reader Sneh has been in touch with correspondence she received from Unilever, who produce many of the bestselling frozen dessert products in the country. Surprisingly, the majority of ice cream products are completely unsuitable for vegetarians.

Some of you won’t be surprised to learn that, but for the rest of you – a quick lesson about cheese. Unilever’s products include whey, which is a by-product of cheese manufacturing. No meat there, but it’s typically created by using a substance called rennet to cause the milk to separate into a solid (the curd, which makes the cheese) and liquid (the whey). It’s the rennet that’s the problem – while it can be created from fungi, you typically make this stuff by cutting up and marinading the stomachs of newly born calves. To summarise, your tub of ice cream has probably been produced using dead baby cows, and that’s what Unilver allude to here:

You can see the letter Sneh received from Unilever here, and the full list of products here and here.

The issue for Sneh is that this fact isn’t mentioned on Unilever’s products. At the very least, in the same way that a bag of nuts might carry the over-zealous warning “may contain nuts”, it’s perhaps not unreasonable to assume frozen desserts that saw a baby calf have its stomach chopped up to produce it should state “may be unsuitable for vegetarians” – according to Sneh, they don’t.

Where does the law stand on this? In the shade, as usual:

The terms ‘vegetarian’ and ‘vegan’ in food labelling are used voluntarily by industry. Where these terms are absent, consumers rely on the list of ingredients.

Unilever would only be misleading consumers if they stated their products were suitable for vegetarians when they weren’t. By not mentioning they aren’t, they’re in the clear. In other words, you have to assume all food is a by-product of dead animals unless the packaging says otherwise – the onus is entirely on the consumer to not only read the food labeling but then research it. That said, when a product appears to be produced without the requirement for dead baby cows – it’s not your first thought when you lick a Cornetto – wouldn’t it make sense to add “may not be suitable for vegetarians” to the labeling?

Should Unilever (and other food manufacturers) at least warn consumers in this instance, or is all the responsibility on the vegetarians?

It’s always the way. There you are, lapping away at a cool cone on a hot summer’s day, and you can’t but think to yourself: “This ice cream just isn’t gay enough”. And you’d be right; most of the ice cream you and I eat on a daily basis is completely straight. In fact, according to a graph that Andy has just drawn on the whiteboard in the Bitterwallet office, less than two per cent of frozen dessert products are on the same bus.

These fabricated statistics clearly demonstrate that ice cream fails to represent the sexual orientation of its consumer base, and one man is doing something about it. Doug Quint is a New York-based musician who is about to tear up the streets of Manhattan in his Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. “Let’s face it, ice cream trucks are kind of queer, and a middle-aged white man driving one is pretty suspect,” says Quint. “That’s not to say that I’m a rolling hotbed of perversion. Hardly the case. It’s all in the name of silly.”

Wherever you are in the world, you can contribute to the success of the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck by hitting their Facebook page and suggesting what tunes will spill out the truck’s tannoys. What kind of toppings can you expect? Pretty much anything you ask for – the likes of olive oil and sea salt, Nutella and bacon are already on the cards. It’s America, you understand. If you don’t like the thought of a queer cone, then you’re only fooling yourself; absolutely nobody can deny that hundreds-and-thousand are as gay as a window.

[Serious Eats]