A random thread for food things that don't really warrant a thread of their own

[andrewc]

So that's what the bits in wholemeal flour are......

[Cudzoziemiec]

So that's what the bits in wholemeal flour are......

Yep, they're the bits that fall off ian's fingers when he leaves them in the bleach.

[Mrs Pingu]

Fun* fact. I used to be on the tasting panel when I worked at what is now Scottish Water (back then it was the cooncil). Then they got all scientific and screened us for our ability to taste stuff like cabbage water etc. At which point my boss and I got booted off the tasting panel.
Oh well. I didn't really like the taste of water at the time. And my boss' taste buds were ruined from years of 'triple item-ers' from the chippy and 'Twa national drinks in one' (whisky + Irn Bru)

[Mrs Pingu]

Also, bottled water containing lots of bicarb = 

[ian]

So that's what the bits in wholemeal flour are......

Mice, rats, bugs all went through the rollers. Flour mills aren't a 'clean' environment. You can probably imagine the hoard of critters that came in with every grain shipment.

[Mr Larrington]

My grate frend Uncle Marvo, the notorious Aqua-Pikey, was a process control engineer at a flour mill.  This explains a lot.

[mrcharly-YHT]

**flour mills are awesomely dangerous, flour dust is extremely explosive, there are dangerous chemicals everywhere,  and the rats are the size of cows, and the noise they make when they go through the rollers will haunt your dreams.

I see your flour mill and raise you a water treatment plant.

Vast tanks of chemicals. NAOH at concentrations so high it had to be heated to stop it from crystalizing (NAOH solution at 50C anyone?), Chlorine gas in vast tanks, the water tanks with stirrers and open walkways and the supreme loveliness; immense tanks of CO2. Enough to blanket the countryside for a 1km radius several meters deep. There was (is) a village 400m away.

[Kim]

Weirdly I prefer my tap water warm. To the extent that I'll drink it semi warm out of the kettle. I think that's more to do with sensitive teeth and brain freeze though.
Plus up here in the northron wastes we have delicious water without all that mank you have in certain areas darn sarf.

I wouldn't say I prefer it warm, but fridge temperature is Too Cold.  The tap generally gets it right, so why faff about?

I grew up with carbonate-rich water of London and the Chilterns, via a spell of Canterbury's finest.  I'm eternally thankful for water with a more sensible mineral content as per the People's Republic and the Welsh stuff we get in Middle Earth, but draw the line at whatever it is that comes out of the tap in the Manchester area, which is low-level minging.  Having visited the region as a child, I consider Volvic bottled water to be the biggest con since McDonalds.

[ian]

The tap water where I lived in Connecticut tasted and smelled like it had passed through Satan's nephritic plumbing. There was a park next door with a spring that everyone used to visit. Virginia wasn't a lot better, tasted like leaf mulch and things that didn't need to be told they were dead and that they had been so for some time.

[Cudzoziemiec]

So Warsaw has something in common with Connecticut. The tap water was the worst I've ever tasted but there were lots of 'oligocene wells' around the city, little round buildings with taps connected to, I presume, a deep subterranean aquifer. That was some of the best water I've ever tasted. Everywhere else in Poland the tap water was fine.

[ian]

It was quite whiffy in the shower too. Probably the bath too, but US baths being generally so shallow, who knows. I think it came straight out of the ground and through a basic clean up and disinfection, it was a pretty rural area (the Quiet Corner, as it's known).

[rafletcher]

The tap water where I lived in Connecticut tasted and smelled like it had passed through Satan's nephritic plumbing. There was a park next door with a spring that everyone used to visit. Virginia wasn't a lot better, tasted like leaf mulch and things that didn't need to be told they were dead and that they had been so for some time.

On a recent visit to Brighton, Michigan, tapwater was off the menu unless further treated to remove arsenic, I believe by reverse osmosis systems in the water coolers.  WHO and now local allowable levels are 10ppb. Parts of the area around Brighton can be as high as 50ppb.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I remember reading in a Victorian book of natural sciences about parents in the Tyrol, where arsenic is naturally occurring in the rocks, giving it to children to help them breathe at altitude.

[T42]

Our local water has natural arsenic too.  The last update to the filtration system reduced it to very safe levels but ruined the flavour.  Our local source usually runs out in summer, though, so we get water pumped from the Rhine. It goes through the same filtration system: we still get vile-tasting water, but with added chlorine.

[rafletcher]

Our local water has natural arsenic too.  The last update to the filtration system reduced it to very safe levels but ruined the flavour.  Our local source usually runs out in summer, though, so we get water pumped from the Rhine. It goes through the same filtration system: we still get vile-tasting water, but with added chlorine.

The lack of taste is probably down to RO demineralisation. They’re obviously not remineralising after treatment.

[Mr Larrington]

I stayed in some place in the (Californian) Sierra Nevada a few years ago.  Mountains everywhere, and the babbling brooks that go with such things.  The water smelled and tasted like it had been baled out of a swimming pool.

If it makes my tea taste funny, water treatment wonks, You're Doing It Wrong.

[ian]

Anywhere non-municipal in the US, they simply suck it out of the ground, drain it from puddles, or wring it out of toads and that's that. If it's municipal, they take time to add some lead or other long-term gaga-fuel. It's only fair, those damn liberal city types are poisoning right-thinking, red-blooded Americuns with their fluoride, which everyone knows can cause symptoms ranging from liberalism to gayness.

[T42]

Our local water has natural arsenic too.  The last update to the filtration system reduced it to very safe levels but ruined the flavour.  Our local source usually runs out in summer, though, so we get water pumped from the Rhine. It goes through the same filtration system: we still get vile-tasting water, but with added chlorine.

The lack of taste is probably down to RO demineralisation. They’re obviously not remineralising after treatment.

It's not so much lacking in taste as bitter - or is that how demineralised water tastes anyway?

[phantasmagoriana]

Today's discovery: microwaved Frijj is actually really nice (it's too cold for cold Frijj!).

[Kim]

Today's discovery: microwaved Frijj is actually really nice (it's too cold for cold Frijj!).

I used to enjoy microwaved ice cream (just to the point where the outside has melted and the inside is nice and soft without being teeth-hurtingly cold), so that makes sense.

I've been avoiding Frijj since they reduced the sugar content.  My digestive system doesn't seem to get on with the sweeteners, which is rather suboptimal when drunk in its traditional audax context.  Supermarket flavoured milk seems to avoid this problem.

[andrewc]

I just avoided spreading spicy mango chutney on my crumpets instead of marmalade... now I'm wondering if it might be a good idea.....

[Cudzoziemiec]

Try it and see! It sounds good to me.

[Pingu]

[Cudzoziemiec]

I've just taken the bread out of the machine. Failure! It's barely risen, it's soggy in the middle and worst of all, it hasn't mixed properly at the bottom – there's a layer of unmixed flour. Quite likely I added too much water but the machine doesn't seem to like white flour. I usually use wholemeal, which never fails to mix, but I've noticed similar on previous occasions with white.

[Kim]

I assume you didn't make my classic bread machine mistake of forgetting to put the paddle in?

White seems more sensitive to exact proportions than wholemeal when it comes to rising/collapsing, but I've not noticed a difference in mixing.