Author Topic: the food rant thread  (Read 228580 times)

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #550 on: 24 August, 2015, 10:11:32 am »
Mrs Cudzo grew up drinking unpasteurised milk from the household cow, as was the norm in that place and time. More relevantly, her cousin's family, who run a proper, shiny, commercial dairy farm, with proper, shiny milking parlour and a contract to sell all the milk to a big cheese (literally!), also drink unpasteurised milk. I guess knowing the individual cow it came from reduces the risk of disease.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #551 on: 24 August, 2015, 01:38:48 pm »
I guess knowing the individual cow it came from reduces the risk of disease.

Since tubercular cows look much like other cows I seriously doubt that.
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #552 on: 24 August, 2015, 03:16:06 pm »
Ok, I know nothing about cows and their keeping. I presume they get tuberculosis from each other (there aren't any badgers out there!) but if you only have one cow, you only have one; and if you have a commercial herd, presumably they're tested regularly.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

ian

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #553 on: 24 August, 2015, 07:29:09 pm »
Unpasteurised milk. Jeez, what next? A smallpox revival? I don't drink milk unless it's been zapped, filtered, and irradiated into something that wouldn’t even recognise actual milk from a cow. I remember full fat milk as a child. It used to make me heave. The best thing Thatcher ever did was get rid of those little bottles of milk at our school, they'd sit there half the day, the cream steadily congealing into a trampoline of fat, and then we had to drink it, trying to recover some milk from the bottle through a process akin to fracking with a straw, desperate not to choke on a clot of lard from the top. I remember when David 'Donkey' Derbyshire went full on vomit after a bottle that had sat there sweltering for a good five hours of summer day whereupon he simultaneously ejaculated two jets of milk out of his nostrils, followed by his entire school dinner. At no point, did his mouth open, everything had to exit through the narrower streets of his nose. He started firing peas and carrots like a nasal Gatling gun before ending in a terminal snuffle of mashed potato and chewed up sausage that made it look like his brains were oozing out of his head (the only giveaway was that Donkey never had that much brains). You can't possibly know how traumatic that was to our young minds. I don't think our teacher ever returned to teaching.

France was a bit of a let down, all said, the big league surly waiters are evidently on their holidays. There was an burst of optimism on the first night when some foul gallic harridan desoléd us because we had sat in the ‘diners only’ section for our boisson before gesturing to a space that omitted spare seats and tables. I wouldn’t have minded but we were already surrounded by non-mange-ing boissonaires extraordinaires, or the fact that at nine euros for a puny europint, eating was probably cheaper. We just pulled a face and she went and hid in a cupboard. She might still be there.

Fab cheeseburger though. Note that London restaurants, a point means just that, not cooked in the heart of a star for an eternity.

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #554 on: 24 August, 2015, 11:28:26 pm »
Am I the only person who liked my school milk?

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #555 on: 25 August, 2015, 12:00:46 am »
Am I the only person who liked my school milk?

I quite liked it, but I only got about a year and a half of it.

I had to explain "milk monitors" to barakta recently.  She's the same age as me, but missed out on many of the subtitles of the early years.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #556 on: 25 August, 2015, 12:07:24 am »
Am I the only person who liked my school milk?

No.  No, you are not.  'twas veritable nectar compared with the alternative beverages available at my skool viz. piss-weak orange squash, a lemon squash/citric acid combination that doubled as paint stripper and tea that had been made shortly after Willoughby-Smith Minor and Twistington-Higgins went off to the Great War.  We only had it as junior ticks so I don't know how long supplies continued after 1975.

They should have supplied Small BEER instead, though.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #557 on: 25 August, 2015, 12:08:46 am »
We, being older, had our ⅓ pint right through primary school.
My sister (17 months my junior) is probably lactose intolerant and hated school milk.
I loved my milk!

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #558 on: 25 August, 2015, 12:21:23 am »
As a very young Mr Larrington we had the choice between milk and cocoa, but you had to decide which you wanted at the start of term.  And being a BFES skool the cocoa was left over from the Boer War.  As, indeed, was the food.

Except the pickled beetroot, which was locally sourced, foul, and on the plate Every.  Fucking.  Day >:(  I think it was the natives' revenge for the bombing of Dresden.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

contango

  • NB have not grown beard since photo was taken
  • The Fat And The Furious
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #559 on: 25 August, 2015, 05:18:44 am »
To this day, I demand someone takes the skin off, I've never understood that. Are you supposed it eat it?

Yes, if it's properly cooked. There's a delicious layer of fat just under the skin, and this becomes crispy if fried, and takes on the flavour of whatever delicious things the fish was cooked in. Fry the fish with finely chopped hazelnuts and crushed garlic, or steam it with ginger and spring onion, or coat it with tamarind and chillies and deep-fry it, and the skin is the best bit.

If the skin is limp, tastes of nothing, or still has lots of scales, then don't eat it. But I wouldn't go back to a restaurant that served fish like this: they clearly don't know what they are doing.

I'm writing off fish in general, it's pretty much reached its culinary epitome when breaded and divided into neat fingers. I can manage battered fish, though it tends to be a bit of a faff and I reach my grease quota about halfway through the average battered haddock and my insides start to feel like an oil-slicked seagull looks. There is no actual limit to the amount of tuna or salmon from a tin I can eat though. Me and the cats could empty the oceans if they could squeeze out enough cans of the stuff. Fresh tuna makes me angry because chefs always insist on leaving it raw in the middle. My thoughts on sushi and sashimi ought to be well-known by now.

Tuna needs to be seared on the outside and raw on the inside. People who don't understand this simple fact really didn't ought to be writing food rants :P

Quote
Fresh fish, mostly always overrated. You must try the seabass someone will demand. It's tastes like the colour white might taste. Now maybe you can concoct some kind of sauce, but if so, tip it over something useful that doesn't cost £5 a mouthful.

I must admit I was rather disappointed with the "delicate" taste of sea bass. It seemed "delicate" in taste in the same way that eating a maruga scorpion pepper might be described as "indelicate". And the resulting depositions into the porcelain god the following morning might also be described as "indelicate".

For the record, I ate a very small amount of a maruga scorpion pepper. Touching the cut surface to my tongue was moderately intense, and chewing tiny bites of the flesh was very intense. It's not something I would recommend to anyone who isn't already something of a chilehead.
Always carry a small flask of whisky in case of snakebite. And, furthermore, always carry a small snake.

contango

  • NB have not grown beard since photo was taken
  • The Fat And The Furious
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #560 on: 25 August, 2015, 05:21:33 am »
Am I the only person who liked my school milk?

I remember numerous tricks to try and get hold of a second unusually sized bottle. One third of a pint was a bottle size I've never seen anywhere since then. Even the weird USA liquor bottles don't seem to include that particular size.
Always carry a small flask of whisky in case of snakebite. And, furthermore, always carry a small snake.

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #561 on: 25 August, 2015, 09:13:47 am »
Unpasteurised milk. Jeez, what next? A smallpox revival? I don't drink milk unless it's been zapped, filtered, and irradiated into something that wouldn’t even recognise actual milk from a cow. I remember full fat milk as a child. It used to make me heave. The best thing Thatcher ever did was get rid of those little bottles of milk at our school, they'd sit there half the day, the cream steadily congealing into a trampoline of fat, and then we had to drink it, trying to recover some milk from the bottle through a process akin to fracking with a straw, desperate not to choke on a clot of lard from the top. I remember when David 'Donkey' Derbyshire went full on vomit after a bottle that had sat there sweltering for a good five hours of summer day whereupon he simultaneously ejaculated two jets of milk out of his nostrils, followed by his entire school dinner. At no point, did his mouth open, everything had to exit through the narrower streets of his nose. He started firing peas and carrots like a nasal Gatling gun before ending in a terminal snuffle of mashed potato and chewed up sausage that made it look like his brains were oozing out of his head (the only giveaway was that Donkey never had that much brains). You can't possibly know how traumatic that was to our young minds. I don't think our teacher ever returned to teaching.

You forgot to mention that in winter , the bottles would have a good half inch or more of ice in them which is difficult to penetrate with a cheap paper ,yes paper, straw. So milk crates were then placed near the cast iron radiator to allow the ice to melt a little. The resulting mush probably put more kids off drinking milk than any threat of T.B .

I was brought up on  a dairy farm so our milk came straight out of the cooler and was fresh every day.
When I started school and saw milk in bottles, I decided that it wasn't real milk and most days I couldn't bring myself to drink it. I still don't like to drink milk unless it has some flavour in it.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #562 on: 25 August, 2015, 09:23:57 am »
They still have milk in Polish primary schools, along with a piece of fruit – that's probably a newer innovation, but I'm not sure of the volume or at what age they stop. It might even be the whole of primary, which is till 13.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

ian

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #563 on: 25 August, 2015, 09:47:26 am »
We upgraded from the milk (universally unpopular in my class, to this day I can't drink neat milk) to small tetrapaks of ludicrously orange squash. Too orangey for crows, certain. Too orangey for nature. I think it was undiluted tartrazine. I don't recall it tasting of an actual orange. It really was just a colour. Of course, childish fingers and a tetrapak ensured a lot of a orange school children. It was the 1980s version of school kid hi-viz.

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #564 on: 25 August, 2015, 02:41:51 pm »
Am I the only person who liked my school milk?

I remember numerous tricks to try and get hold of a second unusually sized bottle. One third of a pint was a bottle size I've never seen anywhere since then. Even the weird USA liquor bottles don't seem to include that particular size.

⅓ pint is 189ml. Is 200ml that different or difficult?

Eccentrica Gallumbits

  • Rock 'n' roll and brew, rock 'n' roll and brew...
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #565 on: 25 August, 2015, 08:40:04 pm »
Why don't people just go along to their local dairy farm and ask to buy raw milk?

Tuberculosis.
Actually, the main reason is that few farmers are allowed to sell it. 'Green top' milk was not pasteurized and farmers had to be subject to rigorous testing regimes in order to be licensed to sell it. Dunno anywhere here that offers it.
When I lived in Holmfirth we had a milkperson who delivered direct from the farm. Really fresh greentop, fantastic stuff.
We always had green top milk when I lived in Huddersfield. It's much nicer than other milk.
My feminist marxist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.


Eccentrica Gallumbits

  • Rock 'n' roll and brew, rock 'n' roll and brew...
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #566 on: 25 August, 2015, 08:42:11 pm »
Restaurants/cafes/brasseries of Paris and Versailles: vegetarians exist and we are willing to exchange money for food. Sort it out.
My feminist marxist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.


Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #567 on: 25 August, 2015, 08:45:07 pm »
Am I the only person who liked my school milk?

I remember numerous tricks to try and get hold of a second unusually sized bottle. One third of a pint was a bottle size I've never seen anywhere since then. Even the weird USA liquor bottles don't seem to include that particular size.

⅓ pint is 189ml. Is 200ml that different or difficult?
Very different, I'd say. Both ⅓ pint and 200ml are "sensible" sizes or rather sizes sensibly expressed. 189ml or, say, 2/9 pint would not be.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

ian

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #568 on: 25 August, 2015, 09:15:34 pm »
In other matters, gluten intolerance, when did that become a lifestyle. Hey everyone, I'm gluten intolerant. Seriously lady, I don't even know your name and already you're telling me which foods might make you fart.

Loads of foods make me fart, some quite extravagantly. The undergarment storms that result from me eating beans are so mighty they are given names and attract grim faced junior reporters from the Weather Channel who would rather had been sent to stand in front of a hurricane with nothing more than a microphone and cheap cagoule. I only announce this on the internet, not to a crowded restaurant like it's an achievement. Just stop it.

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #569 on: 25 August, 2015, 09:25:05 pm »
In other matters, gluten intolerance, when did that become a lifestyle. Hey everyone, I'm gluten intolerant. Seriously lady, I don't even know your name and already you're telling me which foods might make you fart.

Well, in my brother's case, in about 1980, when one lot of doctors got their fingers out of their collective arse and produced a diagnosis that had evaded others since he was born three years earlier, just about in time to stop my parents killing him because Weetabix was about the only thing that would stay down.

It might not be a lifestyle he'd choose, but it sure as  fuck beats the alternative.

(Ok, ok, coeliac disease is less an intolerance, more an auto-immune thing, but these things aren't just a fad for everyone.)

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #570 on: 25 August, 2015, 10:02:49 pm »
Gluten 'intolerance' is a trendy chattering classes non-issue.
Coeliac disease is horrible but tolerable with a strict gluten-free diet.
It is vaguely useful for coeliacs that the availability of gluten-free food has increased to meet demand from the chatterers.

Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #571 on: 25 August, 2015, 11:02:33 pm »
Oh, I'm more than aware of the difference between chattering class self-diagnosis and, um, the rest - but it's a little difficult to be certain of those differences across a crowded restaurant.

Not everyone who makes a dietary request is engaged in frivolous self-aggrandisement, and the assumption that they are, so such a request can safely be ignored, has damn near put my wife in hospital several times. (Eggs, not gluten, in her case.)

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #572 on: 25 August, 2015, 11:45:29 pm »
Indeed.  I'd suggest that while the chattering classes faddishness is undeniably a thing, what's also happened is that it's become more socially acceptable to have specific dietary requirements, and people who might previously have suffered in silence at home are now feeling they have the right, if not always the ability, to safely eat out.

The problem with invisible disabilities is that you don't usually encounter people's disableist behaviour until you disclose them, and sometimes - perhaps as a result of the chattering fads, but mainly as a result of people in positions of power being arrogant fuckwits - people feel the need to be really emphatic about the magnitude of the problem in order to reduce the likelihood of careless contamination.

I really don't want to talk about poo.  I get more than enough of that in the privacy of the toilet.  But if all that's on the menu is a tomato & onion greaseburger, cooked in the traditional Glaswegian style and served in a toasted sesame[1] seed bun, I'm going to politely refuse.  If polite refusals aren't strong enough (as often they aren't - see drinkohol threads passim), I'll invoke the TMI slink off or pretend not to be hungry, because I've been socialised not to make a fuss.  But that's because I only have postcholecystectomy syndrome, and the worst effect is likely to be an afternoon in the bog wishing I could die.  Coeliac disease is much more serious.


[1] Unrelated allergy.  Not life-threatening, unless I'm already having a bad breathing day.  Probably.

barakta

  • Bastard lovechild of Yomiko Readman and Johnny 5
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #573 on: 25 August, 2015, 11:48:15 pm »
To be fair sesame would probably result in anaphylaxis for you Kim so that's serious too.

But yes, I agree. Same with lactose. I'm not 100% intolerant, just annoyingly so - it's tedious and boring and makes buying ready cooked/made food very difficult although not as difficult as coeliacs have it.  But I will get TMI guts for 2 days afterwards if I am given regular milk by mistake and I am sure if I drank more than 50ml milk that I'd be iller.

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: the food rant thread
« Reply #574 on: 26 August, 2015, 12:10:42 am »
If barakta wants dairy-free kosher food, choose anything marked 'Parev' or 'Parve', which means neutral.
Orthodox Jews don't eat meat with milk and might not eat anything dairy for several hours after meat. This means they seek foods they can eat after meat meals.