the food rant thread

[jsabine]

Coeliac disease is much more serious.

For a one-off, no, I don't think it is. Force-feed my brother a sandwich, and he'll have little or no ill-effects from it. Change his diet more permanently, and you've written a different story, but there's certainly no point worrying too hard about crumbs in the butter, albeit they're best avoided as a bit infra-dig.

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. 

Not sure that he really finds it that hard to be honest - it's just a matter of finding an appropriate routine, especially now that every supermarket has a FreeFrom section.

No egg/wheat/nut/mushroom/shellfish can be entertaining sometimes though - mostly I just give up and cook from scratch.

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.

That's an interesting point. I guess I've not really considered it too much because, growing up, I was never really aware of us not eating out because of my brother's diet. (In truth, the fact that steak and chips is practically universally available meant that there was always a possible option, even if it was sometimes a tedious one.)

More recently, it's been more obvious where some chefs or restaurants simply don't seem to give a monkey's, while others are quite different - going out to a nice place in Edinburgh for one of my parents' birthdays and booking the tasting menu, we supplied an impressively long list of dietary requirements, to be told "that'll be no problem - the chef believes everyone should be able to enjoy the meal equally."

This included suitable homemade bread that was gluten, wheat and egg-free: sadly subsequent visits (for a more modest menu) have revealed that they've started buying in the gluten-free bread, which now contains egg - fine for my brother, not so for my wife.

Still, steak and chips remains the universal panacea - at least unless you're vegetarian ... or a Parisian waiter insists that they haven't wiped the bearnaise sauce off the plate, and that there's no egg in it anyway.

[Cudzoziemiec]

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.

OTOH, I've just discovered the minimum regulation size of a cricket ball is 8 ¹³/₁₆ inches. But presumably that was set empirically.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Allergies, intolerances, special diets and eating out. I guess the problem from the kitchen's pov is their multiplicity and compoundness. As illustrated by jsabine's Edinburgh resto. Yes, we have gluten-free bread. Yes, we can do things without eggs. Oh, but bread that is gluten-free and egg-free and has no sesame? Then add halal etc, it all gets increasingly complicated and probably expensive for increasingly little return (ie fewer people).

Though it would help if staff knew what they had and didn't have. Bakery down the road advertises gluten-free goodies Monday, Friday and Saturday. I went in one Sat morning to get something for a gluten-allergic (or whatever it is) friend, bloke there had to phone the boss at home to find out what they had and where (which turned out to be left over from the previous day  ).

[ian]

Well, that was kind of a proxy rant for a friend of mine with coeliac disease who is forever being greeted with 'oh you're gluten intolerant too!' to which she cheerily replies 'yes, so much so that I had a portion of my bowel removed, you?' Tends to shut them up.

And yes, she might not be pleased by the self-diagnosed company, but she pleased to get her own section of the supermarket aisle and some understanding from the world. But hey, this is a rant, and I think we know that a lot of these self-diagnosed food intolerances are rebranded look-at-me faddism.

Which given, after loudly exhausting the menu, she ordered a pizza, I'll say her intolerance was taking the night off.

We all react differently to food stuff. I literally cannot eat beans without significant pain. And I remember the fateful description from a colorectal surgeon former colleague of mine of the man who farted so badly that his insides fell out. Apparently it looked like a 'giant bloody cauliflower'. He fair ruined my dessert with that description. Never share an office with bum surgeons and urologists.

[ian]

Restaurants/cafes/brasseries of Paris and Versailles: vegetarians exist and we are willing to exchange money for food. Sort it out.

When I was a vegetarian one of my French friends called it a 'malady of the stomach', then after a moment or three of contemplation, she tapped me in the middle of the forehead and added 'and the brain' before going to off to smoke cigarettes and watch arty moves in tiny cinemas and whatever else it is that the French do when they're not insulting me. I recall eating a lot of omelettes.

[Jaded]

School milk. We used to purloin bottles and stash them were they wouldn't be found. The aim was to get an extrusion of stuff that looked like cream from a spray can (and smelt litkeit too) with the foil cap perched on top. Under it would be a swirly mix of a greenish fluid and white wispy clumps. Marvellous.

[contango]

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.

No reason to resize to 200ml when things were measured in imperial.

It makes no more sense than insisting that the 25.4mm length be rounded down to an "easier" 25mm. It might work better in metric but the reduction from 1" to 0.984" isn't going to please the people using the original units.

An ongoing gripe for me (unrelated to food, but what the heck) was the way imperial units were abandoned in a way that made what could have been a simple job into a major job. Trying to replace a 3-foot-square shower tray was an experience when things were metric, where a 1-metre-square unit didn't fit and a 90-cm-square unit left enough space at the edges I might as well have sprayed all the water over the floor and been done with it.

I sometimes wonder how many people are still getting rich from selling pipe connectors to join 1/2" pipe to 15mm pipe.

[contango]

We all react differently to food stuff. I literally cannot eat beans without significant pain. And I remember the fateful description from a colorectal surgeon former colleague of mine of the man who farted so badly that his insides fell out. Apparently it looked like a 'giant bloody cauliflower'. He fair ruined my dessert with that description. Never share an office with bum surgeons and urologists.

I never liked cauliflower anyway. Probably just as well having read that. Still, I guess you can be thankful he didn't share his description during a meal of cauliflower and tomato sauce.

[contango]

School milk. We used to purloin bottles and stash them were they wouldn't be found. The aim was to get an extrusion of stuff that looked like cream from a spray can (and smelt litkeit too) with the foil cap perched on top. Under it would be a swirly mix of a greenish fluid and white wispy clumps. Marvellous.

In my university days the shared fridge in the shared kitchen was a sure-fire way to make sure your stuff got stolen between you putting it in the fridge and hoping to take it back out of the fridge.

A friend got so sick of stuff being stolen he took a mould of a Yorkie bar, then bought a bar of chocolate exlax which he melted and poured into the mould. Folding the Yorkie paper around it he left it in the fridge, until a few days later it mysteriously vanished. About a day later all the toilet paper also mysteriously vanished, and no further thefts took place from his fridge for a while.

One term I bought a pint of milk but only needed a splash from the top. I left it in the communal fridge figuring someone would make good use of it. Except that 9 weeks later it was still sitting there, had acquired a personality of its own, and I think was part way through studying for a degree in philosophy.

[Cudzoziemiec]

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.

No reason to resize to 200ml when things were measured in imperial.

It makes no more sense than insisting that the 25.4mm length be rounded down to an "easier" 25mm. It might work better in metric but the reduction from 1" to 0.984" isn't going to please the people using the original units.

An ongoing gripe for me (unrelated to food, but what the heck) was the way imperial units were abandoned in a way that made what could have been a simple job into a major job. Trying to replace a 3-foot-square shower tray was an experience when things were metric, where a 1-metre-square unit didn't fit and a 90-cm-square unit left enough space at the edges I might as well have sprayed all the water over the floor and been done with it.

I sometimes wonder how many people are still getting rich from selling pipe connectors to join 1/2" pipe to 15mm pipe.

Bike parts are weird in this respect. Why do we have 1¹/₄" headsets but 31.8mm bars? Apart from Deda, who make 31.7mm bars – but it's the same size, just rounded down instead of up.

[mrcharly-YHT]

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.

Almost certainly from the dairy I was talking about!

[barakta]

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.

That is useful, I will keep my eye out for those. Mostly it's stupidity on my part and not reading the sodding ingredients every single sodding time.  There are some things I can get away with and others I really can't. Thankfully I don't get REALLY unwell, just slightly.

A lot also depends on sensitivity, my friend who got diagnosed with coeliac disease about 3-4 years ago is sensitive even to a crumb in her food and she often struggles with gluten-poisoning which makes her fluey and ill for 1-4 days.  If in doubt I will always assume worst-case for someone reporting an intolerance/allergy even if they choose to increase their risk themselves or eat something they oughtn't (or cos they're being faddy).

[contango]

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.

No reason to resize to 200ml when things were measured in imperial.

It makes no more sense than insisting that the 25.4mm length be rounded down to an "easier" 25mm. It might work better in metric but the reduction from 1" to 0.984" isn't going to please the people using the original units.

An ongoing gripe for me (unrelated to food, but what the heck) was the way imperial units were abandoned in a way that made what could have been a simple job into a major job. Trying to replace a 3-foot-square shower tray was an experience when things were metric, where a 1-metre-square unit didn't fit and a 90-cm-square unit left enough space at the edges I might as well have sprayed all the water over the floor and been done with it.

I sometimes wonder how many people are still getting rich from selling pipe connectors to join 1/2" pipe to 15mm pipe.

Bike parts are weird in this respect. Why do we have 1¹/₄" headsets but 31.8mm bars? Apart from Deda, who make 31.7mm bars – but it's the same size, just rounded down instead of up.

Probably because of half-assed metrication.

I always found it irritating when food products simply turned the nice round number into a number that looked totally random unless you knew the old units.

When a 1lb Christmas pudding went metric they could have taken the chance to make it a nice round 500g but no, they labelled it as a "454g pudding". The larger size was 907g. Then came the bottle of milk that went from being 1 pint to being 568ml, although more recently I've seen milk sold by the litre rather than seemingly random fractions of a litre.

It can be fun to mix and match units for the sake of it, so you can have a piece of drill rod 1/4" in diameter and 50mm in length. It's good for winding people up, if not ideal for engineering purposes.

[contango]

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.

AIUI the guideline is something like three hours between eating milk and meat products. Apparently it originates from Exodus 23:19 that prohibits boiling a young goat in its mother's milk, but it seems to have gained layers of restriction over the years.

A Jewish friend of mine not only won't eat milk and meat products together, he won't eat one within three hours of eating the other, and has completely separate sets of cutlery and crockery for milk and meat dishes. In his kitchen he has two dishwashers - one for the meat dishes and one for the milk dishes. He doesn't describe himself as particularly strict, he knows people who are sufficiently strict they won't eat meat from a barbecue unless they know exactly what has been on it previously, in case it has been contaminated by something they regard as not kosher.

[hellymedic]

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.

AIUI the guideline is something like three hours between eating milk and meat products. Apparently it originates from Exodus 23:19 that prohibits boiling a young goat in its mother's milk, but it seems to have gained layers of restriction over the years.

A Jewish friend of mine not only won't eat milk and meat products together, he won't eat one within three hours of eating the other, and has completely separate sets of cutlery and crockery for milk and meat dishes. In his kitchen he has two dishwashers - one for the meat dishes and one for the milk dishes. He doesn't describe himself as particularly strict, he knows people who are sufficiently strict they won't eat meat from a barbecue unless they know exactly what has been on it previously, in case it has been contaminated by something they regard as not kosher.

All the members of my close family do all of that, including duplicated dishwashers.
The post meat milk abstinence is variable, depending on tradition.
Sephardi (Spanish, Portuguese & Oriental) Jews wait one hour.
Western Ashkenazi (Dutch, German) wait three hours.
Haredi usually wait six hours or 'into the sixth hour' (5+). This includes my sister and her kids.

Obviously, people get pretty hungry 5 hours after a meal so will want suitable snacks.

[contango]

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.

AIUI the guideline is something like three hours between eating milk and meat products. Apparently it originates from Exodus 23:19 that prohibits boiling a young goat in its mother's milk, but it seems to have gained layers of restriction over the years.

A Jewish friend of mine not only won't eat milk and meat products together, he won't eat one within three hours of eating the other, and has completely separate sets of cutlery and crockery for milk and meat dishes. In his kitchen he has two dishwashers - one for the meat dishes and one for the milk dishes. He doesn't describe himself as particularly strict, he knows people who are sufficiently strict they won't eat meat from a barbecue unless they know exactly what has been on it previously, in case it has been contaminated by something they regard as not kosher.

All the members of my close family do all of that, including duplicated dishwashers.
The post meat milk abstinence is variable, depending on tradition.
Sephardi (Spanish, Portuguese & Oriental) Jews wait one hour.
Western Ashkenazi (Dutch, German) wait three hours.
Haredi usually wait six hours or 'into the sixth hour' (5+). This includes my sister and her kids.

Obviously, people get pretty hungry 5 hours after a meal so will want suitable snacks.

I didn't realise people waited different periods, I thought three hours was pretty standard.

My Jewish friend told me of a situation with a couple of his friends where one of them declined a particularly tasty side dish that had meat in it, much to the surprise of his dining companion. But his reasoning became clear an hour later when he had a large bowl of ice cream in the sun, while his companion couldn't because he had eaten meat too recently to be eating milk.

Do you know how the prohibition of boiling a kid in its mother's milk turned into a requirement to wait for so many hours between eating meat and milk? I can see that cooking meat in milk might be troublesome because we never know just which animal provided the milk but don't understand how, for example, putting a slice of cheese on a burger is in any way related to the prohibition and struggle even more with the idea that if you ate meat two hours ago you can't have a glass of milk now.

I fully appreciate where religious requirements are concerned the standard response is often "God said so", I just don't see where God actually did say so.

[rafletcher]

I fully appreciate where religious requirements are concerned the standard response is often "God said so", I just don't see where God actually did say so.

It's also one of those where I can't see a practical benefit (unlike say not eating easily perishable pork or seafood in hot climes without preservation)

[hellymedic]

I don't know where and when these edicts came in.
It has been traditional to reinforce Rules with a precautionary 'fence'.

Too much fat and protein (costly foods in most economies) might be perceived as 'indulgent' or 'greedy'.

[geraldc]

There are theories that some of the rules are designed to keep the Jews apart from other tribes. e.g. The rules regarding kosher wine are a case in point. Kosher wine shared with someone non Jewish instantly renders the rest of the bottle non kosher.

[ian]

Or perhaps it's all made up because, well, because. God can do whatever the shit he or she wants. It's a job perk. He made pickles Kosher. I think he does each one individually. Everyone needs a hobby. Mine is eating Kosher pickles. Me and God got a thing going on.

My first proper girlfriend (you can only have so much impropriety) was Jewish on her father's side (which probably meant she wasn't Jewish, isn't it matrilineal?), but anyway, areligious me got myself dragged along once-upon-a-time to gathering of her more remote orthodox relatives (they have better hats in Finchley, there should be a big orthodox hat league). Now that was a culture shock. Served me right for conscientiously objecting to RE and sitting in the corridor (not that I think Judaism got much coverage). In the end to avoid breaking any more rules I stood quietly in a corner not touching anything. It's hard work is religion. In Hell, they have cheeze whiz on tap and there's no lock-out period. You can use it as toothpaste or for comedy yellow moustaches. The Devil don't care. He encourages that sort of behaviour.

Thinking about it, I may have non-Koshered the entire gathering with my heathen stink. Mind you, she was lapsed about as far as you could lapse without being her father who I think the entire state of Judaism had disowned. He was probably the only thing they all agree on.

[hellymedic]

My first proper girlfriend (you can only have so much impropriety) was Jewish on her father's side (which probably meant she wasn't Jewish, isn't it matrilineal?), but anyway, areligious me got myself dragged along once-upon-a-time to gathering of her more remote orthodox relatives (they have better hats in Finchley, there should be a big orthodox hat league).

Judaism is matrilineal.
Finchley has good hats
Stamford Hill has extreme hats.

Mrs Elswood pickled cucumbers are my usual pickle. Very Kosher!

[Mr Larrington]

Judaism is matrilineal.
Finchley has good hats
Stamford Hill has extreme hats.

The hats of Stamford Hill are extreme to the extent that as far away as San Francisco the locals of that part of North Londonton are sometimes known as "Stamford Hillbillies". It was on my commute for many a year.

[Andrij]

Finchley has good hats
Stamford Hill has extreme hats.

Last Saturday (the Sabbath, for those not in the know) I walked from Stoke Newington (close enough to Stamford Hill) to Hendon.  There was quite an impressive range of head coverings on display along the way.


To bring things back on topic...
HOW MUCH for skate?!?  OK, it was a large piece of fish, and not bad, but definitely not worth £8!  Now I see why you have all your prices up on the board - except for your fish.  Next time I'll ask the price is I ask for anyhting other than cod.

[contango]

I fully appreciate where religious requirements are concerned the standard response is often "God said so", I just don't see where God actually did say so.

It's also one of those where I can't see a practical benefit (unlike say not eating easily perishable pork or seafood in hot climes without preservation)

Where religious requirements are concerned I don't suppose there has to be a specifically identifiable practical benefit, although in the days of the Exodus it's possible there was some health implication associated with meat and milk that came from the same animal.

[contango]

Finchley has good hats
Stamford Hill has extreme hats.

Last Saturday (the Sabbath, for those not in the know) I walked from Stoke Newington (close enough to Stamford Hill) to Hendon.  There was quite an impressive range of head coverings on display along the way.


To bring things back on topic...
HOW MUCH for skate?!?  OK, it was a large piece of fish, and not bad, but definitely not worth £8!  Now I see why you have all your prices up on the board - except for your fish.  Next time I'll ask the price is I ask for anyhting other than cod.

I went to a local county fair here in rural Pennsylvania and some guy wanted $10 for what he rather optimistically described as a "bucket of fries". So in other words that's $10 for a few more chips than you can put in a folded bit of paper.

On the flipside the deep fried Oreos were an experience. Not an entirely unpleasant one, at least from the perspective of my taste buds. I'm not sure my arteries would have rated it as highly. Hey ho, can't win them all.