the food rant thread

[ian]

No, don't. DON'T. Not the in-room tea and coffee making facilities. It's a trap. I only once made that mistake and the result tasted like I'd used Tutankhamun as a teabag. I think those facilities had last been cleaned and used back in the second dynasty. I remember running around the room making a ack-ack sound and desperate for something, anything to drink and finding only $7 bottle of water. I'd rather die than pay $7 dollar for water. The tap water tasted like it had been used to clean engine parts, so that only left the minibar. On the grounds that American civilisation teeters and could be sent reeling into the abyss if anyone under the age of twenty one even sees an alcoholic beverage, American hotel minibars are more secure than Fort Knox. I'm spitting bits of Tutankhamun's bandaid and trying to get the key in the lock and break the minibar's security seal while slowly feeling my insides mummify. This is why Americans have guns. To get in the fucking minibar.

[Mr Larrington]

Fortunately I don't stay in the kind of places that have minibars anyway...  The Brown Drink available in the room was an order of magnitude better than the ozard muck in the dining room this morning though.  But I actually wanted the sugar to put in my tea, having brought with me a travel kettle and a box of Yorkshire teabags.

[hellymedic]

A 35mm film canister filled with white crystals might be you next travelling friend.
Or might excite the attention of Jobsworth Borderguards

[Mr Larrington]

I doned five crossings of the USAnia/Canuckistan border so far this trip, though only four of them came equipped with a Person with a Gun as Mr Obambi doesn't care who goes to Hyder AK.  Only one of them has even asked to look in the boot.

[contango]

Speaking of which, I had some fun the day I accidentally crossed the Canada-US border at the Niagara Falls due to taking a wrong turning. Having turned around in the US and gone back over the bridge, of course Canadian immigration was ready to greet me. So there I was, speaking with a British accent and driving a car with Florida plates explaining why I only planned to be in Canada for about half an hour. That was interesting, although thankfully nobody felt the need for me to talk to the nice men with the long rubber gloves.

[ian]

As someone who once had to be rescued from life as a bridge troll on the Canada-US border, I'm always scared. It's what happens when you get caught between two sets of people who like to dress up in uniforms. Unless it's a cosplay sex game, in which case I imagine there's a larger dry cleaning bill and less bureaucracy.

A friend and I once drove down to Point Roberts and spent a happy fifteen minutes jumping back and forth over the US-Canada border. I declared war on Canada on behalf of the US with a pre-emptive barrage of pine cones. She then kicked dirt over the yellow kerbstone into the US. Canadian dirt. Things escalated from there, as wars so often do, to become known as the Battle of the 49th Parallel. Fortunately no border guards stumbled across two people pelting one another with pine cones and acorns across an international border as I'm sure there are international statutes about that sort of thing. Unfortunately, after taking an acorn in the eye, the US had to cede victory to a rather smug Canadian, and forever there will remain a little bit more Canadian dirt in US territory.

[Mr Larrington]

I've redressed the balance by bringing a good deal of the Nevada desert into Canada on the flanks of my motor-car, where it has subsequently been washed off by the rain.  If it wasn't raining I'd likely visit Point Roberts but it is raining and seems set to do so all day so I'm going over the mountains to where it's drier, armed only with a box of chocolate chip biscuits, to slow down the bears while I make my escape.

They call this part of BC the Sunshine Coast.  Ha fucking Ha.

[ian]

I think 'Sunshine Coast' was always intended to be a joke and demonstrate that Canadians have clung to a finely honed sense of irony. I actually got so wet once on Bowen Island that I was chased by a dolphin down the street and onto the ferry.

[Mr Larrington]

We have chicken with rice or vegetarian pasta, said the Nice Lady in the blue uniform.  I chose the former.  It was like I'd travelled forty years back in time, to the days when airline food was the most feared anti-comsymp weapon in the CIA's export portfolio.

Also world+dog should eschew the soi-disant "Seattle's Best Coffee" franchise.  Not only for charging ten dollars for a ham sandwich and a cup of "coffee" but also because the name is blatant bollocks.  Unless it isn't, of course, in which case any claims Seattle has to being a hotbed of caffeinated excellence are founded on a thick and squishy mulch of Lie.

[ian]

Yeahbut, in Seattle there's like an intersection and there's a Starbucks on every corner! Someone told me that once in a very excitable voice that made it sound like he had precisely twenty breaths left until he died and he wanted to ensure those were the final words that passed over his lips. I should have hit him with a shovel and made it so. You excite me not with such a statement. I'm not particularly against Starbucks coffee, it has its taste, but it's just part of the brown bilgewater tsunami that has washed across every city. When did it become normal to pay £2.50 for a cup of coffee? When did barista become a profession? Why does every shop now had a small steam engine chugging in the back? Even the mothership has guest 'baristas' barnacling up reception. OK, I like that one and you would too if you'd crossed beverages with any of the motherships' coffeebots. These were parented by 1980's era KLIX vending machines, the ones that micturated the hot fluorescent orange drink. As far as I know that was a less a drink more a symphony of e-numbers. As a child when I drank one of those (there was a KLIX machine standing sentry at the swimming pool), I had no memory of the succeeding thirty minutes, till I woke up in a ditch à la Hulk and noted the world still had a curious orange tinge, or possibly that was my skin. Sadly the mothership's coffeebots don't do orange but they do encourage a lot of people to go next door to Costa, or if they're posh, one of those New Zealand gravel straining operations around the corner. OK, some credit to the chains for knocking over the styrofoam cup of Nescafe Cheap-n-Nasty instant that preceded them.

I'm not sure if 'Seattle's Best' is chutzpah or desperation. It's like 'Perfect Fried Chicken' – now that's a claim. There's a sliding scale of fried chicken shop braggadocio, from perfection down to 'Tennessee's Best' (I think I drove through Tennessee precisely once, I don't remember the chicken). The formula State + Superlative + Chicken stretches all the down to Florida where it can dip its toes in the Keys and claim 'Florida's Best Chicken.' While the South is admittedly the home of deep frying, unfortunate chickens, and racism, I'm pretty sure Florida isn't really the South. Florida's Finest Cuban Sandwich would be better, methinks.

[ian]

I meant to say something on the subject of airplane food which still occupies that niche where they just tell you the kind of meat or define it as vegetable, and provide no further description. I always wanted to start a restaurant on that basis. Just three items on the menu. Chicken, beef, or vegetable. And we don't have any chicken.

Someone will probably tell me this already exists up Shoreditch way.

Unless you travel first where everything comes with exotic descriptions all the way down to the parentage of its ingredients. It still tastes like airplane food.

[contango]

They call this part of BC the Sunshine Coast.  Ha fucking Ha.

The sun does shine on that coast. Just not that part of that coast.

[Mr Larrington]

They call this part of BC the Sunshine Coast.  Ha fucking Ha.

The sun does shine on that coast. Just not that part of that coast.

Presumably it only shines on the uninhabited bits?

Emily the SatNav claimed that Squamish was two metres below sea level; my new chum Ursula said "Oh, yes, they just had a big flood there!" so Emily may even have been right.

[fuzzy]

As someone who once had to be rescued from life as a bridge troll on the Canada-US border, I'm always scared. It's what happens when you get caught between two sets of people who like to dress up in uniforms. Unless it's a cosplay sex game, in which case I imagine there's a larger dry cleaning bill and less bureaucracy.

A friend and I once drove down to Point Roberts and spent a happy fifteen minutes jumping back and forth over the US-Canada border. I declared war on Canada on behalf of the US with a pre-emptive barrage of pine cones. She then kicked dirt over the yellow kerbstone into the US. Canadian dirt. Things escalated from there, as wars so often do, to become known as the Battle of the 49th Parallel. Fortunately no border guards stumbled across two people pelting one another with pine cones and acorns across an international border as I'm sure there are international statutes about that sort of thing. Unfortunately, after taking an acorn in the eye, the US had to cede victory to a rather smug Canadian, and forever there will remain a little bit more Canadian dirt in US territory.

Be careful about dissing baristas ian. The dude that does his thaing at ICEbike every year makes a fecking good cup of Java

[contango]

They call this part of BC the Sunshine Coast.  Ha fucking Ha.

The sun does shine on that coast. Just not that part of that coast.

Presumably it only shines on the uninhabited bits?

Emily the SatNav claimed that Squamish was two metres below sea level; my new chum Ursula said "Oh, yes, they just had a big flood there!" so Emily may even have been right.

I guess if you go far enough south you get to somewhere the sun has been known to shine, even if only once when nobody was looking.

GPS elevation estimates are usually good for a laugh. When I walked or cycled a circular route it was remarkable how my total ascent and total descent varied by anything up to 1000 feet. Since I never dug a hole that deep and still can't quite figure out how to levitate I had to wonder. Not that this has anything to do with food, although any warping of the gravitational field caused by the sheer mass of the person ahead of me in the queue for a super-jumbo-monster sized ice cream this afternoon could have explained such things.

[tiermat]

I woke this morning feeling a bit groggy.

Decided to have a day sick.

Ate breakfast, lounged around, did nowt.

Come lunchtime, I made Mrs T her lunch (she is WfH today), but didn't feel like eating myself.

After about 1/2 hour of her finishing her lunch, I decided I had better make myself something, so had a sandwich.

Now I can't stop eating! How does that work? From not hungry to unsatiable in one easy step?

[Kim]

Now I can't stop eating! How does that work? From not hungry to unsatiable in one easy step?

That's normal for me.  I only really feel hunger if I've eaten recently.  If I go a long time without food, I actively don't want to eat (but know that if I do, after a while I'll feel less sick).

[Cudzoziemiec]

Food Technology. For those without children of the appropriate age, this is the current term for Domestic Science or Home Economics, ie cooking things in class. This requires you to buy ingredients you would never normally allow purchase and which you will never use again, such as

(click to show/hide)

margarine. Butter, apparently, is not acceptable.

And then the kids don't even get to eat it in class, where they might perhaps compare different versions, they're expected to bring it home. I guess teachers have to take revenge on parents somehow.

[T42]

Missus brought home some very handsome "bio" plums all done up in a fancy box.  No amount of washing will remove the taste of mould.

Give me Round-Up any day.

[Mr Larrington]

Can you even buy proper margarine - the stuff made from boiled cows and Chemicals - any more?  Everything seems to be either heavily-mutated olive oil or variations on the theme of not-butter.

[ian]

Ah, Stork Margarine. I think that was fish oil and petroleum industry biproducts. As students used to liberally butter slabs of fat white toast and apply posters to the wall. Rumours of its use as a sexual lubricant are, I hope, unfounded. But needs must as needs want.

On other matters, aubergines. Where does the jury stand on aubergines?

[contango]

Ah, Stork Margarine. I think that was fish oil and petroleum industry biproducts. As students used to liberally butter slabs of fat white toast and apply posters to the wall. Rumours of its use as a sexual lubricant are, I hope, unfounded. But needs must as needs want.

On other matters, aubergines. Where does the jury stand on aubergines?

Aubergines have their place. Ideally on someone else's plate. Or, better yet, as ballast or projectile weapons.

[Mr Larrington]

On other matters, aubergines. Where does the jury stand on aubergines?

As a Son of York I ought to be in favour of them but in reality they don't do anything that can't be done more cheaply with the Humble Potato.  And I have yet to see Hash Purples (and hope fervently that I never do) though I expect that e'en now someone with a shovel-shaped beard is experimenting in a Hoxton basement.

[menthel]

Ah, Stork Margarine. I think that was fish oil and petroleum industry biproducts. As students used to liberally butter slabs of fat white toast and apply posters to the wall. Rumours of its use as a sexual lubricant are, I hope, unfounded. But needs must as needs want.

On other matters, aubergines. Where does the jury stand on aubergines?

The aubergine is a fine beast, whether prepared in Indian, middle eastern or Provençal style. Mmm, aubergines.

[Raj]

The aubergine is a fine beast, whether prepared in Indian, middle eastern or Provençal style. Mmm, aubergines.

Amen to that ... As a Briton of Indian origin, I can vouch for the fact that the Aubergine is highly underrated in the West.
Look up Baingan Bharta and give it a try. Exquisitely simple ... exceedingly tasty !!! 

http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/baingan-bharta-recipe-punjabi-baingan-bharta-recipe