things i'd like to eat

[barakta]

I can't stand primula either, it's just not nice.
And now I'm saved from eating Primula or Dairy Lea triangles by the horrendous lactose-containing ingredients (milk and whey powder being LETHAL for lactose content).

I can eat hard cheese and brie cos their lactose levels are very low.

[T42]

That's funny: I can eat soft cheeses but hard ones appear to fizz with my metformin.  If I'm on a long Audax I don't take it, and I can eat hard cheeses until the cows come home with no ill-effects.  That might be due to the fat percentage, of course: Comté, Beaufort & so forth have higher fat content than Brie and Camembert, and on a long ride they're liable to be processed faster as fuel...

[barakta]

Almost certainly, cos lactose basically lives in the carbohydratey/non-fatty bits of the cheese, so a crude rule of thumb about cheese safety for the not-100% lactose intolerant like myself is look at the carb % as a rough heuristic for max lactose content.

I dunno what lactose is like as a sugar from the diabetic perspective but sounds like your experience with it is not amazing.

[T42]

Before I went onto metformin I could eat any kind of cheese with impunity. Metformin plays a bit fast & loose with the liver, so my theory was always that digesting hard cheese is more liver-intensive, so the liver didn't quite have the capacity to deal with both metformin and the toxins in the cheese - hard cheese has more than soft. Could be bollocks, though.

ETA pre-metformin I could also eat durian with no problems, but durian + metformin makes me ill - swollen liver, headaches for a couple of days.  There's a variety of durian than can cause fatal poisoning if eaten with alcohol, so I suspect it's something like that.

[hellymedic]

Lactose is split into glucose and galactose in the small intestine of those who have lactase therein. (Lactose intolerant folk don't)

Glucose hits the blood unchanged but needs insulin to enter the cells.
Galactose needs to be processed in the liver.

If ALL the lactose is converted to lactic acid by fermentation, a lactose-intolerant person might be OK with a dairy product.

[ian]

I used to know a guy who thought lactose would kill him, which I suppose is extreme intolerance. Really, as said, it just gets fermented into the gut to various levels of intestinal distress. Then again he was the sort of guy who self-diagnosed himself with every middle-class ailment known.

[pcolbeck]

The Laughing Cow cheese triangles are much nicer than Dairy Lee. I think they might even contain some real cheese.

[Hot Flatus]

Before I went onto metformin I could eat any kind of cheese with impunity. Metformin plays a bit fast & loose with the liver, so my theory was always that digesting hard cheese is more liver-intensive, so the liver didn't quite have the capacity to deal with both metformin and the toxins in the cheese - hard cheese has more than soft. Could be bollocks, though.

ETA pre-metformin I could also eat durian with no problems, but durian + metformin makes me ill - swollen liver, headaches for a couple of days.  There's a variety of durian than can cause fatal poisoning if eaten with alcohol, so I suspect it's something like that.

If you want a decent substitute for durian to get around this health issue try mixing custard and horseshit

[T42]

Before I went onto metformin I could eat any kind of cheese with impunity. Metformin plays a bit fast & loose with the liver, so my theory was always that digesting hard cheese is more liver-intensive, so the liver didn't quite have the capacity to deal with both metformin and the toxins in the cheese - hard cheese has more than soft. Could be bollocks, though.

ETA pre-metformin I could also eat durian with no problems, but durian + metformin makes me ill - swollen liver, headaches for a couple of days.  There's a variety of durian than can cause fatal poisoning if eaten with alcohol, so I suspect it's something like that.

If you want a decent substitute for durian to get around this health issue try mixing custard and horseshit

One of the joys of eating durian is that it disgusts the bystanders.

[Davef]

Primula cheeze in tubes can be eaten by the spoonful or will last almost indefinitely in your fridge.
Less faff than some of these plastic creations.

“Leave indefinitely in your fridge” is the recommended serving suggestion.

[ian]

A couple of years back I got my wife to taste a bit of durian. I'm still on the shit-list for that. It was just a little sample on a cocktail stick from one of the stalls down the market. I don't think she's associated the ambient odour with the piece of fruit she was being offered. I got a serious dead arm for that. Then, when we got back to our hotel, they were hosting an upmarket wedding banquet, which judging by the smell that hit us square in the face like a prizefighter when we walking into reception, had a menu that featured significant quantities of durian. We didn't hurry back that evening.

[geraldc]

Durian is about the texture. A lot of East and South East Asian are lactose intolerant, so you don't have a lot of chance to eat creamy textured food. Durian is sweet and creamy (and has the  vague whiff of burnt rotten cabbage), get past the odour (which most westerners can do with cheese, but not with Asian foods) and it's a delight.

[ian]

I beg to differ, I find the entire thing boak. But I don't like stinky cheese either.

[citoyen]

Radcliffe & Maconie are talking about Vesta curries and Angel Delight on 6music this morning. And tinned salmon.

[ian]

I love tinned salmon.

Back in olden times, my first proper job was part-time monkey at the Coop. I did a bit of everything from shelf-stacking to trolley retrieval operations (the best job, I could take an entire shift to retrieve a trolley from the canal) to doing sad face in front of angry customer. During slack hours, I'd be store detective. There was one old lady who'd nick tinned salmon. I 'apprehended' her and she confessed it was for her cat. So I thought fuck it, and gave her another three tins. Every time she came in I loaded her up with tinned salmon.

Eventually, they noticed we were losing massive quantities of tinned salmon. No one could figure out why. But thereafter it had to be sold from behind the ciggie counter (where I wasn't allowed as I was under eighteen). I had to apologize to the old lady. It's fine, young man, she confided, my cat died a year ago.

It wasn't the worse job, at Christmas the manager used to let me 'drop' bottles of booze. You dropped that, ian. No, I didn't. You dropped that, ian. Ah, I see.

[citoyen]

Best ice cream round here is from Sundae Sundae. They do all the standard flavours, and do them very well, but they occasionally do more experimental flavours - eg oyster and chilli.

Just been awarded 'Best Independent Ice Cream Store - South East England' by Lux Life Mag, apparently.

[Legs]

Bombay mix sandwich; brown bread, mango or (better) tamarind chutney, and as much Bombay mix as will fit in without going everywhere...

[barakta]

That sounds genuinely nice, I wanna go and buy some bombay mix now!

[ian]

Bombay mix is quite variable, you need the good stuff from a proper Indian corner shop (actually the M&S stuff isn't bad, don't buy the stuff they sell in Waitrose though, it's crap*). I think I'd switch the mango chutney for lime pickle though.

Actually, I am also quite partial to Geeta's chilli pickle.

*this is quite possibly the most middle-class sentence ever written.

[barakta]

We have a proper Indian shop up the road, advantage of Birmingham.

I'm a chilli/hot-things wuss.

[ian]

It's not as hot as all that, but then it's not not hot.

They serve a nice hot chilli pickle at Baburs in Forest Hill (close to Jurek-ville, I'm sure he's been) but I never saw anything similar in the shops till browsing the Geeta site.

I think I need popadoms now.

[jsabine]

Babur is Brockley, innit? Not been for an age, mind.

[Jurek]

There are two Baburs - both part of the same outfit.
One in Crofton Park - which is take-away only, and the other is the restaurant on Brockley Rise between Honor Oak Park and the South Circ.
I've never used the take-away, but have dined in the restaurant on a several of occasions.
They do not share the same menu. The take-away in more conventional Indian.
If you want Indian food with a difference, and not what you'd expect from your average Tandoori, the restaurant is as good a place as any to start.

ETA - I'm deffo going to have to give the Bombay mix sarnie a go  - maybe in Pitta bread - for enhanced containment.

[ian]

We still take (or did) the occasional trip to the restaurant from our palace in the benighted Surrey Hills (we used to live in Brockley many years ago, back when everyone said where? when we told them were we lived). Often enough to knows it's £24-£35 quid in an Uber. Curry in Surrey seems a universally dire eating experience, on the plus side, it means I make my own rather than get a takeway

The Babur takeaway, while more traditional, isn't bad either. I'm a big fan of the bhuna and shashlik. A bit of a long drive through, though the bossman did once meet us in Croydon with a bag of hot food.

[pcolbeck]

A cheap steak with a mountain of proper frittes followed by a tart citron all washed down with a couple of cold beers outside in a nice square watching the people go by anywhere in the south of France.