Category: Food & Drink

Of Course It Does

Food & Drink, Lies and Untruths, Science!

For all those fools people who have been eating white meat instead of red meat because Studies Show That Red Meat Will Kill You Dead, here’s the latest study:

Eating chicken puts consumers at a higher risk of a rare form of blood cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, as well as prostate cancer in men, according to researchers from Oxford University.

Of course, my skepticism about all these “studies” has been well-documented, and no doubt the next study will say that in fact, eating chicken will cure  cancer, not cause it.

Red meat stops your heart, poultry gives you cancer, cannibalism seems to be illegal, and no  meat causes your brain to shrink.  So basically, we’re fucked.  To quote a well-known sage (Joe Jackson):  everything  gives you cancer.

Next thing they’ll be telling us that it’s not the full English breakfast that will kill you, it’s the pint of gin you wash it down with.

Like that’s going to stop me.

Quote Of The Day

Food & Drink, QOTD

“I’ve not drunk instant coffee since 1972. And even then, it was under duress.” — Liz Jones

My date was 1992 — because like Liz, I came from an instant-coffee culture.  And it took emigration to break the ghastly spell.   Now, I can’t even stand the smell  of the swill.

 

Working Class Food

Food & Drink

I was reminded of this the other day.

Back in Sith Efrika, city streets are full of little snack bars, fish ‘n chip shops and cafés (called “caffies” by the locals, and these places bear absolutely no relation to the French establishment).  All serve the usual stuff:  hot dogs (“horrogs”), burgers, and of course fish ‘n chips.

Most of them, especially in working-class areas, serve something else.  It’s called (inexplicably) “bunny chow”, and it’s the simplest of all dishes:  a half-loaf of regular white- or brown bread, hollowed out and filled with either chicken/beef/lamb curry, or else beef/mutton stew.  It’s a budget-prized take on the “soup-in-a-French-boule” thing beloved of snooty Californian and Midwestern restaurants.

Here are a couple pics of bunny chow, to give you an idea:

 

You can eat it with your bare hands:  scoop the top part out with your fingers until there’s enough crust to break off and use as a scoop;  or if you’re feeling flush, order a side of fries and use those in twos as your delivery device.  (I said  it was a working-class food.)  Or, if you’re squeamish, use a fork for the stew, and when it’s all gone, eat the saturated bread up afterwards.  Either way, you have to eat it quickly or else the loaf will collapse — literally, it’s a portable meal to be eaten on the run.

You can go upscale with it:

…but that’s like putting caviar on a hot dog.  “Bunny chow” means cheap bread, cheap meat, a cheap meal.

Served properly, it’s delicious.  Sadly, bunny chow is often used for yesterday’s leftover stew (not that there’s anything wrong with that) or else last week’s  leftover stew (not so good).  Rule of thumb:  never order bunny chow early on a Monday morning.

When I was a starving student back in the early 1970s, I lived on bunny chow.  There was a greasy snack bar just around the corner from campus which served both curried chicken or -lamb chow, but you had to be careful eating either because there were often pieces of bone left in the stew — let’s just say that the food prep tended towards the hasty side in these establishments.

Later, as a starving musician, my tastes had become more sophisticated, and I’d moved on to shawarmas, that spicy and tasty Mediterranean dish of lamb, chicken or beef carved off a rotating vertical skewer:and served inside a soft, thin pita-bread pocket.

After almost every gig, I’d head off to Paradise Foods in Hillbrow (greasy spoons, greasy floor, greasy walls  FFS), get two shawarmas (meat and sauce only, none of that veg crap), and somehow I’d manage to eat both of them on the run before I got back to my car.  Man, it was a highlight of the week.

But if I was on the road to or from a gig and feeling hungry, there was always a roadside “caffie” somewhere to sell me bunny chow.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the kitchen.

Oops

Business, Food & Drink, Gummint

Everybody told them that it was a monumentally-stupid idea;  but noooooo:

Restaurants Unlimited, a Seattle-based chain with restaurant locations in 47 US cities, announced on Sunday it was seeking Chapter 11 protection, citing “progressive” wage laws.
The company, which has operated since the Lyndon Johnson Administration, said rising labor costs—part of a national trend of government-mandated minimum increases—were part of its decision.

Note the 47 cities affected by these closures (see link).

I would feel more sorry for the soon-to-be-laid-off workers, but I’m betting that most of them supported the higher-minimum-wage idiocy in the first place, so… sucks to be them.  Maybe next time they’ll vote with their brains instead of with their greed.  (Granted, working-class people have trouble making ends meet in liberal shitholes like Seattle and San Francisco;  but the politicians who have caused the high housing prices are the same ones who pushed through the higher minimum-wage thresholds.  So there’s a double whammy here, and yet those idiot voters keep sending them back into office.)

Of course, it’ll be all Trump’s fault (according to the West Coast media).

No It Isn’t, And Yes It Is

Food & Drink

Question asked:

“Is it just me? Or is raw onion in salad the work of the devil?”

Then follows hundreds of words of unnecessary justification.

I’ve heard of people who can eat an onion like one eats an apple, and I’m glad they’re identified so I can avoid them.  It’s akin to munching on cloves of raw garlic:  anti-social and disgusting.

Raw onion is foul — it smells like unwashed armpits, and it has no place in a mixed salad.  Period, end of statement.

BFD

Food & Drink, Gummint

This from TexGov Greg Abbott:

Well excuse me if I don’t turn a few cartwheels and stuff.  Fifty years ago, you could see liquor stores’ delivery scooters putting around all over every city and town in South Africa, painted in the various stores’ livery.

And, just so everyone understands my scorn, you could order beer and wine for home delivery.  Also gin, vodka, brandy, Scotch and rum.  Fifty years ago.  In South Africa.

I once noted that as one moves south from the northern states in the U.S., the gun laws become less stupid, and the liquor laws become more so.  In Chicago, I could buy single-malt Scotch at the supermarket, but I couldn’t buy a gun anywhere.  Down here, even oh-so-cosmopolitan Plano became a “liquor” retail area (as opposed to just beer & wine) only about five years ago, but I have about fifteen gun stores within a couple miles of my house.

There are a lot of things to like about the South, but their liquor laws are not among them.

So:  wake me up when I can order my favorite Scotch and gin from Total Wines or Spec’s, and have them delivered to my front door.

Actually, check that.  Wake me up when I can buy my booze from Amazon.  Like you can in Britain (where you can’t buy anything made by Colt).

And one last thing:  I don’t enjoy the paternalistic tone of government “allowing” me to do anything, and being advised to do something “responsibly“.  Fuck you, fuck your responsibility, and thanks for nothing, you paternalistic asshole.

Now send the Texas State Guard down to police the Rio Grande, and stop pissing around with chickenshit like this.