Category: Travels

Take-Home Foods

Food & Drink, Travels

As someone who’s traveled quite a bit, this article struck a chord with me:

A recent Reddit discussion has highlighted how trips abroad are capable of permanently changing a traveller’s diet, with commenters revealing foreign dishes they had on their travels that they now can’t stop eating. 

The list includes acai from Brazil*, Morocco’s cinnamon-dusted oranges, onigiri (Japanese rice balls), pasteis de nata (milk custard tart) from Portugal, ajvar (a red pepper paste) from the Balkans and even spaghetti carbonara  from Italy — which is quite different from the stuff you’ll get at Olive Garden, trust me.   (There’s other less-salutary stuff like haggis and buffalo wings on their list, but whatever.)

*can someone tell me the difference between acai and blueberries?

One of the foods on the Reddit list struck home for me:  French baguette and butter — which, having sampled it in Paris, made me refuse to eat American shelf bread ever again. Seriously.  Who would have thought that simple bread and butter would be an exquisite meal all by itself?  (Well, anyone who’s ever tasted the real stuff.)  It’s one of the few dishes which I prefer eating with unsalted butter, because the bread becomes unutterably sweeter.

That Portuguese tart (not Sarah Hoyt) is very familiar to me as the Afrikaans melk tert (they’re almost identical, and the Seffricans have even made a cream liqueur based on its taste).  The only difference is that the Porros use puff pastry instead of pie crust pastry.  Hmmmm… now that’s a thought.

I”m going to try the Moroccan oranges this weekend after I’ve done the Friday shopping (no oranges in the house), but with three different sugars as an experiment to see which tastes best.  (Light brown, Demarara or 10x mixed with the cinnamon, in case you’re wondering.)

I’ll also try making ajvar,  which sounds like hummus mixed with ground spicy red peppers, but I’ll use South African Peppadew spicy peppers because they are spectacular.

There are a couple that I’ve encountered on my travels which I wish were staples Over Here.

One of my all-time favorite imported meals happens to be poutines, from Canuckistan, but only one place around here makes them properly (the Holy Grail pub in Plano).  I must have eaten poutines at least twice a day when driving back from Montreal to Detroit, along with Tim Horton’s coffee to wash them down.

Another is Viennese Sachertorte which, having had some in meine schones Wien, would kill me if I could find it here because aaaaargh it’s luvverly.

Over Here, we’d call it “death by chocolate”, because it really is.

There are a few others, but I think they would be best enjoyed in their home countries (e.g. pisco sours in Chile and Welsh rarebit in Britishland).  Of Wadworth 6X and Greggs sausage rolls we will not speak.

And so, Gentle Readers:  tell me about your favorite furrin dishes, in Comments.

The Other Side MIA

Behind Enemy Lines, Politics

The Divine Sarah has just returned from her native Portugal, and reports as follows:

One of the scariest things about the trip to Portugal was talking to people and realizing they’re living in an alternate reality.

You know, all the things that the Junta has tried to sell, and push? From “We’re in a booming economy” to “Biden is a patriot who stepped down to save the nation” to “Trump is a criminal” to “The refugee crisis is the result of global warming” ALL OF IT is being bought wholesale in Europe.

Now as a caveat to this, actually two of them: My family is now very much what would be considered “laptop class”, i.e. they are all credentialed professionals of some description, who therefore pride themselves on being “well informed” a lot of which consists of following our MSM (NYT, CNN, etc) and the Portuguese translations thereof. And I was mostly associating with them, save for listening in when we were in public, as I pretty much do all the time out of habit and because I like to know what people “really” think.

However, as far as I can tell even if not uniform, Portugal — which probably means most of Europe — at least as far as its educated classes go, is taking the pap our MSM spews as the gospel truth. You literally can’t tell them the truth without their thinking you’re a complete lunatic. I.e. the reality on the ground here in the US seems to them like something out of the left field that we’re just saying for shock value.

Keep that in mind when you hear of all the European love for Kamala-rama-lama-ding-dong.

The thing is that Europeans (including Brits) have  been accustomed to people telling them what to do (and to read, and to think, and to say) for so long that now, when it really counts, there is no “counter-culture” such as we have Over Here:  no equivalent of PJMedia, RedState or Breitbart News, no conservative radio (e.g. as practiced by the much-missed Rush Limbaugh or even the still-living Sean Hannity), or fearless “alternative” bloggers with an enormous following such as Instapundit, and precious few independnet small blogs such as this one.

So in the absence of all that, all they have is state-controlled electronic media and leftwing-sponsored newspapers like Le Matin, Der Spiegel and so on.  (I was amazed at how Lefty even Austrian newspapers were, the last time I was there, and Austria is easily one of the more conservative Euro countries.)

Small wonder that they believe the bullshit thrown at them about Glueball Wormening, Ev Inevitability and untrammeled Third World immigration as a benefit.

So of course, when confronted by the New Counter-Culture (as espoused by leaders such as Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, Geert Wilders and Giorgia Meloni), they are utterly bewildered by such strange concepts because they have never been exposed to them before — and strangeness, as we all know, leads to fear, opposition and resistance, if not outright rejection for no other reason other than strangeness.

And as Sarah so correctly points out,the funny thing is that while European society is living in an alternate reality, they are convinced that it is we who are.

The prognosis for Europe is not heartening, just as it will not be happy for us if the upcoming vote is fixed to provide another four years of BidenHarrisObamaClinton policies.

Tight Fitting

Travels, Two-Minute Hate

…or to put it more succinctly, trying to fit 500lbs of lard into a single economy airline seat.

A photo of a plus-sized passenger struggling to fit between the armrests on a plane has sparked a fierce debate over whether obese travellers should have to pay for an extra seat. 

The man was snapped by a fellow traveller as he squeezed into his aisle seat during a flight from Helsinki to Copenhagen on Monday.

‘This guy sat behind me on my flight from Helsinki to Copenhagen yesterday,’ the man who took the photo wrote on Facebook. 

‘I felt sorry for him and the guy next to him in the middle seat, both of whom must have felt very uncomfortable for the short flight.  Maybe it’s time for airlines to address situations like this in a thoughtful and sensitive way.’

And the pic:

There are two points to be made here.  The first is that while it’s true that airlines have shrunk their economy-class seats to the point where even a heroin-addicted model has to squeeze into it, if they had to cater to dimensions like the above, they’d have to install fucking sofas.

The second point is that when it comes to situations like the above, there is no debate:  Fatso and his elephantine buddies should have to pay for two seats (in his case, maybe even an entire row). And by the way:  Helsinki to Copenhagen?  Catch the train, Doublewide.  In the goods carriage, if necessary.

Finally, there’s no need for airlines to address this in a “thoughtful and sensitive way” because if they can’t refuse service to people of this tonnage and volume, they should at least be able to charge for the extra weight — as they have no problem doing with oversized luggage — not to mention having to turn the main cabin into a de facto  cargo hold.

And I say this as a man who once was almost reduced [sic]  to asking for a seatbelt extension.  (Thank gawd that’s in my rearview mirror, never to return.)

It’s bollocks.  Fatties should have to pay more for their additional accommodation inside the limited space of a flying aluminum tube.  End of statement, period, THE END.

I Did Not Know That

Travels

…the term “rawdogging” had this meaning, in a travel sense:

A new travel phenomenon has swept TikTok in the form of ‘rawdogging,’ which means consuming no form of entertainment during a flight – except for the basic maps or data shown on the seatback screen.

Taking it to greater extremes, some will also claim to forgo food and drink for the duration of the journey.

Many videos show travelers with blank expressions as they stare into space, while overlaid captions brag about them completing the challenge. 

However, a team of travel experts from the site Netflights have now warned that the practice can have many negative impacts.

And here I thought “rawdogging” on a flight meant some kind of unprotected sexual congress with a flight attendant.  Shows what I know.

Anyway, while I can sort of see the experts’ [coff coff]  point, I don’t buy into their argument wholeheartedly.  I quite like to sit and gaze into space with a “blank expression”;  in my day, that was called “quiet contemplation”, and on short-haul flights I do it all the time, not needing constant stimulation to be happy, or at least passably happy.  Transoceanic flights are a different animal, however, but a decent couple of “disposable” books — ones that can be tossed without regret after completion — usually fit the bill admirably.  And I loathe airline movies because they’ve mostly been bowdlerized Because Of Teh Kiddies.

Also forget forgoing food and drink on a long flight;  that’s just plain stupidity, spelling as it does hunger and dehydration.  This is why God invented biltong, my children; and dehydration in the pressurized cabin is no frigging joke, especially if you are at risk of a gout attack (ask me how I know this).

Speaking of biltong:  I see that our supply thereof has fallen to a dangerously low level, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the kitchen.  I may be feeling poorly, but sometimes ya just gotta.

Pay The Price

Food & Drink, Travels

Some Belgie chick went to London and was astonished to be charged through the nose for her breakfast.

A tourist has come under fire for complaining about paying £3.55 for two croissants and a bottle of water at a London supermarket.

Here’s why I have no sympathy.

1) Any time you visit a major city (pretty much anywhere, Tokyo, Zurich ahem), you’re probably going to pay more than you expect for stuff, and in London more so than most, especially when the currency exchange is factored in.  (In Murkin greenbacks, this amount would be $4.50 or so — typical for a quick breakfast in L.A. or NYfC, probably, but without the quality guarantee.)  Which leads to my next point:

2) It’s Marks & Spencer, FFS.  Chances are that said croissants are as good or better than she could get anywhere else in Europe, with the possible exception of Paris.  That’s why they’re more expensive than most places:  they go for quality over everything else, and you pay the premium accordingly..

3) Water?  With croissants?  Loath as I am to tell a Euro how to eat their food, the proper liquid to be consumed with croissants is coffee.  Okay, considering the locale, a cup of tea could be substituted, but water?  Ugh.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do;  and when in London, suck it up and pay, Margriet.