Think of the lettuces!
Whenever I hear about the severe vegetable shortage, I wonder — who the hell wants to eat severe vegetables? But, yeah, you’ve probably read that we’re having Vegetable Issues.
The story is, we in the North are dependent on growers in the South if we want Summer veg in Winter. England relies mostly on the Spanish for things like peppers and spinach that won’t be available from local growers for months. And Spain has had a shit Winter. Much of their February crop was rained out.
How serious? Eh. Two weeks ago, I paid £.45 for a head of iceberg lettuce at Aldi. Last week, the same store was asking £1.10. They had plenty, though.
Frankly, I think 45p is super cheap for a head of lettuce, anyway. I remember in college there was a spike in lettuce prices and a head climbed over $1. We were horrified. We seamlessly switched our salads to cabbage and felt quite pleased with ourselves…until a few days went by and the gastric consequences of a diet rich in cabbage began to present itself.
God, we were stupid.
The oldies I work for aren’t impressed. Summer vegetables in Winter are a danged newfangled idea, like digital whotsits and the gramaphonium. We have plenty of local veg, and all the better for not coming from the Continent.
So, don’t worry. We aren’t facing scurvy any time soon.
p.s. No, I didn’t buy the lettuce. We’ll do our weekly shop tomorrow and I’ll tell you what it’s up to now.
February 6, 2017 — 8:02 pm
Comments: 23
…I found her little footprints in the snow…
Ummmm…the Imgur pics, the Reddit thread. Hey, all the serious journalists get their stories browsing Reddit, neh?
I’m using Uncle B’s new bread machine to make pizza dough. You may recall that I was once a Pizza Professional. Poncey Sicilian pizza restaurant in the early Eighties — the kind that pioneered vegetarian pizzas with brocolli and carrots. That sort of thing.
The raisins, they puffed up like engorged ticks.
But we made really good meat lover’s pizzas, too.
The only component we didn’t make in-house was the dough; we bought it raw from a local bakery and kept it frozen. We then thawed, shaped and baked the pizza bases in-house. I was upset when I discovered they don’t sell raw bread dough in the UK. Dunno why.
Anyway, this thing has a 45-minute pizza dough cycle that makes what seems exactly like what I used to work with. We shall see. It’s proofing now.
Bonus: according to sources, kids these days call pizza “za”. I have never heard anyone say “za” — except me, obviously — but that little two-letter word has gotten me out of several tight Scrabble dilemmas. You’re welcome.
January 10, 2017 — 10:12 pm
Comments: 23
Atkins, rolling in his grave
This is the breadmaker Sandy Claws brought Uncle B. At least, I think it’s this one. I got the picture off the web; I’m too lazy to go into the kitchen with a camera.
Yeah, still a holiday here. Because New Year’s fell on a Sunday, we got today off.
Don’t understand, but happy to accept it at face value.
He’s made a couple of excellent loaves just with the instruction book, but we were both a bit surprised to find there didn’t seem to be any good breadmaker forums online. I guess once you get it down, there’s not much to talk about.
Anybody know anything new and interesting to do with a breadmaker? ‘Possum stew or other regional favorite?
January 2, 2017 — 9:09 pm
Comments: 21
Turkeys: the paste-eating mouth breathers of the poultry world
I stole this picture from National Geographic. At first, I couldn’t work out what it was. Some sort of two-headed conjoined twin turkey maybe. But no, it’s just a pair of Meleagris gallopavo being they own brilliant selfs.
I’ll be honest with you — I think our turkey this year had a leeeetle too much fresh air and healthful exercise. She was tough-ish. More indolence and lounging around the barn for the next one, I think.
Anyway, I’ve boiled down the carcass and made a pie for tonight. A bit of soup tomorrow, and that’s the bird done.
On to the ham!
December 28, 2016 — 11:07 pm
Comments: 14
…and her name was Lorelai…
I shit you not, this is printed on the bag our Christmas turkey is in. I’m all for animal welfare, but I kind of feel bad for cutting this bird down in the prime of her life. She was having such a lovely time.
More on “high welfare” farming here.
Don’t forget — back here tomorrow 6WBT for Dead Pool Round 93!
December 22, 2016 — 10:21 pm
Comments: 15
Word of the Day: braggot
A braggot is a mixture of honey and barley, used as an alcohol base (like malt for beer, or corn for moonshine). Remember, kids, yeasties eat sugar and pee alcohol!
I learned this word from this NPR story about reviving an ancient brew based on analysis of an archaeological find. Specifically: the cauldron in the picture. It was dug up and analyzed in Germany.
The 2,500-year-old brew was made with barley, honey, mint and meadowsweet. Barley and honey to feed the yeast, meadowsweet in place of hops as a bittering (and preservative?) agent, and mint for flavor, I guess. The author said it was strong and tasted pretty nice, but there are no plans to sell it.
I’m still unclear why alcoholic beverages need a bitter component, except hops are also a preservative agent. You would not believe how huge hop production was here until pretty recently. Even more so next door in Kent. The whole area is covered in old oast houses, once used to dry hops. Now converted into ultra expensive houses for the most part. They are dreadful cool.
Right! We know what tomorrow is. Friday. 6 WBT. DEAD POOL ROUND 90.
November 17, 2016 — 9:59 pm
Comments: 14
it’s all relative
My Sweet America is a Belgian shop that offers American delicacies (the picture is a capture of their FaceBook page header).
A new shop, My Sweet America, hopes to take away all of that angst by adding a new ingredient: American-style customer service.
“By living in the USA, I really learned what customer service means,” explained James, the shop owner, in a recent interview. A native of France, the owner and his (Belgian) wife have lived in New York City and Los Angeles for the past several years…
You got that? They learned the true meaning of customer service by living in Los Angeles and New York City. Oh, my sides! That gives you a glimpse what it’s like in France and Belgium.
Unfortunately, while the FaceBook link above works, their shop seems to be down, and the site I found it on doesn’t want to let me link directly to the article. Hell’s yes it matters — they do mail order! I’d kill for a proper PopTart (our local supermarket has them, but it only carries the gross flavors like Chocolate and S’Mores).
On a related note, I ordered some Benadryl off eBay this week. Did you know you can’t buy Benadryl as an antihistamine any more, just as a sleep aid? Fun fact. Anyways, I ordered some in bulk from a seller called uksleep expecting them to ship from the UK (duh), only to find they shipped from Texas.
Second class, three days, free shipping. I ordered Sunday, got the notice it had shipped on Monday and got my order today. The world of international shipping is a confusing but sometimes gratifying place these days.
October 6, 2016 — 8:01 pm
Comments: 15
lol no
To be fair, that’s a 24-pack, so it’s really only £8.28 ($12.40) per four-ounce jar. Yes, I really had been shopping for pimientos. I crave the weirdest things from the past, in this case pimiento cheese.
Not craving it that hard.
This is a strange story to grow out of DNA analysis. Half of modern men in Western Europe are descended from a single man who lived 4,000 years ago.
I’m having trouble understanding that. Something like 10% of men inside the borders of Genghis Khan’s old empire are descended from him. But he only lived about 750 years ago and we have tons of documented evidence that he murdered the men and screwed the women on an unimaginable scale.
So how can half the male population be descended from one ancestor? I’m thinking he must have murdered, screwed AND had some natural catastrophe wipe out most everyone else. Also, this paragraph from the link:
He was part of a new order which emerged in Europe following the Stone Age, sweeping away the previous egalitarian Neolithic period and replacing it with hierarchical societies which were ruled by a powerful elite.
Egalitarian, huh. Hard science or hippie bullshit? You decide!
Finally, to get you in the mood for the weekend, enjoy this stroll down the romantic streets of Paris. Y’all have a good weekend, y’hear?
September 16, 2016 — 8:23 pm
Comments: 19
Who burnt the cheese?
This is a fun one. Archaeologists in Denmark dug up a completely intact bronze age pot. It had been flung, whole, into what was a garbage pit in the street. Finding a whole pot was unusual enough, but there was a substance clinging to the bottom they couldn’t quite identify.
After spectrometry, they have decided it’s cheese. Burnt cheese. Somebody accidentally burned a batch of cheese and threw the whole mess away. Probably.
The writer of the article has fun speculating about the possible bronze age family drama that ensued, or perhaps Cheese Burner was trying to hide the act by getting rid of the pot?
Phun phart phact: Britons do not use the expression “cut the cheese.” This matters because my employers like to host little wine and cheese get-togethers and there’s always much discussion of who’s going to cut the cheese and who cut the cheese last time and whether the cheese was cut fine or coarse. I swear I’m going to lose it some day.
Like when my mother in law exclaims, “blow me!”
September 15, 2016 — 10:13 pm
Comments: 10
I’m super cereal
I had a silly day today. I was going to stay home and do some chores, but I got a call that the phone was out at work. This is bad because the phone is tied to the security system, so I had to go in (so I could look up the customer number from our last bill) and navigate the help system of British Telecom. The hardest part of that is finding a live human. They’d rather open a vein than give you a phone number.
Anyway. Boring.
As today was screwed, we decided to get the weekly shop out of the way. Aldi had a special on a block of those little miniature cereals, so we bought one for nostalgia. And then the clash of cultures began.
I’m like, “these aren’t scored in the middle so you can use them as a bowl.”
And he’s like, “What?”
And I go, “you used to open them up and fold the sides back and the cereal was in a wax paper bag so you could pour the milk right in.”
And he goes, “didn’t you have bowls where you grew up?”
And I say, “sure, but these were for camping and, like, being in the woods and stuff.”
Long story short, he doesn’t believe me. Do you remember this? Was it really a thing? All I could find was that one picture, from a long-defunct breakfast blog.
August 10, 2016 — 7:36 pm
Comments: 35