Maintenant, réchapper à MacDo!
Who is the world’s second-biggest consumer of tasty MacDonald’s fast food? The French. I shitteth thee not.
In a move that makes The Narrative cower in the corner, whimpering, a mob of angry Frogs from the town of Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise has marched to demand somebody finish building our goddamned MacDonald’s toot sweet.
The courts put a halt to construction (seen above) because the site was zoned for industrial or artisanal activities, and a MacDonald’s is a commercial one. The suit was brought to court by a company that runs a dump nearby. I mean an actual dump, a “refuse site.” Mon dieu!
The townspeople are eyeing the 30 or so jobs the restaurant would bring and also, of course, those crazy tasty Big Macs and fries.
Anyhoo, their FaceBook page is oui oui au macdo st pol. MacDo. I really like that. Much better than Mickey D’s. I hated it when some marketing droid foist that off on us, and I hated it even more when I heard myself using it.
From now on, MacDo for me, in solidarity with my French brothers and sisters. Won’t you join me?
Good weekend, all!
May 30, 2014 — 10:01 pm
Comments: 34
An explosion was heard in rural Sussex over the weekend
Been on a bean streak lately. You know, dried beans, soak ’em overnight, cook ’em with fatback. It’s probably a variety of homesickness; I come from a bean eating people.
When I went away to college, I had to call my mother and ask her, “when we have a bowl of beans…what exactly kind of beans are those?” At the time, my ignorance embarrassed me, but turns out it’s not such a dumb question. There are many varieties of small white bean, and recipes play fast and loose with the definitions.
The one I was looking for was probably the navy bean, which is called that because we stuffed American sailors full of them in the late 19th, early 20th. And I know that’s true, because I’ve just reached the point in Norman Rockwell’s autobiography where he joins the navy, and he describes desperately painting portraits if the officers to ingratiate himself and escape the endless beans in the regular mess. Poor bastards.
Those beans are called haricot beans here and they are the base bean for Heinz baked beans. Yup, hard to believe those vile neon orange fuckers are made out of the innocent white navy bean, but it’s true.
One of our local markets put a bunch of beans on the reduced rack — the more exotic varieties just weren’t selling, I guess — so I have some new and wonderful beans to try. I’m especially looking forward to adzuki beans, which are little read beans used in desserts in the East.
Why I thought you might like to spend the weekend here talking about beans, I couldn’t say, but allow me to recommend the Bean Institute‘s quarterly newsletter if the conversation runs dry. Good weekend, beaners!
February 28, 2014 — 10:45 pm
Comments: 45
Chiphenge
Artist makes middling sculptures out of chips and peas. These were commissioned by the Potato Council in honor of Chip Week 2014, which I somehow missed. Again.
Actually, this lady will make any sculpture out of any food. Or non-food items. Or, whatever. Please, just give her something to do already.
The peas in question are mushy peas, which are — yes — peas that have been mushed. It’s a *little* (but not much) more complicated than that. You take marrowfat peas — big peas that have been allowed to dry in the field instead of being picked young in the pod — soak them overnight in water and baking soda, and cook them down to a paste with a pinch of salt and sugar.
Yeah, fuck it, mushed up peas. They aren’t bad. They don’t taste bad. They just taste…pointless.
Still, they make pretty good mortar in chip sculpture. I guess.
February 20, 2014 — 11:42 pm
Comments: 28
It’s bacon, but not as we know it
I know, I’ll post a picture of bacon. Americans love bacon!
This is a giant, messy wad of dismembered bacon chunks. It’s called “cooking bacon.” I guess it’s made up of offcuts and leftovers. It’s substantially cheaper than any other kind of bacon, including my favorite British bacon: lardons.
Lardons don’t taste different from any other bacon, it’s just fun to say. “Oooo, that Oscar Mayer, he gives me such a lardon!”
Anyway, I’ve been on a dried bean kick lately. I asked for fatback, and I got this cooking bacon stuff. It’ll do, it’ll do.
Oh, hey, I’ve lived here upwards of five years, and I’ve only just realized you can’t get lima beans for love or money. Turns out — I did not know this — lima beans are just baby butterbeans. I can get butterbeans, but not limas.
You just never know what you’re going to miss.
So Mrs Mondale croaked and ExpressoBold takes the dick! We know what that means, don’t we? Dead Pool Round 60 Friday, 6 sharp.
February 4, 2014 — 11:28 pm
Comments: 20
Happy MILK day!
Oh, man, I love a glass of sweet, cold whole milk. It’s those milk-drinking Viking genes.
This is one of my happiest indulgences. All of the major supermarkets carry a premium brand of Jersey or Guernsey whole milk. Channel Island milk, as I’m sure you know, has more of everything that makes milk awesome. It’s golden yellow with butterfat!
Butterfat. God, that word.
It’s the breed of cow, so they say, rather than the conditions that makes Jersey or Guernsey milk, but I like the idea mine comes from little storm-lashed islands off the coast.
When I was a lass, our family cow was a Jersey, and she gave fine, sweet milk. We usually let her go dry after her calves weaned, but when we did milk her, it was awkward to talk about it:
her name was Mother.
January 21, 2014 — 12:36 am
Comments: 20
Nooooo…not Mrs. Grissom!
I found this cruising my hometown (Nashville) paper — notable deaths 2013 — Grace Grissom, co-founder of Mrs. Grissom’s Salads, died in May, age 94.
I had no idea this was a local product. I had no idea Mrs Grissom was a real person. Mrs Grissom’s chicken salad was a total staple of my childhood. I have not had anything that came close to it outside Tennessee.
Not sure how to describe it. It was like chicken meat pâté, but looser. More like liquid chicken. Chicken paste. Chicken shakes. Okay, maybe not that loose, but it tended to squish out the sides when you took a bite, and a tub of it was less than a buck, so there can’t have been much chicken in it.
Still back in old Nashville, my friend’s granddad made an awesome chicken salad. It had much more chicken in it, but it was still all ground up into a stiff paste (with mayo and celery, I think the recipe went). Stiffer than Mrs Grissom’s, but the same idea.
Then I moved to New England, where chicken salad was diced chunks of chicken with various food lubricants. And then I moved to old England, where a sandwich salad doesn’t mean the same thing at all. Chicken salad and tuna salad are, respectively, chicken or tuna with a salad (i.e. with lettuce on it). On the other hand, they sell a variety of tinned meat pastes which is much more like what I’m talking.
Anyway — lay it on me. What’s your regional notion of chicken salad?
January 15, 2014 — 12:04 am
Comments: 32
Breakfast with Mrs Slocombe
Really, England? Really?
It’s an energy drink. I plucked it off the bargain shelf after the holidays. The girl at the register said, after the novelty wore off, even the kids weren’t really interested.
And what makes up its magical blend? Fresh white grape juice from Southern Italy, pressed Mexican limes and lightly carbonated water. These are then mixed with Grenadilla and Lychee infused with six selected botanical herbs: Siberian Ginseng, Guarana, Sasparilla, Schizandra and Milk Thistle all of which have their own unique properties and benefits – and taste amazing when blended together and served ice cold on a hot night out.
Hang on, I love grenadilla and lychee. Let me crack open this sucka.
Hey, I like it.
Don’t tell my mom.
January 10, 2014 — 12:08 am
Comments: 5
Here we go!
I bet I’m getting fifty commercial emails a day, from everybody I’ve ever bought so much as a paperclip from. Mostly from the States, so they are — how you say? — out of luck sneaking a hand in my pocket this Christmas.
I dread this season. I’m a lousy gift shopper, Uncle B is incredibly hard to buy for and his birthday is too close to Xmas. If something’s big, I can’t afford it. If it’s small, he’s already bought it. If it’s weird, he’s probably not going to like it.
What I usually do is open up Amazon, close my eyes, think of him and poke stream-of-consciousness into the search box. For, like, a week, until I reach my money limit.
The thing above is one of my stranger successes. It’s a temperature-controlled butter dish. See, Brits use butter instead of mayo as a sandwich lubricant. And, on untoasted bread, the butter is either tear-it-up hard or sloppy soft, depending on the season and how long it’s been left out. This thing has a thermostat, a dial and a computer fan in the bottom, so the butter is always the perfect spreading temperature.
No, really, it was a hit.
What are some of your stranger Christmas successes? Seriously, I’m asking. Begging, even. I am allllll out of ideas this year.
December 2, 2013 — 11:32 pm
Comments: 31
The Muzeum of Beanz
Jack and I got exiled to the kitchen yesterday for bad behavior, so I organized the canned goods cabinets. Words are inadequate to describe how astonishing it is that I might organize a kitchen cabinet. My housekeeping, it is below average.
Lookit — turns out, in aggregate, we have a whole cabinet’s worth of Heinz beans. Excuse me, “beanz.” They’re likely to last a while, too. I’ve finally plucked up the courage to tell Uncle B that the answer to the question, “would you like a few beans with dinner?” is not merely “no” but “honestly, no.”
Anyways, MacDonald’s is throwing a corporate snit. After forty years of Heinz ketchup, MacDonald’s is dropping them because — get this! — the new CEO of Heinz is the old CEO of Burger King. Word.
Pretty thin gruel of a blog post, I admit, but we were exiled again. If this keeps up, I’m in danger of having a clean kitchen.
October 31, 2013 — 12:04 am
Comments: 41
Mmmmm…
Roast beef, roast potatoes, carrots and peas…in a bowl made of yorkshire pudding. I know…food always looks gross in black and white, but I can assure you, this was a bit of alright.
I lumme some yorkshire pudding.
Honestly, folks, I don’t know what to say about politics at the moment. It’s not that I’m not following. I am. But damned if I can figure out where it’s going. Everything has an ominous, oppressive feeling, like the heavy air before a thunderstorm.
Though I should probably let you guys know, my gut feelings are *always* wrong.
October 3, 2013 — 10:39 pm
Comments: 28