Cotton-Pickin’ Days

This picture is for Graham Holliday who took matters into his own hands last week and plucked, gutted, and hacked a pheasant all on his kitchen floor. He asked,

Is it just me, or does there seem to be more fluff and feathers on show on British markets these days?

I have no basis for comparison but a couple of weeks ago, I saw the above at Borough Market in London. I think the birds on the right are pheasant but the furry animals…deer? I also saw kangaroo meat for sale and some other exotic meats. I know Marv would have loved to try it, but I stayed safe with a bratwurst, a fresh tomato, and lots of fresh juice. Yum.

Here are a few more shots from Borough Market of the archway sign, mushrooms, and a couple of guys being filmed cooking (click for a larger image). Anyone know who they are?

5 Comments »

How many people had turducken this year for Thanksgiving? My turducken post from last year featuring the turducken my brother-in-law’s cousins made was my most popular post this week. Here’s a video of how professionals make a turducken.

3 Comments »

I’ve mentioned before that Stephen really seems to enjoy his school lunches. Earlier this week, I had a chance to attend a school lunch tasting. Now I can see how truly lucky he is to have such a wide selection of meals each day served by friendly staff. His school has its own kitchen with food prepared fresh on the premises and they also have a salad bar with fresh fruits and vegetables.

I especially appreciated the handout the food service team prepared.

Menus are nutritionally balanced using the latest computer-based technology and must conform to our own tested recipes and quality assurance programme. All of our suppliers are carefully identified and then audited to ensure that they are providing us with products that meet our quality and nutritional standards. We will not knowingly use any ingredient that has been genetically modified.

Our aim is to ensure that school meals are not only great value but that they also provide your child with a safe diet that will assist with their learning development

The school lunch tasting included:

• Chick pea curry (my favorite!)
• Chicken enchiladas
• Quiche
• Fish with white sauce (which didn’t look great but was very tasty)
• Apple crumble with warm custard
• Carrot cake

I know for a fact that Stephen is more willing to taste a variety of different foods because of the many flavors he encounters at lunch.

The lunches put my own simple meals to shame. And with smiling staff like this, lunches must be a highlight of the children’s day.

Thank you to everyone involved in encouraging Stephen’s culinary adventure!

8 Comments »

This poor pigeon reminds me of the Chinese story about a man who died from starvation. He was so lazy that he couldn’t even be bothered to eat the necklace of buns that was put around his neck.

Famine by Xu Xi at Ploughshares tells a similar tale:

She used to tell me an old legend about sloth.

There once was a man so lazy he wouldn’t even lift food to his mouth. When he was young, his mother fed him, but as his mother aged, she couldn’t. So he marries a woman who will feed him as his mother did. For a time, life is bliss.

Then one day, his wife must return to her village to visit her dying mother. “How will I eat?” he exclaims in fright. The wife conjures this plan. She bakes a gigantic cookie and hangs it on a string around his neck. All the lazy man must do is bend forward and eat. “Wonderful!” he says, and off she goes, promising to return.

On the first day, the man nibbles the edge of the cookie. Each day, he nibbles further. By the fourth day, he’s eaten so far down there’s no more cookie unless he turns it, which his wife expected he would since he could do this with his mouth.

However, the man’s so lazy he lies down instead and waits for his wife’s return. As the days pass, his stomach growls and begins to eat itself. Yet the man still won’t turn the cookie. By the time his wife comes home, the lazy man has starved to death.

via Neatorama

No Comments »

This is for Noodlepie who’s asking to see everyone’s school lunch menu. Click to see a larger image.

Stephen quite likes his school lunches and tries new things every day. Yesterday’s new-to-him item was peach ice cream which he seemed to like yet wasn’t completely sold on.

Stephen: I had peach ice crem for dessert today.
Me: Oh! That’s interesting. Was it good?
Stephen nods: Yes! It was delicious.
Me: Should we get some next time?
Stephen: Naaah.

3 Comments »

Johns Hopkins University President William Brody spent two weeks in Beijing studying Mandarin in 2006. Here he describes the dining experience:

One of our favorites is a Muslim restaurant, where we get dinner for two for $2 or $3, including a chicken kabob, curried eggplant, rice, and beer. The food is quite tasty, though perhaps not as hygienic as at home — I really liked the barbequed chicken or lamb on a bamboo skewer until Wendy observed that they probably reuse the skewers.

When I read this, I guffawed because it reminded me of the sidewalk barbecues in Vietnam. Marv and I are big fans of the ol’ BBQ and I occasionally asked our helper to buy us a sampling to eat at home with rice vermicelli salad. We often saw that the vendors laid their grills directly on the sidewalks along busy streets but the grilled meat was so delicious that we tried not to see if you know what I mean.

Here’s a photo I’ve nicked from Noodlepie where Graham goes into great detail describing “barbecue boulevard.”

Direct proof that barbecue causes cancer.

7 Comments »

A teenager was taken to hospital after overdosing on espresso coffee.

Jasmine Willis, 17, developed a fever and began hyperventilating after drinking seven double espressos while working at her family’s sandwich shop.

Ms Willis, who had thought the coffees were single measures, said the effects were so severe that she began laughing and crying for no reason while serving customers at the shop.

One of the coffee shops I used to frequent in Baltimore had huge cups that could have doubled as soup bowls. I was so intrigued by them that I thoughtlessly ordered one, drank it all down, and was wired and somewhat panicky feeling all day. I still remember lying on my bed a few hours later wondering why I felt so anxious then realizing that a huge cup like that could only mean that it contained at least a triple shot of espresso.

What’s the most amount of caffeine you’ve ever imbibed at one time?

6 Comments »

Despite a busy weekend reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I made this dinner last night – tonkatsu (using Lilian’s recipe) with aka miso sauce, tender stem broccoli, and steamed short-grain rice. See! I can cook. The question is: will I?

21 Comments »

Last Friday, I was minding my own business when I saw this note on Chris Garrett’s Facebook:

Chris is wishing he had ordered more Nespresso pods.

That piqued my interest because I had recently used a picture of someone’s display of Nespresso capsules at Eye on DNA although I had no idea what those things were. The wall hanger happened to look like two colorful X chromosomes and I liked that. Definitely a sign.

So I spent the rest of Friday researching and obsessing over Nespresso. By the end of the day, I’d put in an order for a Nespresso D290C Concept Automatic Espresso Maker. It arrived this morning. And exercising great restraint, I only tested one regular cappuccino and one decaffeinated. Marv even went out of his way to get me amaretto syrup for my latte tomorrow morning.

The Nespresso coffee is hot, strong, and smooth. Perfect! Here’s a video demo of the machine I purchased.

Happy 35th birthday to me! (Six weeks early to boot.)

Update: Nespresso is clearly not going to leave any coffee lover high and dry when they run out of coffee capsules. I ordered the one-time offer welcome package yesterday and it was just delivered a mere 24 hours later. Very impressive.

4 Comments »

One of the mums brought these chocolate krispie cakes to school one afternoon. Stephen loved it so much he was nearly in tears when he dropped the last bite on the ground. Fortunately, the generous mum gave him another. We tried making it ourselves today and it was a big success! Here’s a simple recipe from Essential UK.

Chocolate krispie cakes

Ingredients:

• A big bar of chocolate
• A packet of rice krispies or cornflakes
• Paper cake cases

Method:

• Break the chocolate into pieces.
• Put the pieces of chocolate into a bowl
• Melt the chocolate in a microwave
• Mix rice krispies or cornflakes into the melted chocolate
• Put a spoonful of the mixture into the paper cake cases
• Put the paper cases into the fridge for an hour
• Eat the chocolate krispie cakes!

No Comments »