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Symbolic Forest

A homage to loading screens.

Blog : Posts tagged with ‘food’

Tiramizoo

In which we have no bread

As people have been asking, here’s the cake that K’s very kindly made me for my birthday. I haven’t actually tasted it yet – as I write this it’s sitting in the fridge – but as all of K’s cooking is wonderful and delicious, I’m sure it will be fantastic.

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More Sheese, Vicar?

In which a correspondent is nauseated

Regular readers might remember that a few days back, in a rant about vegan food, I mentioned a vegan cheese substitute product I came across called “Sheese”, a kind of oil-water-soya paste packed to the gunnels with artificial flavouring to make it vaguely cheeselike.

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Vegetarian

In which we disbelieve vegan propaganda, and try food made of additives and nothing else

At the weekend: off we went to a vegetarian food event we’d seen advertised in The Spark, put on by vegan campaigning organisation Viva!. We were expecting it to be slightly biased, obviously, but even so the strength of the propaganda they gave was slightly surprising. They claim, according to a poster we saw there, that their “veggie roadshows” have saved the lives of 100 million animals so far, which sounds like, well, a rather large number. They claim that one person converting to the veganist religion will save “around 11,047 animals”. I love that figure, and, particularly, the “around” part. Around. A rough estimate: it might only be 11,046-and-a-half animal lives, or you might do well and manage a whole 11,047-and-an-eighth! Going by these numbers, that means they think they’ve converted 9,052.2314 people to veganism (don’t forget that almost-a-quarter of a person at the end there) – or about 650 a year, on average, since they started out. How they count those 11,000 – sorry, roughly 11,047 – animals, I’m not entirely sure. Do animals who will now not be born count as lives saved? Will all those 11,047 (roughly) animals live out their natural lives in some happy, predator-free elysium? Forever cute, as their propaganda posters show? Who knows?

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The image of popularity

In which we see how popular food is

After posting pictures of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park last week, it got me looking at my Flickr account and wondering what pictures are the most popular. Flickr will, if you like, give you pages of tables and graphs to tell you how many people have been looking at each of your photos,* so I thought I’d see if there’s any general pattens in what sort of photos people like to view at full size.

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The Quest Continues…

In which we are still on a quest for condensed milk

After Thursday’s post, Kahlan got back in touch, with a tip-off. Apparently there had been a rumoured sighting of a can of own-brand non-evil condensed milk, in a Waitrose. So our Saturday was spent driving 25 miles to Harrogate, the nearest branch,* to find … Nestlé products firmly on the shelves. Oh well.

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An Experiment

In which we cook a frittata

Back in the days when I was a student, ten years or so ago,* I would be quite experimental in the kitchen. I’d try things out, new recipes, experimental recipes. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t, but it made things nice and varied.

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Tasty

In which we look forward to a delicacy

Science news of the week: scientists have finally invented an odourless breed of durian, the tropical fruit which is popular in the East Indies, but entirely impossible to obtain in Britain. It smells like a potent mix of vomit and custard, and is banned from the cargo holds of every airline because of that. In Malaysia, several people are killed by durian every year, not because of the smell, but because they are large, spiky, and grow high up in trees. My former Malaysian flatmate would send me news clippings about deaths rising at the start of each durian season. Note to European publishers: start getting those durian recipe books ready now!

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Busy life

In which eating the leftovers is ill-advised

Note to self: be more careful with the leftovers in future. Two day old Chinese food with prawns in isn’t good for my stomach, clearly. That was at least part of the reason for my absence over the past couple of days. There were other reasons, too, of course – when I wasn’t in bed or throwing up, I was travelling round half of Yorkshire, escorting kissograms and delivering cats. Despite my illness, despite still spending most of the weekend in bed, I didn’t get much sleep.

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“JCB Maniac Demolishes House”…

Or, while we are away

…was the headline on the Evening Standard billboards when I was wandering around Islington this morning looking for a bus. It’s not a headline you hear every day. It turns out that the manic in question was a ‘heavy plant operator’, which at least might explain how he knew how to get hold of a JCB at 7 in the morning, never mind how to drive one.

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Italian cuisine

In which we talk about poverty, diet, and the deep-fried pizza

I often don’t agree with the writing of Julie Bindel, the left-wing feminist who apparently believes that everyone should have full control over their own body, unless they were born male, or want to prostitute themselves. Today, though, I thought she was along the right lines when she wrote about diet and classism: it’s easy to criticise poor people for being unhealthy, when they don’t have the time or the money to eat well.*

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