“Budweiser has rice in it. So what? So do Asahi and Kirin of Japan, Bintang of Indonesia and Efes of Turkey, and nobody has such a hate on about them.” Daniel Davies at Crooked Timber wages poptimist war on beer snobbery…

UPDATE: bullet point four gives me an idea for AWESOME FOOD SCIENCE btw

which is uh oh at my house this year i think –:0

Well, I don’t mean me sauce of course, that would be disgusting… anyway!

Tonight I’m going to be carrying out a little experiment. I found some char sui sauce in the local shop (good old shop, it is the nicest thing about New Cross by a country mile), so I’m going to go to Waitrose, buy some pork and have a MARINADE TEST, ie shop char sui vs my own marinade! I’m going to whizz together some soy sauce, hoisin sauce, garlic, ginger, brown sugar, honey and five spice - argh! do I have five spice?? - and see who is the WINNAR. Might also add some food colouring. If I don’t have any red food colouring at home, perhaps it is time to experiment with BLUE char sui HURRAH!

The pork is going to marinade overnight and during the day, I’m not sure whether I should cut it up into thin slices before it marinades or not though… the internet says I should use PORK NECK (nom nom pork neck) but I bet Waitrose has none of this. No doubt the meat markets in Peckham do, but mamma, I’m scared… all the miserable chickens hanging in a row get a bit overwhelming. Reader, I nearly turned vegetarian at one point. I think I will cook it by sticking the oven at the hottest it will go (chiz I bet this is BUG ALL, my oven sux) wrapped up in a load of foil - maybe some extra water for moisture? And then if it is not a disaster, I will eat some with greens, freeze some, stick some in RICE BALLS - it will be marvellous. It will NOT be a disaster.  I will of course, report back.

NOM NOM NOM.

Random commenter “im borat” brought this old post of Pete’s to my attention, and reminded me that our badgery friends at Hall and Woodhouse have a new seasonal ale to take over from Hopping Hare. It’s called STINGER, it’s an organic beer brewed “in conjunction” with Huge Furry-Wishing-Stall and the River Cottage and IT HAS NETTLES IN IT!!!

I’d imagine a dandilion and burdock chaser is recommended to go with it…

when i wz in seattle staying at the SP4CE NEEDLE TRAVELODGE i wz excited to discover that they offer CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST — which to me means slices of cheese and cold meat, a croissant with butter and jam, lovely coffee, and plus other extras

however at the SNT it meant: plain bagels, chocolate eclairs and coffee but no milk!

obv it is a difft continent and everything but :(

Hurrah! For, lo, it is asparagus season again, which coincided nicely with our weekend visit to Arbutus in Soho (srsly, go there, you can have two amazing courses and good wine for like £30 a head which is barely more than a curry in town these days, and certainly in no way excessive for Quality Food and, yeah, it’s popular but you can get a table at 6 no problems at all on less than a week’s notice).

Mrs Carsmile had a starter of steamed asparagus and fried DUCK EGG (it came in a frying pan) and I had asparagus soup with a big dollop of ricotta in the middle and we agreed that asparagus is almost the best vegetable ever.

Then tonight we had roast asparagus a la dast00r that we dipped (with a bit of faffing) into a WHOLE BAKED CAMEMBERT, what could possibly be nummier?

Also i got to revive one of my favourite ilx threads.

Carsmile Steve told me last week about the special edition Spamalot tie in Spam which he had seen in the supermarket. Spam with Stinky French Garlic. Yes, yes, that joke is so early seventies now that it almost seems quaint. The WORD Spam will always be funny, it has the spitting opening, the long a (trying to describe why words are inherently funny is a mugs game of course). But the attachment of Garlic to the French seems a bit old hat now, especially as I get through a bulb a week. Perhaps it is the secret of the Spamalot musical, that Monty Python has become the establishment (and thus being anti-French fits its US based demographic). A wee bit of research on the British Spam website however shows that this is not the only new variant “special edition” flavour available in the UK. Read more »

Stumpy the duck is down to three legs. The usual terse reporting from Ananova explains how he got one of his superfluous appendages stuck in a fence and the vet came and harvested a leg for dinner helped free him from his predicament.
Read more »

Kellogg’s, ah Kellogg’s. Never has there been such a company with such an insatiable desire to stretch a brand to breaking point. You would think there was a pretty limited number of ways you could serve up cereals. Pretty much one per cereal chosen. But ever since they coated some Corn Flakes in sugar to make Frosties (They’re SWEEEEET!) the R&D guys have not stopped. Why only in Tesco’s the other day I noticed Corn Flakes with Honey, one assumes for people who find Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes (cornflakes with honey and nuts) too extreme. Or have nut allergies. Nevertheless it is in the world of the Coco Pop where the most design money is spent. Not on Coco the monkey himself of course, who hasn’t changed in twenty odd years (still with the same annoying yelpy voice). But look at the varieties the Coco Pops brand stretches to: Mega Munchers, Coco Rocks, Coco Pops Straws… Read more »

1: The Fanta-Stick

Possibly invented to tie in with the Christopher Ecclestone incarnation of Doctor Who, for whom this was his catchword. And seeing what we say, it is clear that the Fanta-Stick would be a slightly fizzy* orange lolly marketed by the Coca-Cola company. Perhaps a lot of thought would be put into making it, or perhaps they would just put a stick into a can of Fanta and freeze it. Read more »

Excuses, excuses 

Attempting to order a much-needed Friday pint of Hoegaarden after work last week, I was disappointed to be told that there was none to be had. ‘Seriously,’ the barman told me, ‘it’s not just us, there’s a worldwide shortage’. Now leaving aside the possibility that this might be TRUE, and that mighty beer behemoth InBev, formerly Interbrew has just run out of its cloudy wheaty goodness, one wonders about the high risk strategy the barman was employing. ‘Worldwide shortage’ presumably implies ‘ so no point trying somewhere else for your pint, better choose something else here’. But blowback misfire response = ’so it’s about to run out everywhere and you should immediately leave in search of the last remaining pints in Edinburgh’. Anyway, I figured that explained why the last time I’d had Hoegaarden in there it had tasted manky, and opted for a glass of wine instead, before discovering rare as golddust bottles of lovely lovely ORVAL in the off license on the way home.