Food and Food Culture

I cannot find anything untrue in any of this :D

We specialize in sour cream, cottage cheese and the delicious melty cheese more than yoghurt, but the spirits? Yeah strong and a cureall. (Got a cold? Pálinka... or mulled wine. Got headaches? Pálinka. Your teeth hurt? Wash out your mouth with pálinka. Nervous? Pálinka. Upset stomach? Unicum... Or pálinka. We're almost as bad with it as Russians are with vodka, seriously xd)

And what do you mean, jam's not healthy, it's made of fruits xd :P

Edited by akanesarumara on Aug 27th 2019 at 4:12:32 PM

The Great British Bakeoff is back on and their Showstopper for the first week was to make their childhood fantasy birthday cake. In honour of this, what were the best birthday cakes people had as children? Mine would be the one my mum made for my 5th or 6th birthday in the shape of Boulder Hill from M.A.S.K.. I can't remember what it tasted like but it looked brilliant.

Edited by SebastianGray on Aug 28th 2019 at 5:28:18 PM

I had a big Lego wooden fort model from their Western range (Fort Legoredo) and my mother made a big chocolate cake with towers chocolate fingers on the sides to resemble that fort and put some of the Lego figures on it. It was rad, even though chocolate cakes have always been a middle of the road pick for me.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Aug 28th 2019 at 5:30:39 PM

Mum and Dad sometimes pushed the boat out for cakes (especially for parties)... but, my favourite was a silly cute cat cake I got for my not-very-razzy-dazzy 6th. It wasn't as intricate as the later ballet-shoe cake or the really jaw-dropping BMX-themed one my brother got, once.

Just a round layered Victoria sponge with a stylised cat face piped on it and the writing around the rim.

Sometimes, simple is best.

I may be trying hot pot soon. Anybody has any tips?

Do you have any dietary restrictions?

Nope.

Then go nuts. The beauty of hot pot is that you can put just about any ingredient you like in it.

If you're bold you can try putting in ingredients such as chicken testicles.

Will do! Though I'm not sure the place has chicken balls.

Ok poultry testicles reminds me of "rooster's dick stew"... yeah exactly what it sounds like.

Edited by akanesarumara on Aug 28th 2019 at 8:02:02 PM

Seems Popeyes chicken has come under fire due to a chicken shortage.

Again.

Gotta admit, I never really liked birthday cake much as a kid. Maybe it was because the places I got cake from as a kid weren't particularly good ones. I was more of a pie fan as a kid.

Nowadays I have a greater appreciation for cake. Though even now I avoid the cakes made to look like artwork first and food second.

I don't remember the tastes of my childhood cakes very well, but for my 19th birthday, I had a chocolate cake shaped like a Highland Park bottle.

I don't really eat cake anymore, because I am trying to avoid sugar and grains, but that was my favorite birthday cake

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/03/are-beyond-meats-burgers-healthier-than-red-meat-dietitians-say-no.html

The Impossible Burger isn't healthier but it could potentially save the planet ecologically.

I always get suspicious whenever I find a vegetarian option that tastes too much like meat. Because that doesn't happen unless you process the fuck out of it.

Just eat a damn salad and buy frozen veggies, people.

Edited by M84 on Aug 31st 2019 at 1:39:56 AM

Vegetarian/vegan isn't always healthier. In many cases it's actually less healthy as getting the full set of nutrients is a lot harder unless you carefully plan your diet. And certain ways of obtaining vegan alternatives cause more environmental destruction than the alternative. On the other hand one benefit of non-restrictive vegetarian diets is that they require a much smaller ecological footprint and thus are more efficient on the whole. I could see myself supporting a widespread cultural reduction though not elimination in the consumption of red meats in favor of more poultry and vegetarian alternatives.

It might be easier for me to say this as while Chinese cuisine has many splendid meat dishes it also has a particularly vibrant history of flavorful vegetarian-friendly dishes for which I would feel the sacrifice less. I often find myself deliberately making dishes that use such imitation meats for their own sake rather than for the ability to mimic meat accurately.

Edited by AlleyOop on Aug 30th 2019 at 1:52:55 PM

Yup. I like tofu better when it's not trying to pretend it's meat. Tofu burgers, tofu dogs, tofu turkey...blech.

Edited by M84 on Aug 31st 2019 at 1:58:36 AM

I like tofu burgers when they're basically "tofu cut to fit in a bun" rather than "tofu failing to be beef, chicken or fish due to over-peaing or over-soying or just plain over-salting and worse".

Then it's just firm tofu you use in a bun and add your own bits to.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Aug 31st 2019 at 9:24:39 AM

I'll second that sentiment. Tofu as tofu is fine, stop pretending its something it's not.

Also (related to a meal today) there is no such thing as vegan cheese. I don't care what you call it, it's not cheese unless it came out of the mammary glands of some kind of animal.

No, it won't. Looking at that article, it seems to be based on processed soy.

Soybean farming is hugely damaging to the environment. For example, if you want an alternative to dairy milk, the single worst non-dairy choice you could make (from an environmental impact perspective) is soymilk.

One of the things you have to be careful with is that vegetarian and vegan lifestyles are not automatically environmentally friendly. In fact, a lot of people who are very aware of the environmental impact of livestock and dairy farming are woefully ignorant about the environmental impact of crop farming or food processing; as a result, some of the choices they make are among the worst environmentally damaging options they could go for.

There's a rather distressing trend that I've noticed with a certain group of people who will switch to a vegetarian or vegan diet 'for the good of the environment' then become extremely proactive about trying to get everyone else to stop eating meat and dairy 'for the good of the environment'. Meanwhile, they don't look any deeper into the environmental impact of their new choices — as if all that's needed is to exclude livestock and dairy. What they don't seem to realise is that the switch is not automatically good for the environment and, if you exclude the 'worst' option, that doesn't mean all the other options that didn't classify as 'worst' somehow equate to 'good'.

The problem is modern, intensive, large-scale industrialisation of farming and food production. Large-scale, intensive livestock farming is very easy to identify, measure and sound-bite compared to either crop farming or food processing. Everything else requires more work to identify, analyse and message. It can also be harder to try and find potential solutions. Thus the livestock and dairy industries become the easy scapegoat for these people compared to everything else. Some people want 'easy' solutions — and this is a complex problem with complex needs, and we don't know yet what all the answers are. Some people don't like not having answers to the point of actively avoiding the questions.

There's a very, very long way to go to avoid diets that have devastating, widespread impacts on the environment. If the whole world became vegan overnight, the problem would be nowhere near solved (no matter how much some people and some news articles might think it would be).

Obvious disclaimer: I am not talking about vegetarians or vegan in general, and I'm not saying that vegetarianism and veganism is bad. I'm solely talking about a very specific, but sadly extremely vocal, 'evangelical' type that unfortunately does exist, gives vegetarians and vegans a bad name, and does more harm than good when sharing information on the environmental impact of human diets. Or, to put it simply: these are people who fall foul of the saying 'a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing'.

Or, even more specifically: one of my mother's friends falls into this group and I've spent all week trying to tell her that just because she cut out meat and dairy, she hasn't become magically environmentally friendly. The scale of the problem isn't that easy. She just thinks I'm being anti-vegetarianism or anti-veganism, when my issue is that protecting the environment requires more work than just switching your diet then putting your feet up and patting yourself on the back over what a great job you've done to save the planet. I've tried the rice, soybean and tea industries on her... perhaps my next port of call should be cotton farming and the Aral Sea — it's not a food-based example, that way.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 31st 2019 at 4:33:08 PM

It's the lesser of the two evils. Soy is already very widely farmed around the world - unlike, say, quinoa - but right now, much of it is used as livestock feed, which a much less efficient way of transferring biomass compared to just straight-up feeding it to people.

If the demand for soy-based food is coupled with a fall in demand for beef, then it should be doable without the current rate of farmland expansion... although given that the market works the way Ork vehicles do, the farms might just keep growing anyway (I bring up the US/EU biofuel acts and the ensuing Southeast Asian palm oil boom all the time because it's such a perfect example of "going green" backfiring).

Anyway, bought some apricots last night. Gonna try to make noshkhukhpa.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Aug 31st 2019 at 2:24:03 AM

Yeah. Don't get me started on biofuels.

Update: This is just to say

I have made noshkhukhpa
from the apricots
that were in
the fridge

and which
you were probably
not expecting to be made
into a Pamiri soup dish

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so good with naan

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Aug 31st 2019 at 6:39:17 AM

I don't recall the last time I had apricot soup, if ever.

Sweet soups sound interesting. I've never had a fruit soup.

On a soup related topic, I don't get Campbell soup's popularity. I'm trying to see if I can cure an infection without going to the doctor, so I'm drinking as much green tea and water as I can. I heated up some Campbell's chicken noodle as a placebo... but it's still as awful as before. It doesn't taste like chicken, just salty water. I swear, Campbell is only popular because it's cheap. Other brands are $2-$4 a can.