Pointless But It Does My Head In
IdleRich
IdleRich
Well, it's not that it's good that they have different plugs but I don't get why you would expect them to be the same, they're different in the US too because different countries put their systems in at different times.
The trains thing is an interesting one, apparently the rail size directly relates to the size of Roman carts which lead to the size of English roads which was then used unthinkingly for the size of train tracks in America.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Really? That's quite cool. Stephen Fry would award you a point for that, I reckon.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I dunno, I've read that several times but it says here that it's bollocks.
http://www.mmdtkw.org/VRomanRoads.html
http://www.mmdtkw.org/VRomanRoads.html
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Apparently it's newsworthy that a popular entertainer takes cocaine "occasionally": http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/10843422
In other news, Pete Smith, 52, of Basingstoke, eats custard creams "occasionally".
In other news, Pete Smith, 52, of Basingstoke, eats custard creams "occasionally".
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
That's in pop-star years, obviously.
"I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they're going to take my creativity from me."
ha. i think i might really hate people who define themselves by their "creativity". anyway, she's had a little pop, can someone just hit her over the head with a brick now until she falls over and all of it gradually seeps away into the earth forever?
ha. i think i might really hate people who define themselves by their "creativity". anyway, she's had a little pop, can someone just hit her over the head with a brick now until she falls over and all of it gradually seeps away into the earth forever?
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
Rocket. The salad vegetable - argula to the yanks - not the early steam locomotive or the system of propulsion.
I quite like it in itself, but its role in British food culture is spectacularly irritating while neatly encapsulating several rubbish tendancies. Specifically we (particularly gastropubs, supermarkets, middlebrow cookbooks etc) love italian food. We love it because it evokes images of sun-drenched vinyards and old men drinking red wine in village squares and farmers wives kneading pasta dough in tuscan kitchens and and all that jazz. A key part of this mystique is the just-off-the-land freshness, the basil from the kitchen garden, tomatoes from the farm, living in touch with the seasons and cooking with wonderfully vibrant fresh local ingredients.
Naturally the british foodie wants some of that. So - of course - we ignore or mistreat all the salad vegetables that are being grown freshly, in season, on our doorstep, and pay large sums of money to have wild rocket cut, washed, packaged and flown here from around the world...
I think this probably ties in with a larger gripe about the awfulness of salad vegetables in most shops in the UK, but I'm focusing the rage on rocket for the time being.
I quite like it in itself, but its role in British food culture is spectacularly irritating while neatly encapsulating several rubbish tendancies. Specifically we (particularly gastropubs, supermarkets, middlebrow cookbooks etc) love italian food. We love it because it evokes images of sun-drenched vinyards and old men drinking red wine in village squares and farmers wives kneading pasta dough in tuscan kitchens and and all that jazz. A key part of this mystique is the just-off-the-land freshness, the basil from the kitchen garden, tomatoes from the farm, living in touch with the seasons and cooking with wonderfully vibrant fresh local ingredients.
Naturally the british foodie wants some of that. So - of course - we ignore or mistreat all the salad vegetables that are being grown freshly, in season, on our doorstep, and pay large sums of money to have wild rocket cut, washed, packaged and flown here from around the world...
I think this probably ties in with a larger gripe about the awfulness of salad vegetables in most shops in the UK, but I'm focusing the rage on rocket for the time being.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Ha, good point. Rocket in the shops here can't literally be wild though, can it?
I think part of the problem is that Britain just doesn't really have the climate for growing very interesting salad veg. What we do well here is winter veg - roots, brassicas, the ubiquitous spud - which aren't very salad-y, and as you point out everyone loves 'summery' (Mediterranean) food because it's al fresco sophisticated and sexy and all the rest of it . Aspirational, in other words. I think Jamie Oliver probably bears a large part of the blame for this. We could turn the tide with a series of Nigella's 101 Interesting Things To Do With Root Veg or somesuch. (I'd watch it, that's for sure.)
But British summer produce is all about the soft fruit, innit? Strawbs, razzers, blackberries (today I picked over a kilo of the biggest juiciest bastards I've ever seen growing wild), redcurrants, plums...I mean oranges are great and all that, but you can't make a summer pudding or Eton mess with oranges.
What’s even more annoying is when you order £1200 worth of kit & the fucking pricks can’t even be bothered to put the plug in that corresponds to your country...
ffs, this mixer even had ‘Pioneer EU’ on the side of the box, why would you send a fucking American plug in it?
And please, if you do work for pioneer and regularly post on this board then please don’t answer this with a plausible reason. I’m sure there probably is one, but fuck me if I can think of it.
Not true. Rocket grows like, er, a rocket here. I grow all sorts of mustardy salad leaves too. In fact with a polytunnel you can grow masses of interesting salad through the winter.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
So really, Slothrop's gripe only applies to imported rocket? (Christ, could this conversation be any more middle class...?)
I suppose you can distinguish between where a crop plant has come from originally and where in particular it's grown today. To me, trad UK salad veg is lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes*, maybe radishes...which all have their place but are not, if we're honest, much to get worked up about. But I hadn't considered covered growing, as you mention.
*and personally. tomatoes have to be either dried or cooked into a sauce before I'll go anywhere near them
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Was just idly surfing back through the thread and came upon this:
Reminded me of a bit in a book I read recently; dude mentions a trick he learnt as a student in shared accommodation to stop this happening - write MILK EXPERIMENT on the bottle.
Reminded me of a bit in a book I read recently; dude mentions a trick he learnt as a student in shared accommodation to stop this happening - write MILK EXPERIMENT on the bottle.
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
Well, to slightly tired prewashed and packaged rocket, basically.
And watercress, mushrooms, spinach, lambs lettuce, spring onion. And, yeah, you can get more exotic stuff fresh and in season too. But shops still believe that salad comes pre-cut in a plastic bag.
jenks
thread death
This fits one of my major gripes - i really don't much like tomatoes (cooked or dried is fine) and particularly not in sandwiches. So why can i never find a sandwich at Eat or wherever that doesn't have tomatoes? And please do not tell me you can always take them out - by then the damage is done - the sandwich is tainted with tomato gloop - there are obviously greater concerns in the world today but sandwiches matter too.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Yeah, sure, agreed on all points. *But* the prewashed-salad-in-a-plastic-bag thing serves its purpose, as a lot of the nice ones have a mixture of leaves, and unless you're making salad for half-a-dozen people it'd be very wasteful and expensive to buy a head of this, a bunch of that and make it up yourself.
Plus, there's the fact that it's convenient. Let's not get so foody-worthy as to forget that convenience is actually a virtue in and of itself; it can be a bad thing if it takes precedence over quality, but that isn't (always) necessarily the case. My name is Mr. Tea, and I buy pre-washed bagged salads...
Concur with jenks re. tomatoes so hard it hurts.