“I’ve not drunk instant coffee since 1972. And even then, it was under duress.” — Liz Jones
My date was 1992 — because like Liz, I came from an instant-coffee culture. And it took emigration to break the ghastly spell. Now, I can’t even stand the smell of the swill.
I was reminded of this the other day.
Back in Sith Efrika, city streets are full of little snack bars, fish ‘n chip shops and cafés (called “caffies” by the locals, and these places bear absolutely no relation to the French establishment). All serve the usual stuff: hot dogs (“horrogs”), burgers, and of course fish ‘n chips.
Most of them, especially in working-class areas, serve something else. It’s called (inexplicably) “bunny chow”, and it’s the simplest of all dishes: a half-loaf of regular white- or brown bread, hollowed out and filled with either chicken/beef/lamb curry, or else beef/mutton stew. It’s a budget-prized take on the “soup-in-a-French-boule” thing beloved of snooty Californian and Midwestern restaurants.
Here are a couple pics of bunny chow, to give you an idea:
You can eat it with your bare hands: scoop the top part out with your fingers until there’s enough crust to break off and use as a scoop; or if you’re feeling flush, order a side of fries and use those in twos as your delivery device. (I said it was a working-class food.) Or, if you’re squeamish, use a fork for the stew, and when it’s all gone, eat the saturated bread up afterwards. Either way, you have to eat it quickly or else the loaf will collapse — literally, it’s a portable meal to be eaten on the run.
You can go upscale with it:
…but that’s like putting caviar on a hot dog. “Bunny chow” means cheap bread, cheap meat, a cheap meal.
Served properly, it’s delicious. Sadly, bunny chow is often used for yesterday’s leftover stew (not that there’s anything wrong with that) or else last week’s leftover stew (not so good). Rule of thumb: never order bunny chow early on a Monday morning.
When I was a starving student back in the early 1970s, I lived on bunny chow. There was a greasy snack bar just around the corner from campus which served both curried chicken or -lamb chow, but you had to be careful eating either because there were often pieces of bone left in the stew — let’s just say that the food prep tended towards the hasty side in these establishments.
Later, as a starving musician, my tastes had become more sophisticated, and I’d moved on to shawarmas, that spicy and tasty Mediterranean dish of lamb, chicken or beef carved off a rotating vertical skewer:and served inside a soft, thin pita-bread pocket.
After almost every gig, I’d head off to Paradise Foods in Hillbrow (greasy spoons, greasy floor, greasy walls FFS), get two shawarmas (meat and sauce only, none of that veg crap), and somehow I’d manage to eat both of them on the run before I got back to my car. Man, it was a highlight of the week.
But if I was on the road to or from a gig and feeling hungry, there was always a roadside “caffie” somewhere to sell me bunny chow.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the kitchen.
Everybody told them that it was a monumentally-stupid idea; but noooooo:
Restaurants Unlimited, a Seattle-based chain with restaurant locations in 47 US cities, announced on Sunday it was seeking Chapter 11 protection, citing “progressive” wage laws.
The company, which has operated since the Lyndon Johnson Administration, said rising labor costs—part of a national trend of government-mandated minimum increases—were part of its decision.
Note the 47 cities affected by these closures (see link).
I would feel more sorry for the soon-to-be-laid-off workers, but I’m betting that most of them supported the higher-minimum-wage idiocy in the first place, so… sucks to be them. Maybe next time they’ll vote with their brains instead of with their greed. (Granted, working-class people have trouble making ends meet in liberal shitholes like Seattle and San Francisco; but the politicians who have caused the high housing prices are the same ones who pushed through the higher minimum-wage thresholds. So there’s a double whammy here, and yet those idiot voters keep sending them back into office.)
Of course, it’ll be all Trump’s fault (according to the West Coast media).
“Is it just me? Or is raw onion in salad the work of the devil?”
Then follows hundreds of words of unnecessary justification.
I’ve heard of people who can eat an onion like one eats an apple, and I’m glad they’re identified so I can avoid them. It’s akin to munching on cloves of raw garlic: anti-social and disgusting.
Raw onion is foul — it smells like unwashed armpits, and it has no place in a mixed salad. Period, end of statement.
This from TexGov Greg Abbott:
Well excuse me if I don’t turn a few cartwheels and stuff. Fifty years ago, you could see liquor stores’ delivery scooters putting around all over every city and town in South Africa, painted in the various stores’ livery.
And, just so everyone understands my scorn, you could order beer and wine for home delivery. Also gin, vodka, brandy, Scotch and rum. Fifty years ago. In South Africa.
I once noted that as one moves south from the northern states in the U.S., the gun laws become less stupid, and the liquor laws become more so. In Chicago, I could buy single-malt Scotch at the supermarket, but I couldn’t buy a gun anywhere. Down here, even oh-so-cosmopolitan Plano became a “liquor” retail area (as opposed to just beer & wine) only about five years ago, but I have about fifteen gun stores within a couple miles of my house.
There are a lot of things to like about the South, but their liquor laws are not among them.
So: wake me up when I can order my favorite Scotch and gin from Total Wines or Spec’s, and have them delivered to my front door.
Actually, check that. Wake me up when I can buy my booze from Amazon. Like you can in Britain (where you can’t buy anything made by Colt).
And one last thing: I don’t enjoy the paternalistic tone of government “allowing” me to do anything, and being advised to do something “responsibly“. Fuck you, fuck your responsibility, and thanks for nothing, you paternalistic asshole.
Now send the Texas State Guard down to police the Rio Grande, and stop pissing around with chickenshit like this.
All my life, I’ve loved bread. As a kid I ate bread with every meal, mostly the commercial white- or brown loaves (called “government bread” in South Africa because the price was kept low by a combination of both subsidy and quota production). The nearest equivalent today would be the Wonderbread/ Hostess/ generic breads found in supermarkets (U.K. equivalent: Hovis/ Warburtons/ store brands).
Gradually as I got older and my taste buds matured, I discovered bakery breads, my taste for which became exacerbated by visits to Europe and exposure to wares of the boulangerie and bäckerei… oy, my mouth waters just thinking about the Viennese brötchen I’d gobble down with my morning coffee.
All went well, until my doctor told me that I needed to change my diet (his exact words: “If you don’t lose weight, you’re going to die, you fat bastard”). There were other words related to my extreme paucity of exercise (“Get up off your fat ass and start exercising, too.”)
I know that diets don’t work; only permanent changes in lifestyle and eating habits do. And the only change that seems to work without being too much work is getting rid of the bad things which cause you to gain weight, chief offenders being starches (grains) and sugars.
Sugars were not too difficult, as long as I cut out stuff like Coke and fruit jams [moan]; but I was never going to eliminate sugar from my diet altogether because I can’t drink coffee without at least a little sugar to cut the bitterness — and I’ll never give up coffee.
The grains were not altogether difficult to cut back on. I’ve never cared much for pasta — whatever it’s called, it’s all the same stuff — so Italian dishes like lasagna and macaroni went into the trashcan. Ditto rice, which I’ve always liked but found easy to drop.
But then comes the worst offender: bread. Oh… fuck. Wait: you mean no more baguettes?
Non.
What about challah?
Nah.
Croissants?
Pas du tout.
Brötchen?
Bestimmt nicht.
So my all-time favorite, crusty French batard loaf?
Mais non (mon gros cochon).
As I said… fuck.
So here’s what I do. I limit myself to two slices of toast (or one croissant) on Saturday mornings, and occasionally a toasted sandwich (cheese, or chicken mayonnaise) on Friday nights. Those are my “cheats” (without which I’d never do any of it).
And I hit the gym — treadmill and stationary bicycle for half an hour — every weekday, religiously. (When I was still at Doc Russia’s house, I walked about two miles per day, including a quarter-mile up and down Thrombosis Hill*.) The results have been quite pleasing: 270 lbs in Jan 2017, somewhat south of 230 lbs today, with a goal weight of 205, which was my weight at age 23 in the Army, right after boot camp. (Some asswipe once suggested that at my height, my goal should be 175, whereupon I chastised him sorely, saying that I hadn’t weighed 175 since 1969 at age 15. When he got his breath back, he agreed.)
But I still miss — I mean, constantly — my daily bread. Were it not for that “death” bullshit, I’d dump the whole stupid diet/ fitness lark in an instant and go back to my four slices a day. I mean, FFS:
*the road up the hill behind Doc’s house, which requires cars to shift into low gear at the base.