Category: Food & Drink

Too Much (Hot) Air

Food & Drink

Apparently, we’ve been drinking champagne All Wrong:

A wine expert has revealed why you shouldn’t drink Champagne out of a flute [glass, not musical instrument — K]. Master Sommelier Olivier Krug, from Krug Champagne, was a guest on the ‘Got Somme’ podcast hosted by Angus O’Loughlin and Carlos Santos, and suggested using ‘proper’ glassware — such as a pinot noir or chardonnay glass — to taste all the elements of the champagne.

Whatever.

I’ve never cared for champagne:  too gassy, mostly crap-tasting inferior wine, it’s a triumph of marketing over quality.

“Ah but Kim, you’ve just never tried the really good stuff!”

LOL.  I remember once going to a brand promotion party at some mansion in Newport RI and being given a glass (or two) of their “premium” plonk — from memory, it retailed for $420 a bottle, in the 1980s — and thinking that it tasted like inferior fizzy apple juice.  I’ve forgotten the brand;  Dom Perignon?  Moët et Chandon?  Taittinger?  Bollinger?  But it wasn’t Veuve Clicquot, which really does taste like inferior fizzy apple juice.

Frankly, I find that champagne / sparkling wine works best as a component of the brunch staple, Mimosa (or Buck’s Fizz, as the Brits call it), as long as the drink contains much more orange juice than champers.
[Side note:  don’t bother using freshly-squeezed OJ in a Mimosa:  ordinary pasteurized crap works just fine, in fact Tropicana may be even better fit for purpose than the pricier-than-gold squeezed.]
And if you’re going to mix champagne with anything, you may as well save your money and use Korbel or the like, rather than the aforementioned overpriced Frog Appellation Controlée* stuff.

Okay, I’m just a Bloody Peasant and you’ve bought into the whole Champagne thing:  here are a couple of places to get a “best of” list:  18 Best Sparkling Wines to Drink in 2023 and 12 Best Sparkling Wines From All Over the World.

All that said, one of my favorite apéritifs is called a Golden Dream:  peach-flavored schnapps and (any) sparkling wine 50-50%, with a tiny drizzle of brandy (poured gently over an inverted teaspoon so as to lie on the surface of the drink).  Be warned:  drink this lovely stuff in moderation, or extreme shit-facery will soon follow.  Cheers.

*For the non-cognoscenti, only sparkling wine produced in France’s Champagne area may be called “champagne”;  all others must be labeled as “sparkling wine”, regardless of quality.  It’s all part of the marketing.

JHC.

Scaling Down

Food & Drink

This past Thanksgiving saw a change for us.  Instead of doing the massive overindulgence of a Thanksgiving dinner, we opted instead for a simple snack tray.

Of course, the kids didn’t starve to death, oh no.  Son&Heir went to his mother’s family (guest count:  “over 20 FFS!”) and Daughter went to her newly-acquired in-laws (guest count:  “about 10 or so”) so they arrived at our place early last Thursday evening groaning with gluttony.

So for New Wife and I to have gone Full Thanksgiving with a turkey and the whole catastrophe could have been classified as child abuse. Well okay, the “children” are all in their mid-30s so maybe not, but you get my drift.

The chances are that the kids would barely have touched our meal anyway — and with the cost of food nowadays…

Then just yesterday I saw this little snippet:

Nearly six in ten Brits would rather have a takeaway than a traditional Christmas dinner, according to a survey.

A staggering 59 per cent of the nation say they would prefer to order a takeaway than cook up a roast dinner with all the trimmings on Christmas Day.

…and I can see where they’re coming from, just based on my own experience.

Of course, I plan on doing a proper Christmas feast for our lot:

… but as usual, this will take place on Boxing Day rather than on Christmas Day proper, so the kids can do Christmas with the other family branches just as they did on Thanksgiving.

The reason I’m hosting Boxing Day dinner at all is partly tradition — we’ve always celebrated Christmas that way — and partly because I can eat roast beef leftovers for days afterwards.  (I can’t do that with Thanksgiving turkey because it can cause a gout flare-up.  Beef, however, is a safe bet.)

The only slight bummer is that I’ll be on my own over Christmas, as New Wife is off to Seffrica for most of December and early January to bless the New Grandson — cost thereof will be most generously met by her #2 Son — so I’ll be doing the dinner myself.  (No big deal:  I’m debating whether to do roast beef or leg of lamb — the kids are agnostic on the subject, they love both.)

Hell, I might just get the butcher to slice the raw beef/lamb really thinly (a.k.a. “shabu shabu”), and do a “table roast” on a hot steel plate, Mediterranean style, with Greek salad, hot pita bread and hummus, and dessert of baklava or cheesecake.  They love that idea as well.

Tradition?  I don’ need no steenkin’ tradition.  But I draw the line at takeout, tempted as I am by the thought of a no-hassle huge dish of fish ‘n chips supplied by the tavern across the road.

I need to get something to eat, now.  Excuse me.

Mouth Watering Over Here

Food & Drink

Tom Parker-Bowles finds the best chippie in Britishland, and it makes me want to go there.

Except Scottishland at this time of year is… well, as put by Combat Controller, who with Doc Russia has just returned from the annual roe deer cull in the Cairngorms:  “Cold, miserable, windy and wet.”

Okay, but I’d still like to get to the Sea Salt & Sole at some point.  A good fish ‘n chips meal is becoming alarmingly hard to find Over There, at any price.  The low price is a bonus.

Root Cause

Food & Drink

I really need to visit Britishland again, not just for personal reasons but to do my bit to reverse an alarming trend.

This is the most depressing article I’ve read all week, and it may explain a whole lot about the nation that Britishland has become:

Brits are eating less meat, potatoes and bread than ever before, according to data tracking the nation’s food purchases over the last six decades.

Red meat consumption has plunged by up to 81 per cent since the 70s amid health fears, the steady rise of veganism and growing concerns about climate change.

Then again, perhaps it’s the slow brain death caused by a low-meat / vegan diet that has allowed a nation of skeptics to become a nation of fearful wussies:  where the .Britgov can pass a law that makes ownership of cars illegal by a certain date without said .Britgov being sent en masse to the gallows, and where Brits can not only get arrested for posting mean tweets, but allow themselves to be arrested therefor.

But all this has just made me want to add a little something to my morning breakfast (and it’s not a second gin, shuddup):

Excuse me…

We Know Better

Food & Drink, Gummint

…saith Gummint, when it comes to just about every human product or endeavor.  Here’s a fresh dose of silliness, from a doctor (another group of busybodies):

Banning junk food won’t stop people eating it, just look at how Prohibition failed! But we DO need new regulations to tackle our poor diet

Oh we do, do we?  So banning won’t work, but the softly-softly approach by regulation will achieve the same ends (cf. gun control Over Here, another catalog of failures).  Let me continue:

How do you feel about being told what to do, particularly when it comes to decisions around your health? — I want to reach for my 1911.

Most of us, I suspect, think we should be left to make our own decisions (and our own mistakes). — Except for doctors, government busybodies and other foul control freaks

But I also think most of us would accept that there are areas where the government should step in and regulate” — errrr no.  Maybe 5% of all human activity might need government oversight, and I’ll entertain arguments from anyone who thinks that 5% is too much.

Anyway, after dealing with the low-hanging fruit (leaded gasoline and cigarettes), Our Good Doctor gets after food.

There’s no way you can ban people from eating junk food — not only is it everywhere but you also have to ensure there are affordable alternatives. — No, “you” don’t.  People would prefer to eat Twinkies instead of carrot sticks or oatmeal bars.  Leave the Twinkies alone.

But there are lots of things that could be done to nudge our behaviour, many of which Boris Johnson planned to introduce before he fell from power. — and not a moment too soon.

These include the end of BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free) sales on foods high in fat and sugar — their main purpose, after all, is to make you eat more junk food. You rarely see BOGOF (US: BOGO) offers on fresh veg or fish. — errrr that’s because fresh veg and fish are perishables, hello.

Other plans included a ban on adverts for junk food and sweets aimed at children, online and before 9pm on TV. These measures are popular — a YouGov poll found a ban on junk food adverts before 9pm is supported by 62 per cent and opposed by just 17 per cent — but almost all the anti-obesity strategies Boris loudly promoted have been kicked into the long grass. — because they’re unpopular, stupid and bossy.  Kinda like Boris.  By the way, the same percentage (62%) applies to people who want to reinstate the death penalty in the U.K.  No?

With one in five children now overweight or obese when they get to primary school, and the number of obese adults projected to soon outnumber those of a healthy weight within the next five years, there is a desperate need for action. Yes, ban smoking in the young but we also need to be thinking about diet. — If we’re serious about reducing the number of fat people, why not just shoot them all in the street?  This would be the most efficient (and, by the way, the least costly) option.

And we just know that Gummint is all about efficiency — except in their own dealings, of course.

Let’s rather just shoot them.  On the whole, I’d be happier living among fat people than having Government busybodies peering into my shopping basket.

Not to mention:

 

Anyone else starting to feel peckish?

There’s A Smell In The Air

Food & Drink, Lies and Untruths, Veggies & Vegans

…and no, it’s not the smell of cooking vegan burgers:

Britons are turning away from meat with a majority backing subsidies for plant-based alternatives, according to the RSPCA.

New figures suggest a revolution in eating habits for a nation that was previously defined by its love of roast beef and a fry-ups, with their bacon, sausages and eggs.

A study sponsored by the animal charity found 58 per cent have taken steps to eliminate or reduce their own meat consumption.

Uh huh.  I bet the study was taken in Islington, among people seen leaving vegetarian and vegan restaurants, and duh!  it’s coming from the RSPCA, hardly an unbiased organization.

That smell?  Ah yes:  it’s non-vegan bullshit.

All this, among actual data showing that vegan (i.e. fake meat) food-producing companies are in financial difficulties if not going out of business altogether, ditto vegan restaurants and so on.

But if you repeat the lie often enough, it becomes the truth.  [cf. climate change, Josef Goebbels]

Still: