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» Guilty Laughs
Just right now...
I'm working in appliance sales currently, in a lovely big showroom full of fridges, cookers, dishwashers... the lot.
So here I am, five minutes ago, flicking through the new newsletter, noting this week's QOTW theme on my way, when the door chimes and in walk an elderly ultra-orthodox Jewish couple.
"We are looking for ovens of gas." Says the wife.
I had to excuse myself for a moment to book a ticket to Hull outside of their earshot.
(Fri 23rd Jul 2010, 22:59, More)
Just right now...
I'm working in appliance sales currently, in a lovely big showroom full of fridges, cookers, dishwashers... the lot.
So here I am, five minutes ago, flicking through the new newsletter, noting this week's QOTW theme on my way, when the door chimes and in walk an elderly ultra-orthodox Jewish couple.
"We are looking for ovens of gas." Says the wife.
I had to excuse myself for a moment to book a ticket to Hull outside of their earshot.
(Fri 23rd Jul 2010, 22:59, More)
» Hypocrisy
The Physicist's Cookbook
As a graduate student I have a fair amount of "study time". On a completely unrelated note, I baking a lot at roughly the time I started here. Grad. school is one of those places where you meet some "interesting" (to put it mildly) cats, especially in Physics: from the weird, lanky Germans to the countless far-too-friendly-for-their-own-good Chinese students to the ones whose you just know it's better to steer clear of, without really knowing why. Andrew (I'll let you take bets on whether that's his real name) is one of those bizarre creatures that actually seems to be a nice, normal (by Physics student standards) guy. By-the-by, he's a vegetarian. Bear that in mind.
Anyway, getting back to the baking: there's only so often you can make regular cookies, sponges or carrot cake - awesome as these things are, there does come a limit. You can spice them up - make the cookies into double-chocolate coconut ones etc. But again, there comes a point where you're just re-hashing the same old stuff. As such I've strayed a touch from the usual limits set in cookbooks, meaning I've baked things mentioned in - say - the newsletter. Now, cast your minds back a few months and you might remember a cookie recipe that made the newsletter. It came about from a discussion the author of the recipe had with her husband about whether a certain foodstuff improved anything it was added to. Apparently said foodstuff, while maybe not an improvement to the humble chocolate chip cookie, certainly wasn't detrimental to it. "Funking awesome!" thought I, "I'm gonna have to make them!". And I finally did make a decent batch a few months ago. People I told about it were either disgusted or intensely curious, no-one was ambivalent. Have I drawn this out enough yet? Maybe not quite - just hold on a minute more.
Anyway, a few weeks ago these magical cookies were mentioned again around Andrew, he'd never heard them mentioned the first time round and - despite the warnings of some nay-sayers - was one of those in the "intensely curious" camp. I warned him about their special contents and he was still adamant on trying them. So I whipped up a batch over the weekend of January 24th/25th (this is important as well) and took them in on the Monday. I proffered one to Andrew and he bit in, looked mildly quizzical, then started noddling satisfactorily. "These are good," said he, "really good."
He's just taken a bite from one of my choc-chip BACON COOKIES. Yes, real fried-dead-pig-in-little-strips BACON. Now, I know that bacon is food of the Gods and it's one of the main hurdles for vegetarians to overcome, but still - I felt proud. Still, it was an easy victory - tempting a vegetarian with bacon, so I could actually forgive him that and not call him a hypocrite (much). However, remember the date I made these cookies? Despite living ~3500 miles away I do still feel the need to tend to some of the rituals of my Scottish homeland. See if you can guess what leftovers I had as my lunch on Monday January 26th. Right, got it?
No sooner had Andrew finished the cookie than I (still eating said lunch) offered him a bite. Having never tried it before Andrew gladly took the fork and grabbed a big forkful of minced, spiced and boiled sheep innards. "Not bad" was his verdict on this delicacy. How the hell can you call yourself a vegetarian and happily munch on haggis, ffs? Not that I mind, of course. Now I just need to find a tee-totaller in the Physics Dept. to try the Jack Daniels brownies that are just out the oven. Somehow I think they'll be harder to come across than a vegetarian.
Just in case anyone's interested in the cookies - here's a link:
physicistscookbook.blogspot.com/2009/02/bacon-cookies.html
(This is a slight variant on the original, tweaked to my particular taste in cookies. That and I've lost the link to the original site - if it still exists - and can't be arsed trawling through old newsletters, I do apologise.)
(Fri 20th Feb 2009, 4:33, More)
The Physicist's Cookbook
As a graduate student I have a fair amount of "study time". On a completely unrelated note, I baking a lot at roughly the time I started here. Grad. school is one of those places where you meet some "interesting" (to put it mildly) cats, especially in Physics: from the weird, lanky Germans to the countless far-too-friendly-for-their-own-good Chinese students to the ones whose you just know it's better to steer clear of, without really knowing why. Andrew (I'll let you take bets on whether that's his real name) is one of those bizarre creatures that actually seems to be a nice, normal (by Physics student standards) guy. By-the-by, he's a vegetarian. Bear that in mind.
Anyway, getting back to the baking: there's only so often you can make regular cookies, sponges or carrot cake - awesome as these things are, there does come a limit. You can spice them up - make the cookies into double-chocolate coconut ones etc. But again, there comes a point where you're just re-hashing the same old stuff. As such I've strayed a touch from the usual limits set in cookbooks, meaning I've baked things mentioned in - say - the newsletter. Now, cast your minds back a few months and you might remember a cookie recipe that made the newsletter. It came about from a discussion the author of the recipe had with her husband about whether a certain foodstuff improved anything it was added to. Apparently said foodstuff, while maybe not an improvement to the humble chocolate chip cookie, certainly wasn't detrimental to it. "Funking awesome!" thought I, "I'm gonna have to make them!". And I finally did make a decent batch a few months ago. People I told about it were either disgusted or intensely curious, no-one was ambivalent. Have I drawn this out enough yet? Maybe not quite - just hold on a minute more.
Anyway, a few weeks ago these magical cookies were mentioned again around Andrew, he'd never heard them mentioned the first time round and - despite the warnings of some nay-sayers - was one of those in the "intensely curious" camp. I warned him about their special contents and he was still adamant on trying them. So I whipped up a batch over the weekend of January 24th/25th (this is important as well) and took them in on the Monday. I proffered one to Andrew and he bit in, looked mildly quizzical, then started noddling satisfactorily. "These are good," said he, "really good."
He's just taken a bite from one of my choc-chip BACON COOKIES. Yes, real fried-dead-pig-in-little-strips BACON. Now, I know that bacon is food of the Gods and it's one of the main hurdles for vegetarians to overcome, but still - I felt proud. Still, it was an easy victory - tempting a vegetarian with bacon, so I could actually forgive him that and not call him a hypocrite (much). However, remember the date I made these cookies? Despite living ~3500 miles away I do still feel the need to tend to some of the rituals of my Scottish homeland. See if you can guess what leftovers I had as my lunch on Monday January 26th. Right, got it?
No sooner had Andrew finished the cookie than I (still eating said lunch) offered him a bite. Having never tried it before Andrew gladly took the fork and grabbed a big forkful of minced, spiced and boiled sheep innards. "Not bad" was his verdict on this delicacy. How the hell can you call yourself a vegetarian and happily munch on haggis, ffs? Not that I mind, of course. Now I just need to find a tee-totaller in the Physics Dept. to try the Jack Daniels brownies that are just out the oven. Somehow I think they'll be harder to come across than a vegetarian.
Just in case anyone's interested in the cookies - here's a link:
physicistscookbook.blogspot.com/2009/02/bacon-cookies.html
(This is a slight variant on the original, tweaked to my particular taste in cookies. That and I've lost the link to the original site - if it still exists - and can't be arsed trawling through old newsletters, I do apologise.)
(Fri 20th Feb 2009, 4:33, More)
» Amazing displays of ignorance
Turkey Bacon, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Genetic Modification
Emma was a lovely lass, really: sweetness and light, chatty and bubbly, but my God was she thick as two short planks. I worked with her in an un-named British supermarket (I might remember more stories about it later and would rather not identify it too clearly) in the fresh meat section, diligently tossing slabs of dead animal onto shelves every weekend for beer money during my degree. Emma was a high school drop-out working there full-time. Anyhow, onto the story:
Our protagonist (moi): Dry, sarcastic, straight-faced. I'm also a reader, as such I quite often had a Fact Of The Day and would chip in to pretty much any discussion with an interesting titbit or factoid.
The ignorant (Emma): Lovely, thick, trusting.
The scene: She and I standing side-by-side, restocking the bacon, with a few of the rest of our number close-by.
Emma sees the case in my hand, full of the Mattesons Turkey Rashers (for those who like their bacon shit and bacon-free) and I see her brow furrow. "Where does turkey bacon come from?" she asks. Taking a second to compose myself, I turned toward her and - in one of my finest straight-faced performances in that job - nonchalantly replied: "Cross-breeds." She looked surprised for a moment but, presumably recalling all the other times I'd provided her with nuggets of information that no-one else seemed to question, was briefly sated. I can only imagine what was running through her head as she tried to work out the logistics of that, but after a moment or two she turned back toward me. I preempted her next question by reminding her of the huge size of some of the turkeys we got in around Christmas time - those were the ones they used along with small pigs. At this point I noticed that we now had a small audience of our co-workers who'd caught the conversation and were now standing behind us, out of her view, trying not to break the scene.
"Really?" I was trying so, so hard at this point not to crack a smile as I nodded seriously. "It's the same sort of thing as the beef ham, right?" My facade was slipping as she thought about this for a moment and nodded, her face showing the strain her poor brain was under trying to comprehend it all. "Or the salmon-cut beef." I know I cracked a grin at this one and I received a smack in the arm for my trouble but the guttural guffaws from those assembled behind us was worth it.
Yes, it was mean but I made sure to undo the damage afterwards by informing her of the truth - complete with interesting facts on the true logistical difficulties of pig copulation. It's still kind of worrying just how readily she ate it up, and somewhat damning of the schooling system in that area (another shining moment of her brilliance was when she asked if Hitler was "That one with that beard.")
(Fri 19th Mar 2010, 13:38, More)
Turkey Bacon, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Genetic Modification
Emma was a lovely lass, really: sweetness and light, chatty and bubbly, but my God was she thick as two short planks. I worked with her in an un-named British supermarket (I might remember more stories about it later and would rather not identify it too clearly) in the fresh meat section, diligently tossing slabs of dead animal onto shelves every weekend for beer money during my degree. Emma was a high school drop-out working there full-time. Anyhow, onto the story:
Our protagonist (moi): Dry, sarcastic, straight-faced. I'm also a reader, as such I quite often had a Fact Of The Day and would chip in to pretty much any discussion with an interesting titbit or factoid.
The ignorant (Emma): Lovely, thick, trusting.
The scene: She and I standing side-by-side, restocking the bacon, with a few of the rest of our number close-by.
Emma sees the case in my hand, full of the Mattesons Turkey Rashers (for those who like their bacon shit and bacon-free) and I see her brow furrow. "Where does turkey bacon come from?" she asks. Taking a second to compose myself, I turned toward her and - in one of my finest straight-faced performances in that job - nonchalantly replied: "Cross-breeds." She looked surprised for a moment but, presumably recalling all the other times I'd provided her with nuggets of information that no-one else seemed to question, was briefly sated. I can only imagine what was running through her head as she tried to work out the logistics of that, but after a moment or two she turned back toward me. I preempted her next question by reminding her of the huge size of some of the turkeys we got in around Christmas time - those were the ones they used along with small pigs. At this point I noticed that we now had a small audience of our co-workers who'd caught the conversation and were now standing behind us, out of her view, trying not to break the scene.
"Really?" I was trying so, so hard at this point not to crack a smile as I nodded seriously. "It's the same sort of thing as the beef ham, right?" My facade was slipping as she thought about this for a moment and nodded, her face showing the strain her poor brain was under trying to comprehend it all. "Or the salmon-cut beef." I know I cracked a grin at this one and I received a smack in the arm for my trouble but the guttural guffaws from those assembled behind us was worth it.
Yes, it was mean but I made sure to undo the damage afterwards by informing her of the truth - complete with interesting facts on the true logistical difficulties of pig copulation. It's still kind of worrying just how readily she ate it up, and somewhat damning of the schooling system in that area (another shining moment of her brilliance was when she asked if Hitler was "That one with that beard.")
(Fri 19th Mar 2010, 13:38, More)