Silva's
Silva's is a little independent cafe at the top of Shaftesbury Avenue, just opposite my office. They do the best bacon butties and the best chicken kebabs in the known universe. Unfortunately everything else they do is distinctly dodgy.

One lunchtime a few of us went over there, and having had a suitably carnivorous breakfast I was craving veggies. Mmmmm, vegetarian lasagna, I thought. When I make vegetarian lasagna, it has vegetables in it instead of meat. Vegetables are the basic premise of a vegetarian lasagna. It's supposed to contain vegetables. This was just a few sheets of pasta with tomato sauce. No veggies at all. It was utterly pants.

But I can forgive them because goddamn their chicken kebabs are amazing.
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Tue 22 May 2007, 12:25, Reply)

A discourse on Vegetarianism
I am a vegetarian of sorts (not very convincing sorts, I'll admit, but as a general rule, if it can run faster than me, I'll think twice about eating it), but I completely fail to understand these veggie meat substitutes. If you can't live without meat, then for goodness sake, eat proper meat instead of a fungus with ideas above its station made to look slightly like something you've vowed not to eat. It doesn't taste nice, and if you did want to eat rubbish, why eat rubbish that looks like meat?

The best thing about being slightly vegetarian is that it opens up worlds of new foods that don't just consist of a slab of something dead and some overcooked vegetables. Just replacing the slab of something dead with a p;oor substitute shows significant lack of imagination.
(WarneMarsh My priority for frivolity begets quality jollity, Tue 22 May 2007, 12:19, Reply)

sweet and savory
Not really on topic but I could never get my head around the difference or relevance of the classification. The confusion for me is things like....

Banana Fritter - Sweet or savoury?
Rice pudding - Sweet or savoury?
Nutella spread sandwich - Sweet or savory?
Coco pops - Sweet or savory?

and so on...

I think we should ban the classification of sweet and savoury. it's not needed. We have hot and cold, breakfast, lunch, dinner foods, Carbohydrates, viatmin, proteins, meat, vegtable, confectionery, cereals etc etc There's plenty of food descriptions out there already. Things have got to change. I'm confused. I need to lie down.
( sneep used to date Freddie Starr's hamster, Tue 22 May 2007, 12:10, Reply)

Hmm
I wonder what a Vegan tastes like - I mean they've got to be very cow like having eaten all that grass & shite...

Mind you, the plastic sandals will have to be discarded....
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Tue 22 May 2007, 12:07, Reply)

the main reason why veganism is ace:

it's like living in Blade Runner.

"I'll have a soy dog thanks. And some synthi-goo for dessert".
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Tue 22 May 2007, 12:04, Reply)

accidently putting
sugar on your chips instead of salt has to be the worst.
Or putting salt in your tea.

Or boiled beetroot. Why? To be honest, i've never eaten beetroot because the smell is enough to put me off. I'd appreciate it if someone else would care to enlighten me on the exact horror of the taste to save me the future experience.

gherkins in burgers? Surprised they havent been mentioned so far.

Aubergine - I mean, why eat something that resembles a tumour?

And another thing, If black pudding is made out of pigs blood....then what is white pudding made of????! salty suspicious if you ask me

Celery. don't get me started on that....
( sneep used to date Freddie Starr's hamster, Tue 22 May 2007, 12:02, Reply)

I feel that vegetarians (and vegans even more so)
have dominated British society for too long. Indeed, their supposedly benevolent reign has become a reign of terror. Some brave soul should dare to stand out from the crowd, by making fun of vegetarianism. There are many FACTS which are SUPPRESSED by the Vegetarian Mafia, because they simply can't answer them.

For example:

i) I knew a guy who was vegetarian once, and he was thin.
ii) I knew a girl who was vegetarian once, and she had various silly opinions on other things.
iii) I had some soy product once, and I didn't like it very much.
iv) Cavemen used to eat meat all the time didn't they? (the answer to this is 'no', but it's still an UNANSWERABLE argument which has been CENSORED)

whoever did such a thing would be incredibly brave, and also very clever and original.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Tue 22 May 2007, 12:02, Reply)

bad meat
My boyfriend loves cooking, so do I, its nice to create a dish yourself and revel in the tasty goodness. AS such we also are both very careful to source fresh ingredients and from the best sources, non factory farmed chickens, free range eggs, locally grown produce (not easy in Liverpool but sort of doable)

My Family are from Malvern and still live there, Malvern is a quaint little country town (remove the o from country and you will share my views on the town , no offence to Malvernians i just never liked it there) anyhoo i was visiting there and decided to get my fella a special treat from the local family owned, very reputable, butchers. I opted for a nice joint of Topside Beef, traditionally hung fro the right amount of time and seemingly a nice bit of meat, anyway, i am careful to refigerate the mseat and deliver it to him at home a day or so later. "Wow says he what a loverly bit of beef, lets invite all our mates round for a roast. I'll get some bines and majke a lovley stock and well have a mega mael with all the trimmings" " great idea says i" and we do.

All was going well until the meat was nearly cooked, we selled a vinegary old shoe smell eminating from the oven, on insepcion of the meat we saw that it was rottem from the inside out, the hok that had hung the meat must have been infected with bad things and had rendered our delicous treat inedible, with about 7 hungry mates slavering in the next room.

WE ended up serving lovely veg and yorkshire puds, with the delectable beef bone gravy, whch was great, but not over filing, if the meat had been good it would have been the roast to end all roasts. But it wasnt.

I have learned no lessons from this and will still buy meat from said butchers but as bad food experiences go that was the worst ive had in a long time. Doesnt beat the time i accidentally ate a ladybird when it landed on my zoom looly whe i was 6 though, ladybirds taste like shit!

length..........blah de blah
(superkitty is neither super nor a kitty, Tue 22 May 2007, 11:30, Reply)

terrible for the artieries great for the taste buds
I have just discovered a new food source.

make one peanut/jam sandwitch and fry it in eggs.
then coat both sides with a generous layer of golden syrup.

it tastes amazing but will make you very, very fat.
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Tue 22 May 2007, 11:28, Reply)

As some of you may know, until recently I was in the Austrian army doing military service...
The food generally wasn't the worst in the world, usually simply "warm and filling" with no particular taste at all. But there was this one dish that came by once in a while which haunts me and all the other conscripts to this day:

essentially, it is made up of ground up kidneys and potatos. This gives a mixture deceptively similar to potatos with BACON, however of course this is wrong. It's kidney. It's disgusting, it's awful, it makes you want to retch as soon as it touches your lips or tongue, the consistency of the kidney is indescribable, simply the worst feeling EVER. The first time they served it to us during basic training everyone took it thinking it would be something nice, after that no one dared touch it if they could help it. Thing is, often we couldn't, as it would be the only thing still on offer if we came to lunch later than the others. The solution?

Salt. Lots and lots of salt.

Ugh. It's like putting lots and lots of salt on shit to make it somehow acceptable to eat. WRONGWRONGWRONGWRONG!

I also went to boarding school.
( morrybyte made a subtle namechange at, Tue 22 May 2007, 11:01, Reply)

Burnt food
Why do some people think burnt food is a treat? I was playing a gig once, and was fed stovies* at the interval. The woman doing the serving scraped a pile from the bottom of the pan and gave it to me with a smile and said something to the effect that I would enjoy it because of the 'lovely burnt bits'.

I gave it back to her (politely, mind) and asked for some without burnt bits, as I hate food which has been charred beyond recognition. She was most offended at my refusal.

*For the uninitiated, the fine Scottish dish of stovies consists of potatoes, onions, some sort of meat (sometimes corned beef or sausages, but more usually beef) and lots of saturated fat, all stewed in a pot until palatable. Think condensed potato soup, just greasier.

On a side note, I once witnessed the stovie cook helping herself to several mouthfuls out of the pot with the spoon she then used to serve everyone else's. I didn't have any that night!
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 22 May 2007, 11:01, Reply)

Probably should have been in the 'revenge' thread
Five second-year students in a shared house, all guys, with questionable personal hygiene habits. Out of desperation to find someone to take the fifth room we ended up with this borderline-autistic Brummy dork that none of us liked.

Anyway he lived on ultra-cheap mince (the frozen kind that comes in 5lb bags from Iceland) fried up into bolognese or chilli sauce. What was bad about it was that he'd cook up a week's worth at a time and then leave it sitting in the pan, heating it up each evening then leaving the remainder to congeal and stink the house up.

Repeated requests to not do this went unheeded, so we got into the habit of scraping up the unidentifiable bits of dried up food crap that collected down the sides of the cooker, and adding them to the mix. Well, it was the only way the kitchen ever got cleaned, which is something I suppose. And he never did catch on, the stupid bastard.

We used to amuse ourselves (usually when drunk) by throwing darts at his bedroom door, while he was inside.

In retrospect, we really were a bunch of cunts.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Tue 22 May 2007, 10:51, Reply)

Veggies
I'm sorry (well, I'm not) but I can't understand vegetarianism at all... I just don't get it - we're meat eaters - hunter-gatherers - Ug, bring me meat, etc.

I did, however, used to rent a room from a Uni Lecturer many a moon ago (while at Uni, obviously) - he was a hardcore vegetarian, but not quite Vegan.

He was a really good guy though and all round top bloke - looked like a vegetarian though.

The last post there reminded me of a meal he cooked for me once - it was nice too. Not just nice for a veggie meal - just nice.

It did, however, have a bowel loosening effect on me - the slightest cough had to be done on the loo otherwise, well, bad things.....

Off topic - he did have a surprising amount of stamina - I came home early once and he was in the shower shagging for about 2 hours - God knows how long he'd been there before I got back.... He did apologise for taking up the bathroom for so long though.....
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Tue 22 May 2007, 10:46, Reply)

While we're on the subject
I was staying a few days with a lass I knew, who was a veggie. She was actually a good cook, if you can call meat-free food good. But my digestive system wasn't used to so much vegetable matter. I had to go for a shit four (4) times in one 24 hour period. And not just insignificant amounts either, they were proper bowl-filling evacuations!

Sorry about the grossness of it, but I had to share that with you.

I fancy some haggis now, after thinking about it this morning.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 22 May 2007, 10:35, Reply)

Pretend meat
Why is it that anything that is "Vegetarian X" (sausages, bacon, beef, etc) looks like the inside of a manky shoe?

If it's vegetarian, then it's vegetables - it's not "veggie chicken", it's nuts, beans, grass, wood chippings, etc - don't sullen the good name of meat...

On-topic:

A girl I used to see many years ago was the most appalling cook known to man, woman, beast and goats. She did me a bacon sandwich once - I didn't think it was possible to fuck that up - apparently you can.... I ate the charred, burnt, putrid vile thing with a smile so as to not offend her....

Trouble is she then used to offer to make me another bacon sarnie all the time - I was a gentleman and always said "I'll do it, I don't want to trouble you"....

**retch**


Edit - I LOVE Haggis - had it last night in a dodgy establishment up here in Aberdeen...
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Tue 22 May 2007, 10:23, Reply)

More veggie
james_tiger_woods has reminded me of a camping trip I went on.

It was the morning after the night before and as we dropped our bangers and bacon on our disposable barbecue, one of the veggies started cooking an oval slice of thin orange polyurethane or similar on his veggie only bbq.

"What the hell is that?!" I enquire, "Vegetarian bacon" he replies. "Are you sure?! It looks like an in-sole!", I exclaimed.

Cue him wittering on about it being nice blah blah while me an my meat eating chum looked at each other in utter disbelief.

While the veggie wasn't looking we might have accidentally caused some cross contamination by turning his "rasher" over with the tongues we'd used on our meat. Still, what he doesn't know can't hurt him.
( abefroman skating on the thin life of modern life on, Tue 22 May 2007, 10:14, Reply)

Trout Cesar Salad
Go with me on this.

Back in the old student days, I went up to the local supermarket, fancied some fish for tea, so bought a couple of fresh trout.

Being a student, I checked out the reduced section, and picked up one of those cesar salad kits - halfprice. Threw it in the basket and paid for the lot.

When I got round to cooking the fish, I couldn't be bothered to do anything else, the salad needed eating, hence, a lovely Trout cesar salad. It'll be the new rage...
( Moonraker isn't the droid you were looking for, Tue 22 May 2007, 10:13, Reply)

A good way to lose weight...
...is to spend a week or more in an NHS hospital. I say this because of the amazing weight-loss qualities of the meals served in such places.

Appetising? No. Quite the opposite, in fact - the smell as they roll that trolley out destroys any appetite you might have had.
Nutritionally balanced? Don't believe the hype. Your meal cost about 20p and you get what you pay for.
Tasty? Not even a little bit - they even make the jelly taste like it was made in a fucking petri dish.

I've had two week-long stays in my life so far and ate nothing but the toast and cereal they served in the morning - lost almost a stone each time.
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Tue 22 May 2007, 9:21, Reply)

More vegetarianism
I have run out of coke doesn't like vegetarian lasagne. Quite bloody right. But there's a worse one, especially if you're a carnivorous Scot like me - vegetarian haggis.

I love haggis. Now I know some of you won't like it, seeing as it's made with all of the bits of the animal you wouldn't normally eat, but that is the whole point of it. It's made from animal's innards - kidney, liver etc, all chopped up and spiced to disguise their identity and boiled in a sheep's stomach. It's all meat (OK, with a bit of barley to fill it out a bit). So WTF is vegetarian haggis about?

If you don't like the idea of haggis, then don't eat the stuff. Don't go making pseudo-haggis out of tofu, twigs and grass clippings or whatever. That's just wrong.

Mind you, I once was served (real) haggis leftovers in Shetland. Reheated offal is as wrong as a vegetarian substitute. It was all dry and crusty. I nearly spewed.

Length? Two short legs and two long ones for running round hills, or so they say.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 22 May 2007, 8:44, Reply)

Fresh caught trout with worms
OK, so I like to fish. In fact, I fish most weekends - no problem cleaning the trout or catfish. Pull out the guts.

Eat a little roe on crackers with tabasco sauce - it's really fricking tasty. Best bit? Getting the hooks back all clean and shiny from the fish that swallowed them.

Worst bit? As husband found out last night, serving him fresh trout with a nightcrawler still hanging onto the fish......ooops. I thought I'd gotten the worm out.........
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Tue 22 May 2007, 8:01, Reply)

labia sandwich
i had this beast in a cafe in montreal. minging.


(big fat lazy man on a sofa is giving his piles a bloody good clawing, Tue 22 May 2007, 7:13, Reply)

Yummy
Late morning breakfast after a late night drinking....
Sausages, Bacon, Eggs.
Oops, no tomato sauce. No matter, we have apricot jam. APRICOT JAM???!!?!?
Actually quite good. Don't knock it until you try it.
(Monkee girl not a monkee, not a girl, Tue 22 May 2007, 2:00, Reply)

Any one for a Sandwich
I have eaten many a disgusting dish in my time but the most memorable of which would have been consumed at my nursery school. There was a small role play area filled with spounge chips, plastic fruit and veg but, there was a sandwich which looked completly genuine it had lettuce poking out of it and everything, even dimples painted on it. So it being near lunch time i decided to eat it. It must have been a few years old and tasted absolutly foul, I think it was salt dough as it was really hard and give me sore front teeth for the rest of the day.
(leadbear, Tue 22 May 2007, 1:40, Reply)

I'm forever blowing ......
Pissed and for a bet (37p, no more no less) in a chip show I once ate half a small packet of Persil which I was carrying in my pocket. It was sprinkled over my pineapple fritter supper and I got it all down before collecting the pitiful amount of change and walking round the corner of the Union boaked a solid stream of foam onto the ground.

Two days later whenever I pulled the chain after a shit I could see bubbles forming on the bog water surface. I kid you not - utterly true.

Come to think of it: even in 1977, 37p wouldn't buy me a new pineapple fritter and chips - I must have been bloody stupid!
(beaverwastemanagement a real company. I want to work for them!, Tue 22 May 2007, 0:21, Reply)

Garage Grazing
Many moons ago, I got a contract working in Aberdeen for a certain petroleum company of the british variety.
Having done all the interviews by phone, I hadn't had the chance to go up there to see it and had to arrange all my lodgings etc by the net and telephone. All I had was the address where I'd be working to go on, so when ringing round my main concern was to get a bed near the office (being a tree-hugging, vegetarian, non-driving southern ponce it needed to be within walking distance).
Anyhow, to cut a long story short, when I got up there I found out that the place I was staying was about 10 miles outside of Aberdeen and the office was a further five miles away.
Not really a problem, thinks me, I don't mind the countryside and I love walking.
Food not being available at the lodgings, I decided to keep my eye out for things like shops, take aways....
Turns out the only shop between my bed and the office (and in a five mile radius of both points) was a garage on an industrial estate. Great for tabs and motor oil, bad for the selection of foodstuffs. Basically the only thing they had on offer were the cheapest and most disgusting pre-packaged sandwichs known to mankind.
I'm not keen on cheap food on the best of days, so I knew it would be hard work surviving on these.
After spending the first evening crying onto a soggy egg mayonaise 'sub' (why do they call them 'subs' in the uk these days? whats wrong with the word 'baguette' or even 'roll'?) I resolved to either find a pizza delivery or find somewhere else to live.
The former wasn't an option (pikey fecking backwater) so I had to move.
It took three months and the whole time I was there, the only thing I had to live on was fuckin garage sandwichs.

I still can't look at pre-packaged sandwichs and almost throw a fit if someone tries to put mayo on anything I eat (why oh why do pre-packaged sarnies all have mayo in them but hardly ever butter? Butter is an integral part of a sarnie. Mayo is savoury blamange without any balls).






Thanks for that, I feel a little better now...
(EvilMeister, Tue 22 May 2007, 0:14, Reply)

Microwaved Sock Omlet
Once, when young, my parents went away for a whole month (they never went away again). This basically meant I went on the piss with my mates for 28 days solid. After 20 days or so, I ran out of socks, not knowing how the washing machine worked I left them to soak in the sink whilst we spent the evening on the piss. Fast forward to the very small hours when it was decided that the quickest way to dry these socks was to microwave them. (After 5min on 850w socks become unstable, set on fire and turn into carbon.) To further this stupidity we then decided to make a 'sock omlet'. Quite the most discusing thing ever (exc Marmite)!
(thecuda If you can read this you are the resistance..., Tue 22 May 2007, 0:00, Reply)

Peanut butter
I've seen a few posts about people who've discovered that just putting peanut butter on chicken will not, in fact, make a Thai peanut sauce. This is quite true, but there's a way to make such a sauce with peanut butter that works out really well:

4 cloves garlic, minced, chopped, or pressed
Juice of 1/2 lemon (about 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons)
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 tablespoon sesame oil
4 teaspoons chopped ginger
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 1/2 tablespoons crushed red pepper

Combine all ingredients until smooth. Can substitute two tablespoons of oil and one of water for the peanut and sesame oils, if desired. Will keep for one week in refrigerator.

Probably ought to cross post this to the top tips forum . . . anyway, give that a go next time you're craving Thai peanut chicken.

----

Obligatory terrible food experience: another university meal, except this time from my father. He was living with a couple of his brothers in a trailer (static caravan) while studying, and one of them had made a sandwich involving butter. Another walked in and asked, "Has anyone seen those sticks of lard I picked up the other day?"

The fellow with the sandwich swallowed heavily and asked, "Did you say . . . gulp lard?"

Didn't catch on, oddly enough.
(tellum0 is spelled with an 'o', Mon 21 May 2007, 23:13, Reply)

Vegetarian Bacon
What the hell is that all about?

I found a tub of this in a friend's kitchen - I should have been freaked out by the fact it was dry and NOT in the fridge.

I read the label "Dried bacon" were the 2 words that came to prominence. (I like beef jerky too, so sue me)

I proceeded to empty the contents straight into my mouth from the tub (I'm a man - it's what we do).

I then swallowed some of this vile, putrid shite and coughed a it all back up.

I read the label again "Dried Vegetarian Bacon bits" - I had to stop myself from retching....

I tried to feed some to the cat who turned her nose up at it in a "You don't think I'm going to eat that shit do you?" sort of way.

If you want bacon. eat bacon.

If you don't - stop fucking about and pretending.
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Mon 21 May 2007, 23:09, Reply)

Vegetarian lasagne
Order of things that I will not do again in reverse preference order.

#3. Paedophilia
#2. Morris dancing
#1. Vegetarian Lasagne.

Fucking vegetarian food makes me so angry. Went to what was going to be a rather decent evening at the inlaws, minus the inlaws. Think 10 friends, lots of food and wine and beer in a huge farmhouse kitchen, surrounded at every boundary by farms producing some of the finest meats and dairy products known to man - every single one of which having featured a face at some point in its development - an absolute prerequisite for foodstuffs.

So who's cooking? The fucking vegetarian hippy yoghurt-weaving sandal knitting bint. And she's making lasagne. Out of fucking aubergine, asparagus, broccoli and vege-fucking-tarian fucking cheese. Holy sweet mother of god it was fucking awful. An abomination. There is level of hell reserved for the vegetarians and for good reason. It's wronger than Gary Glitter's wank-mag stash.

Before all you hippies and communists start arguing otherwise, I dare you to drive past the Vegetarian Society office on the A56 near Altrincham and just look at the state of the people going in and out.

Lasagne is called lasagne because it contains meat. Dont let anyone tell you different.

(Never actually done #3 obviously, calm down)
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Mon 21 May 2007, 23:00, Reply)

Steak Tartare
Don't eat it - you won't like it. Really.

I'm a fan of rare meat - the rarer the better - Steak Tartare, however, is something else.

While working in Paris a few weeks back (the same night as the pate incident) - I decided, in a drunken haze, to have steak tartare.

So you can imagine my surprise when it came and it was, well, cold. I believe my exact words were:

"Shit, it's cold. And it's raw."

Cue the word "DUH" from my colleague (who was still smarting about the Liver incident).

I ate it anyway - complained about it the whole time - of course.

I then paid the whole bill - €180.

Yes, I was that drunk - I had a shit meal and then paid the whole damned bill.

Arse.
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Mon 21 May 2007, 22:46, Reply)