Hmmm... was it bad, or just that there was so much of it? Or both?
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/6677931.stm

And now my own story.

Last term in Switzerland I was coerced into (because the person who wanted one lacked the ability to cook one) cooking a fried cheese sandwich. All well and good, I thought, cheesy goodness with proper Swiss cheese.

Oh no. I spent the next 24 hours alternately shivering and sweating, feeling like every part of my intestines were trying to escape, and I've not touched fried bread or anything resembling a fried cheese sandwich since, and anyone who asks me to make one gets told to fuck off.
( Maladicta, Tue 22 May 2007, 17:01, Reply)

Silvas 3
Silvas is also opposite my office!

Croque monsieur is indeed the cheesy goodness of the Gods, but I have to disagree with Grandmasterfluffles about the chicken kebabs. They gave me food poisoning. I've also found hairs in the food. Bacon butties are nice though, as is their selection of traditional italian cakes.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Tue 22 May 2007, 16:28, Reply)

I say..
Quite alot of talk on gherkins going on...

I like to jerk my gherkin. So much in fact that when my dad walked into the room, i bloody carried on jerking it like there was no tomorrow so all the pickle juices were flying off it onto the work surface.

I put it on a pitta with home made burgers.

turns out i shouldn't have ate it so soon, as the burger was too hot and i got oil all over my gherkin and couldn't eat it, so i fed my gherkin to my dog who lapped it up joyfully.

needless to say, i will never thrust my gherkin into a pitta full of burning meat again...



(It was alright, but i suspect my gherkin would've made it worse)
(Snailfighter Mk VIII MASTER of the bits underneath the ledges on fences, Tue 22 May 2007, 16:02, Reply)

Hey, sister!
Spacekitten -no, I'm not your brother. I'm actually quite a good cook. For a scientist.

Never burnt a pheasant in my life! Run over a few, mind.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 22 May 2007, 15:57, Reply)

Quite simply all the food I ate as a student
it makes me shudder even thinking about it
( Jahled Three shades of black, Tue 22 May 2007, 15:52, Reply)

Um...
K2K6... are you my brother?

You know, the chef guy who once served me pheasant in a creamy peppercorn sauce over wild brown rice as a surprise treat.

The surprise being that it was burnt, tangy and inedible and therefore the perfect thing to serve to your feta and olives/hummus/twiglet munching sister while you make yourself a steak as a consolation prize.

Well, are ya?
(posthumous mince is tiptoeing through the tulips, Tue 22 May 2007, 15:49, Reply)

Mmm, twix story below
Well the advert does say Twix fits...
( abefroman skating on the thin life of modern life on, Tue 22 May 2007, 15:41, Reply)

Mmm, twix.
Not me, but someone else (of course).

A few years back, we had a strange cantonese girl in our school boarding house whom, for the sake of humiliation, I shall call Utonia (mainly because that was her name).

She was in my Maths class all year, never spoke a word, just sort of silently answered questions and got everything right. No one really noticed her to be fair, until that dreaded, chocolatey night..

I had heard from other boarders that in the morning, they were given a choice of snack. Say, a twix. But Utonia wasn't hungry. She was saving it for later. Much later. But not to eat.

It isn't known if she had actually innocently mistook it to be a dildo or not, but she couldn't tell the difference. It was enough to make her wake up the other 5 girls who were sharing the dorm with her, enough for them to know exactly what she was doing. The other girls sat horrified, didn't dare say a word. Minutes passed, Utonia popped her head from under the duvet. All that work makes up an appetite eh? Wrapper comes off, munch munch munch.

Needless to say, she left a few weeks later. Shortly after the morning snack was changed to Curly wurly.





Length? She couldn't take much more, apparently.

*Post cherry popped*
(MunchMyBalloons, Tue 22 May 2007, 15:21, Reply)

Gherkins
Unstabledan could not be more right. Gherkins are the only redeeming feature in Mc Donalds food. They add flavour, texture and if you steal several unwanted gherkins, they add up to part of your recommended 5 a day fruit and veg quota!
( abefroman skating on the thin life of modern life on, Tue 22 May 2007, 15:14, Reply)

My sister
buys little tubs of olives and feta cheese, then sits and munches her way through them like they were tasty or something. I don't know, some folk...

And she also eats hummus, which is a bit rank.

And Twiglets, which aren't to my taste either.

On the up side, she is an excellent cook and I enjoy visiting! And she knows I won't pinch her olives.

Edit: "pinch her olives" sounds a bit rude. But it wasn't meant to be. She's my sister, FFS!
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 22 May 2007, 15:13, Reply)

Butyric Acid
Having been unfortunate enough to have used this stuff in a synthesis, I can agree that it smells like the devil's own arse cheese. In fact not dissimilar to the smell you would get if you took that cheap ready grated parmesan style cheese and left it in a marathon runner's trainer at 37C for about a month.

To make this reply relevant I could insert a side splitting story about a friend of mine who didn't know the difference between "mincemeat" and "minced meat", with hilarious consequences. I won't bother though.
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Tue 22 May 2007, 15:12, Reply)

ALSO GHERKINS
I happily blag everyones elses gherkins when I eat at maccy d's!
They are lovely.
And it is possibly the best reason to introduce your kid to fast food once a month.
So I can steal her gherkins!
(UnstableDan Bah, Humbug! ooooh, humbugs, nyom!, Tue 22 May 2007, 15:09, Reply)

Gherkins
I was once a naive follower of the non-gherkin eating philosophies

I then reasoned that anything that takes the taste of the "meat" in a big mac away has to be a good thing.

I have since discovered the vinegary delights of gherkins in decent burgers such as might be found at an outlet of hamburger union, or dare I say it, at home.

that's right...I bought a jar of crinkle cut gherkin slices for my homemade burgers. not only that, but I then included them in my ham sandwiches for lunch every day that week!

they were delicious I tells you

but then I'm the sort of person that requires anchovies, olives, capers, artichoke hearts etc. on my pizza because otherwise it doesn't provide enough of a taste explosion.

before anyone accuses me of not having any tastebuds left, I will pre-emptively refute this by saying that I'm one of the few people I know who can taste cucumber for what it is.

the most disgusting abomination ever discovered.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 22 May 2007, 15:00, Reply)

BO
Butyric acid is a naturally occurring substance formed by fermentation of glycerides, as found in butter and fats. So if there is fat in samosas, which there undoubtedly is, and they've been left out for a while, they will start to go off and the bacteria have a field day.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 22 May 2007, 14:53, Reply)

BO
but what is that doing in a samosa?

EDIT: the acid, I mean
(jennymnemonic, Tue 22 May 2007, 14:47, Reply)

BobFossil
The BO smell is caused by the formation of butyric acid, also known as butanoic acid.

Now there's something you've all learned today, eh?
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 22 May 2007, 14:13, Reply)

BO food
At school, we were sitting down, tucking into a plate of delicious* home-made** samosas.

We were suddenly aware of this hideous smell (imagine the smell of a fat, hairy, sweaty tramp who has never had a bath, on the hottest day of the year). It reeked. We were all accusing each other of bad personal hygeine, and then we realised that it sweaty smell was coming from the samosas themselves.

Still ate them though.


*minging
**made by lepers, heated by dinner-ladies
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Tue 22 May 2007, 14:10, Reply)

The worst thing I've ever cooked is quite nice actually
Get a loaf of unsliced bread and carve it up into chunks about two inches cubed. Then soak it in milk until it's dripping with the stuff. Then shallow fry it in olive oil turning it so each side is crispy (watch out for the spitting oil). Once the stuff's cooked drizzle honey over it and sprinkle with nutmeg.

Tastes fantastic, but about a billion calories per chunk. I can't take credit for this recipe, it was done by a bloke called Apicius a few hundred years ago.

Length? 2 inches please don't laugh
( Occulus Swallowed, instead of spat, on, Tue 22 May 2007, 14:03, Reply)

Gherkins and Onions
I like Quarter pounders with cheese from McDs - well, when I say "Like"...

However, I always confuse them by insisting that it's done without Gherkins or Onions.

I like onions - just not gherkins - and certainly not on a burger.

And yes, K2k6 - you are weird.
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Tue 22 May 2007, 14:01, Reply)

Big Macs
I always eat the gherkins in Big Macs. Am I unique?

Or am I just stereotypically Scottish - I've paid for it so I'll bloody well eat it!
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 22 May 2007, 13:53, Reply)

Rice Rant
<rant> I just went to Essex University canteen where I ordered cod with rice. The dude serving destroyed the smallest piece of cod he could find by using the wrong implement, arranged the remains on my plate and then buried it under enough rice to feed at least four people in what was probably guilty compensation for the rip-off he'd just administered. The whole disaster came to five quid. Five quid for a plate of rice! Argh </rant>

Apologies for rant, its the rice talking.
(ooechs, Tue 22 May 2007, 13:50, Reply)

Ice Cream
Just made some Chili Chocolate Ice cream.
It is very nice :)
( Terry Oblong There's nobody here but us chickens on, Tue 22 May 2007, 13:40, Reply)

Gherkins are in Big Macs for a reason
I'm sure its so they can call it a 'Sandwich' or something, google is not offering any results on this.

It looks like a burger, smells like a burger, tastes like shit a burger, so it must be a burger...
( Moonraker isn't the droid you were looking for, Tue 22 May 2007, 13:35, Reply)

silvas
its next my office too, i actually really like it - i advise you to try the croque monsieur. mustardy goodness.

i also love that pile of pre-cooked chicken Kievs under the counter
(Fake Spaniard, Tue 22 May 2007, 13:31, Reply)

More on gherkins
On holiday once in Canada, in a place called Parry Sound, Ontario. We were recommended a particular restaurant called Drew's, so off we went. It specialised in Italian so we ordered pizzas, pasta, whatever. While waiting for our meals to come, the waiter came over with a jar of gherkins, a chopping board and a sharp knife.

With a happy flourish, he announced that these were our complimentary gherkins, on the house.

We laughed. But I felt I had to eat one to be polite. Two slices in, I gave up. Complimentary they may have been, complementary they were not. Pasta and gherkins? FFS! Come on Drew, you can do better than that.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 22 May 2007, 13:26, Reply)

Salad box
For lunch today, I bought a do it yourself salad box and filled it with a mish mash of all kinds of salady delights. Some of the combinations were like a party on my tongue, however, the combination of black olives and pineapple was not a good one. Combining this with my morning of talking to patients on a pee soaked hospital ward, resulted in me seeing my lunch again soon after.

On the subject of piss, I ate raw kidney from a goat which I was petting 5 minutes earlier, that tasted like pee.

Oh, and this weekend, at a ball, the free wine we were given, wasn't wine, but it was warm. yum.
(padre dosn't want to go to interventional radiology on, Tue 22 May 2007, 13:24, Reply)

sneep...
yes, gherkins ming. apparently they were originally there to soak up the grease, which is now not (quite as) necessary.

i also heard that 98% of the population don't like them, which means there's an awful lot of unnecessary gherkin killing going on out there.

i don't like them (kind of on topic just at the end there)
(beanojam isn't really Ricardo Flange, Tue 22 May 2007, 12:56, Reply)

Eat a cow
And a Vegan
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Tue 22 May 2007, 12:47, Reply)

Save a cow
Eat a vegan
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Tue 22 May 2007, 12:46, Reply)

VEGANS.
Vegetarianism? Fine, if you like that sort of thing. I'm not one, but I can see the point, and certainly it's possible to be perfectly healthy and have tastygood food without meat.

But VEGANS, I can't stick 'em. Veganism is just irrational. It is. All the vegans I've known have been permanently off-colour due to being deficient in so many essential proteins, they smell funny, their eating habits are totally antisocial and impossible and the reasons behind it are sanctimonious half-baked nonsense. One girl claimed she didn't eat dairy because "keeping cows for milk is slavery." Which just served to prove that most vegan's aquaintance with animal husbandry goes no further than Watership Down and that gerbil they had once.

Vegans. Malnourished dappy weirdos. I wouldn't eat one.

(ducks below parapet and awaits the slings and arrows)
(jennymnemonic, Tue 22 May 2007, 12:35, Reply)