La Flamme Rouge **off topic discussion**

Harrybelafonte

magicbastarder wrote: »

we've cooked with the denny's meat free mince a few times and the taste and texture is good but I can't make any claims as to the nutritional value.
Lidl veggie burgers are good too.

My wife was given one of the happy pear books from a few years ago and says the recipes are usually full of salt, though I think they've rectified that in the latest book.

I didn't like mushrooms until about five or ten years ago, but it's just a matter of exposure to them really.

It's just Soya and Wheat tbh and a few stabilisers and flavourings. Decent protein amounts.

Yip, strangest thing about them, they insist on not using oils in their cooking but pour salt into every dish, when in reality I put almost no salt into every dish of theirs I've made (family history of heart disease) and they still taste good.

There's also the matter that our taste buds "die" as we get older, allowing us to eat things we may never have had before.

magicbastarder

Harrybelafonte wrote: »

A friend who’s very much into his food is equally disgusted by my hatred of aubergine, cucumber and courgette

is that that genetic thing re taste of cucumbers?
we mill through courgettes during the summer, we usually have three plants on the go and they spit them out like bullets when the weather is warm.

I can only eat those if there is pickling involved.

Harrybelafonte

magicbastarder wrote: »

is that that genetic thing re taste of cucumbers?
we mill through courgettes during the summer, we usually have three plants on the go and they spit them out like bullets when the weather is warm.

I’m not sure they’ve confirmed the supertaster link for those particular vegetables. I’ve an interest in environmental and genetic effects on food intake. Long story to do with my own family but it was also part of the course and how to deal with it.

I have noticed over the years though that people often like to hold what they regard as “fussiness” over people who admit a dislike for certain foods. As though this were some character flaw. Dig deep enough and everyone has something they can’t bring themselves to eat, seafood, spicy food, peas, etc. flavour and texture playing the bigger parts, but also smell, cold/heat. Down to people who view meals in terms of gender, which is a particular theme in US cuisine and advertising.

tomasrojo

It is nice that you can get vegetarian and vegan food nearly everywhere now. Big change.

magicbastarder

Harrybelafonte wrote: »

flavour and texture playing the bigger parts

the latter was the cause of my issue with mushrooms growing up. wasn't so much the taste (which i can still be meh about) but that slimy texture which some can develop which would actually make me gag.

magicbastarder

magicbastarder wrote: »

the latter was the cause of my issue with mushrooms growing up. wasn't so much the taste (which i can still be meh about) but that slimy texture which some can develop which would actually make me gag.

Yeah even thinking about them makes me nearly gag

magicbastarder

tomasrojo wrote: »

It is nice that you can get vegetarian and vegan food nearly everywhere now. Big change.

it's kinda funny to see the clamouring from 'big meat' looking to have the terms 'veggie burger' and 'veggie sausage' banned. i even saw the term cultural appropriation used in one article, though i don't know if it was a quote attributed to anyone.

yeah, you could argue that if they were talking about a 'veggie steak', there's an argument to be made that a steak is a specific cut of meat, but burgers and sausages aren't exactly cuts of meat.

tomasrojo

I think there has been some success in stopping plant-based meat substitutes using "burger", "sausage" and so on in the States as well. And "milks".

I guess "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" is so named to make the customer think of butter without falling foul of regulations that stop you calling it "butter". (My housemate in California called it "I Can't Belive It's Not Carcinogenic".)

Similarly, there's a "This Isn't Bacon" product in the UK, I saw today. Maybe it's here as well, I don't know.

buffalo

tomasrojo wrote: »

I think there has been some success in stopping plant-based meat substitutes using "burger", "sausage" and so on in the States as well. And "milks".

I guess "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" is so named to make the customer think of butter without falling foul of regulations that stop you calling it "butter". (My housemate in California called it "I Can't Belive It's Not Carcinogenic".)

Similarly, there's a "This Isn't Bacon" product in the UK, I saw today. Maybe it's here as well, I don't know.

"Buy our new veggie non-burger!"

Idleater

Harrybelafonte wrote: »

I’m sometimes stuck back in 1989 when the vegetarian option involved picking as much of the meat out of something as you could or just eating around it.

I've never eaten meat (apart from the odd morsel as above). A friend once offered a veggie sausage she described as "the closest thing to real sausage" - which of course was completely lost on me as I have no reference point. It tasted very meh. I'm not a fan of the meat substitutes in general though.

Harrybelafonte

Idleater wrote: »

I've never eaten meat (apart from the odd morsel as above). A friend once offered a veggie sausage she described as "the closest thing to real sausage" - which of course was completely lost on me as I have no reference point. It tasted very meh. I'm not a fan of the meat substitutes in general though.

Ah, I envy you to a degree. I always hated eating meat and only had the guts to tell my parents when I was 10. So the meat flavoured stuff sickens me. Then again so do mushrooms so...

tomasrojo

I like a few of the meat substitute things. As far as I can remember meat, they don't really taste like meat, but they're sort of their own thing now: like synthesizer string emulations.

Idleater

I'm glad there are a few people that seem to detest mushrooms. I hate it whenever the "vegetarian option" is mushroom blah blah... I'll have the burger without the burger please....:rolleyes:

rubadub

magicbastarder wrote: »

yeah, you could argue that if they were talking about a 'veggie steak', there's an argument to be made that a steak is a specific cut of meat, but burgers and sausages aren't exactly cuts of meat.

I saw somebody saying steak is not necessarily meaning meat.

Middle English: from Old Norse steik ; related to steikja ‘roast on a spit’ and stikna ‘be roasted’."

I saw some interesting ones in the veggie/vegan forum. It depends how far the law goes but there will potentially be no coconut milk, coconut cream, peanut butter.

When I first heard the ridiculous proposal I was only thinking of almond milk and veggie burgers.

and then, what seems like a joke but you never know if the law will permit it.

New Home wrote: »

What about Easter eggs (hollow ovoidal chocolate shapes) and chocolate bunnies (hollow leporidae-shaped novelty chocolate )?

magicbastarder

you could argue that 'egg' is a common word for shape as well as it being the future chicken/foodstuff. and it's on this sort of issue i suspect many people will earn lots of money arguing.

tomasrojo

rubadub wrote: »

I saw some interesting ones in the veggie/vegan forum. It depends how far the law goes but there will potentially be no coconut milk, coconut cream, peanut butter.

Peanut butter and coconut milk are usually exempt from these marketing restrictions, as they are so well established.

seamus

Any attempt to trademark "burger" would probably fail, since "burger" is the shape moreso than the content. Hence why we have "ham burger", "sausage burger", "mushroom burger", etc.

"Sausage" might get through though since that's generally considered a type of meat. Hence why you have "hot dogs".

tomasrojo

Interestingly, beef burger and so on are all based (perhaps jocularly) on the false etymology that Hamburger is something to do with ham, rather than Hamburg.

I agree though: a burger does seem to be more of a proteinaceous round sandwich than any particular meat.

tomasrojo

Milk chocolate was a contested term in the EU for a long while. It's not 100% ridiculous. People are entitled to get what is being advertised, and the only way to resolve disputes is to define relatively tightly what terms mean. But it inevitably gets mixed in with lobbying and restrictive practices.

The solution to the milk chocolate dispute (calling it Family milk chocolate when exported outside member states that produced it) suggests that "vegetarian sausage" with one word added might be sufficient to end this.

rubadub

Not certain but this appears to be the proposal

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2019-0198_EN.pdf#page=169

buffalo

tomasrojo wrote: »

Interestingly, beef burger and so on are all based (perhaps jocularly) on the false etymology that Hamburger is something to do with ham, rather than Hamburg.

I agree though: a burger does seem to be more of a proteinaceous round sandwich than any particular meat.

Actually, in the context of Hamburg, a burger is a citizen of a German town/city if I remember my leaving cert. I presume that usage can continue, as all citizens are made of meat.

tomasrojo

Yeah, I remember this coming up a few years ago. I thought it had already been decided, but that was the dairy case.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/apr/04/eu-to-ban-non-meat-product-labels-veggie-burgers-and-vegan-steaks

Cocoa butter, coconut milk and salad cream were exempted under EU law but that “is not the case for soya or tofu”.

Captain Havoc

Zen0 wrote: »

No. Coffee machines are the devil’s own invention. They’re like lots of kitchen gadgets, they take up way too much space on valuable kitchen counter space, especially when you need that space for kneading your pizza dough. I would concede that ownership of a simple coffee filter holder might be the one example of the exception that proves the rule.

What? You take that back. Coffee machines are hand produced by angels, filled with beans of joy and produce cups of sanity.

eeeee

Aw mushrooms rock!
Get butter foaming in a medium hot pan, throw a couple of bulbs of garlic in then pop sliced mushrooms and leave them in the pan, don't move them, just leave them until the moisture evaporates in the pan, they get a lovely sear. Salt and LOADS of pepper (and a bit of parsley of you have it).
Put them on toast and you have yourself a delight!

RobertFoster

eeeee wrote: »

Aw mushrooms rock!
Get butter foaming in a medium hot pan, throw a couple of bulbs of garlic in then pop sliced mushrooms and leave them in the pan, don't move them, just leave them until the moisture evaporates in the pan, they get a lovely sear. Salt and LOADS of pepper (and a bit of parsley of you have it).
Put them on toast and you have yourself a delight!

Bulbs? :eek: That's one way to ensure drivers (and everyone else) give you space.

eeeee

RobertFoster wrote: »

Bulbs? :eek: That's one way to ensure drivers (and everyone else) give you space.

:D It's a multi functional recipe :pac:



You don't chop up the bulbs, just give them a press, and they flavour the butter and it bastes the mushrooms, like a steak. You can even through a woody herd of choice in there, thyme works well.



Man I wish I got mushrooms this week!

CatFromHue

magicbastarder wrote: »

some brands (fizik) i think will supply dealers with tester saddles. ask your LBS anyway.

Brought it back today and they gave me a refund.

North of 32

Please forgive my blog-style post but I convinced herself to get a road bike and it was a fun / interesting experience (at least for me ).

I started road biking spontaneously in 2018 and loved it from the get-go. Shortly thereafter I began a gentle - but relentless - effort to convince my girlfriend to get a road bike as well. Regular cajoling over the last 2.5 years was met with firm resistance. With the cycling seasoning winding down and the nights rapidly getting shorter, I haven't been in the saddle much the last couple of months. So it was a great surprise when she came to me last week and said she'd like to give road biking a go. Not the best time of year to start, I thought. Then again there's no time like the present!

There was no wiggle room on her 700euro (ideally 600euro) budget. There are road bikes available at that price but the options available in all local shops pretty much start at 950 and I was keen that she try any bike before buying. We checked some shops but they had nothing (in fact, three of the places had only 1 road bike in the entire shop. Everywhere is just stacked full with ebikes these days where I live. It's quite a reminder how much of a niche sport road cycling is when you go to a cycling shop, in an area where cycling is hugely popular, and there is hardly anything on offer. Maybe also corona drove a lot of sales and the new models are on the way so it's an in-between period).

While we were out of luck in the LBS, we did find fortune online! I did a quick check on ebay and within the first few results was a lady selling a bike just down the road from us - the correct size and within budget! A 2017 Giant Contend SL 2 with Tiagra throughout (except for brakes) that had hardly been used since purchase by the owner.

It was my first time going to look at a 2nd hand road bike so I watched a few GCN videos beforehand on what to look out for, jotted down some questions and off we went to meet with the seller. We gently negotiated the price down to 650 from 700. Considering the bike now is 4 years old I would've wanted to pay a bit less (it was 999 new), but the components/bolts/cables/wheels really all are in fantastic condition to my eye and the owner claimed not to have done more than 350km so it's near-new to look at. There were some signs negligence - scrapes on the shifters and the bike had not been cleaned nor the tyres inflated (good thing I brought my pump) but I couldn't fault it overall and there's no way we'd get a better bike & spec new for the money. There's a nagging in my head that we should've said 600 but neither of us are bold enough to do it. Long story short, she's delighted, I'm satisfied with my find and after getting a helmet tomorrow we'll go on our first spin together. And if she's annoying I'll drop her. :pac:

Thoughts which struck me me during the process:

• LBS have really limited stock - it's normally just 1 brand of everything. It's sad because, for example, in each of the LBS I was prepared to spend quite a bit of money on a snazzy helmet for myself but there's nothing beyond a few basic models so I'll have to buy online
• The cycling industry really is a total load of nonsense: practically every annual model is identical. There's nothing significantly different between a 2017 and a 2021 model because we're still in the same generation of groupset so besides the paint job, hardly anything is different
• Sadly this buying process did nothing to convince me of the benefits of shopping in a LBS. There is more variety, better value and, I would suggest, more helpful information online [between YouTube reviews, Boards etc].
• As mentioned, road cycling really is very niche and this likely is the explanation for all of the above.
• Haggling makes me uncomfortable

Thanks for listening, I'll get my coat and leave now.

eeeee

Great to see another woman on the road (hopefully!).
This might be of interest to her to get going if you have a turbo she can borrow:
http://www.cyclingireland.ie/page/programmes/bike-like-me/active-participation

If she wants to get her fitness up. Nothing like outside, but not the worst thing to be doing of a dark and wet evening!