Category: Food

Now I know what it feels like to be Fidel Castro. For some reason I ate an unripe avocado last night, which gave me a itchy swelling in the back of my throat. It seems I’m allergic to unripe avocado. Eventually the itching spread to the insides of my ears and finally subsided after a couple of hours. As I was searching online to find out how serious my situation would get and what to do about it, I discovered my adverse reaction is caused by an enzyme called Chitinaze, of which there is a high concentration in avocado.

More interestingly, I found out that the name “avocado” comes from the Aztec or Nahuatl word “ahuacatl,” which means “testicle,” assumed to be a reference to the fruit’s shape.

Thanks to Courtney for initiating this voyage of discovery ;-)

The closure of 25 McDonalds “restaurants” in the UK has prompted a tremendous celebratory article by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in the Guardian. I dream of the day when the only McDonalds in the UK will be those frequented by homesick American tourists.

Behold my first attempt at scones! They taste every bit as good as they look, and they were pretty easy to make. I’m basking in a warm yellowy self-satisfied glow right now. The ladies at Courtney’s Margaret Atwood book group should be well fed tonight. Click here for a screenful of food porn goodness!

People in the UK may know Paul Newman from his roles in movies such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Cool Hand Luke, or perhaps from seeing his face on bottles of salad dressing in Waitrose. Over in the US, Paul Newman is far better known. You can see his face on boxes of cookies, bags of popcorn and bottles of pasta sauce. As we’ve already seen, some US food companies put bible verses on their packaging. Thankfully, Paul Newman’s food packaging gibberish is as good as the next man’s. This is from the carton of Newman’s Own lemonade:

LEGEND: The marathon in Africa… I’m halfway out and barely chugging. Mountain coming! Liquid needed! What’s around? Water’s bitter! Beer’s flat! Gator, blah blah!… Fading fast. Then a vision-sweet Joanna!-Tempting me with pale gold nectar… Lemon is it? Yes, by golly! Lemonade? No, Lemon aid!… Power added! Asphalt churning!… Cruising home to victory! Hail Joanna! Filched the nectar (shameless hustler)-in the market-Newman’s Own.

However, whilst he donates all his after-tax profits to charity, and the products are made from organic ingredients, it’s not specified which charities are the beneficiaries, and almost all the products include the ubiquitous and fattening high fructose corn syrup. “Gator, blah blah,” indeed.

There’s a point in The Big Lebowski where the Dude, played by Jeff Bridges, finds his car has been stolen. The police retrieve the vehicle; it’s in a bad state, but at least the joyrider didn’t steal his Credence Clearwater Revival tapes. The dude later discovers a crumpled page of homework down the back of the driver’s seat. His friend Walter locates the owner of the homework. The kid lives just down the road from an In-N-Out Burger.

The first time I watched The Big Lebowski, I thought the name of the burger chain was just a humourous invention of the Coen brothers, but it’s not. In-N-Out Burger is a popular burger chain in California, Arizona and Nevada. The comical name aside, what’s interesting about In-N-Out Burger is that their food packaging carries bible references.

The word "gourmet" is over-used in the USA. Constant application to items such as burgers, jerky and cat food have stretched the word out, made it frayed and baggy, worn holes in the knees and rendered it useless for carrying meaning.

Today laughing chance brought me stumbling across a section of the salon.com website known as the Surreal Gourmet. A chap called Bob Blumer advocates recipes in which a familiar ingredient is cooked in an unfamiliar appliance and vice versa. Did you know you can poach salmon in a dishwasher?

At first I thought "how ingenious," but in the last few minutes it’s occured to me that it’s as "ingenious" as it is "gourmet". True ingenuity is not using a non-essential electrical appliance to amuse dinner party guests, it’s plastering a dead hedgehog in mud and roasting it in a bonfire, gypsy style. That, and making water flow uphill using a corkscrew tube.