Text 23914, 140 rader
Skriven 2015-02-11 15:24:00 av NANCY BACKUS (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av MICHAEL LOO
Ärende: Re: coverups 184
========================
-=> Quoting Michael Loo to Nancy Backus on 02-07-15  15:29 <=-

 NB>> I'm with you on that...  True, spice MIGHT be used to cover up
 NB>> shortcomings but it's also quite nice to enhance the taste of foods,
 NB>> as well... ;)  Perhaps that's a piece of my preferring Asian (of just
 NB>> about any sort) over American cuisine...  ;)
 ML> Though there's no beating a big old steak on occasion.

On occasion.  :)  I'll agree there..  :)
 
 NB>> Are there any other particularly American foods that are spicy...?
 ML> Can't think of any. Of course, even though hot peppers are
 ML> supposed to have originated (as with just about everything else,
 ML> it seems) in northern south America, their use never migrated
 ML> far north. Roughly, the (artificial) demarcations seem to be the
 ML> Panama Canal, the Rio Grande, and the Mason-Dixon, for hot,
 ML> semi-hot, and sissy hot respectively, the 20th-century hot for
 ML> hot's sake being an anomaly. 

Or at least a progression of sorts..  :)  Spices used judiciously for
flavor, not for heat, one finds plenty of... I think of the spiced
tongue I learned to make from my father... 

 ML> I refer you to early editions of
 ML> Joy of Cooking, which referred to the placentas of ordinary bell
 ML> peppers as carrying excruciating heat: I don't have direct
 ML> evidence earlier than the 1950s, but I can attest to the Scoville
 ML> value at that time to be about 10 or 50, no more, even in the
 ML> hottest commercial specimens. 

Not exactly hot, really...  :)

 ML> I did have a sport once a few
 ML> decades ago that actually had some heat, but I suspect that was
 ML> the result of a horticultural mixup.

Probably.  :)

 ML> I wonder if there might be a market for a hot bell pepper
 ML> these days.

Maybe... but then there are lots of varieties of hot peppers readily
available now anyway...  that might just confuse the issue unless the
flavor was substantially different from the other hots...  :) 
 
 NB>> I hear you on the breakfast, I tend to try to find something
 NB>> decent on those buffets just because it's there and "free"... even
 NB>> though I'm not much of a breakfast person normally either... ;)
 ML> It messes up the rest of the day. Lilli tends to threaten
 ML> to hold her breath and turn blue if I don't have breakfast
 ML> with her, though, so I generally do; this means that the
 ML> noontime brisket or fried chicken or rattlesnake stew
 ML> doesn't have the satisfying quality it otherwise might.

The stomach not being empty enough to fully appreciate it...  :)

 ML>> I had to take three Lasixes today after having spaghetti
 ML>> and chili (made with that ancient roast beef that I banged
 ML>> into the freezer a month ago) at 3 am this morning. Big
 ML>> mistake, but I was hungry.
 NB>> Was that particularly salty...?  Can't blame you though... hunger
 NB>> makes for some odd/interesting choices...  ;)
 ML> As the beef was ancient and mistreated, I salted it a bit
 ML> extra. Also, for some reason, the cumin hadn't been put back
 ML> in the fridge (by whom?) so had all the earthiness intact
 ML> but not so much of the cumininess, so the result was hardly
 ML> worth eating except that I'm saving up for my next extravaganza,
 ML> whenever that might be.

And at least it was edible of sorts... 

 ML> By the way, Jonathan cleaned up the kitchen almost (almost) to
 ML> the point where I might be comfortable cooking in it; this is
 ML> good. He also wandered in while I was eyeballing the situation
 ML> and started talking with morbid excitement about a train crash
 ML> that had killed half a dozen people, something I was in no mood
 ML> to discuss and told him so. I did compliment him on the state
 ML> of the kitchen, though.

Progress...  maybe there's hope for the kid yet...  :)
 
 ML>> Relatively few of my friends these days have adventurous
 ML>> palates - either that or they have used them up and have
 ML>> become timid in their old age. It would be nice to take a
 ML>> field trip with someone whose tastes were as wide-ranging
 ML>> as mine.
 NB>> I hear you.  :)  If anything, I think my palate is becoming more
 NB>> adventurous in my old age...  ;)  Some things are ok once, and that
 NB>> satisfies the urge to try, but other things become new favorites... :)
 NB>> If I had the funds, I'd volunteer... 

 ML> Sigh. I need someone with no kids and no mortgage or who has
 ML> outgrown same (Lilli). Otherwise, you'd do fine.

Hmmm... the mortgage is paid off, the kid can fend for himself... maybe
when I start drawing my SS...?   ;)  Don't have an inheritance to draw
from, though, or much hope of that even eventually...  ;)
 
 ML>> from Joseph Roques, New Treatise on Everyday Plants,
 ML>> Especially with Regard to Medicine (1838) - "Spinach,
 ML>> broom of the stomach, a banal saying that has been
 ML>> the cause of more than one indigestion ... ." 
 NB>> Stole that tag from someone... probably UDD...  ;)  I happen to like
 NB>> spinach well enough... doesn't seem to work as a broom, though, nor
 NB>> give me indigestion... :)

 ML> If you ate enough for it to work, it might!

Maybe.  :)

 ML>> Mutual isolation can be a good thing. Back in the once upon
 ML>> a times, they used to put the immunocompromised into "life
 ML>> islands" - roomettes with air filtered in and out and with
 ML>> airlocks for transferring stuff -; later, such were used in
 ML>> cases of suspected contagiousness, notably, AIDS before the
 ML>> method of transmission was figured out.
 NB>> They still have some of those in the EDs around here.
 ML> Funny, earlier today I was singing to myself the song in which
 ML> King Gama introduces himself in Princess Ida, imagining it as
 ML> sung by Jeffrey Wayne Davies, who will always be inextricably
 ML> associated in my mind with that role. Jeff was one of the first
 ML> AIDS patients, and they built one of those things specially for
 ML> him at Sloan-Kettering when they had no idea what the stuff was.
 ML> I remember having been forbidden from visiting him during his last
 ML> illness, something that I sort of regret over thirty years later.

Yeah... One wonders later if one should just have not worried about it
and/or just visited anyway... 

 ML> Now I guess they're using them for stuff like ebola.

And for similar reasonings... 

ttyl        neb

... Can you say as-sim-i-late?  I can... Mr Rogers of Borg

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
 * Origin: Check Out Doc's QWK Mail  Via Web BBS > DocsPlace.org  (1:123/140)