Text 24196, 143 rader
Skriven 2015-02-20 01:41:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av NANCY BACKUS
Ärende: hot food & topics 237
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 ML> Like now! I've just finished a big bowl of pasta agli'
 ML> olio e peperoncini, and I'm thinking of tearing into a
 ML> big chunk of protein at the earliest opportunity.
 NB> Too much starch and veggie, and not enough real protein, eh...?  ;)

Even with scientifically matched complementary aminos,
vegetable protein really isn't real enough. Repeat after
me: I am not a cow and don't have to eat like one.

 ML> 50 is quite noticeable. I don't imagine most "hot"
 ML> restaurant dishes go much above that.
 NB> Including Thai..?  and Korean...?  (and similar cuisines noted for
 NB> heat...?)

Generally speaking. You really have to ask for native
spicing to get much more than that. I would say that
a full-on Thai or Korean might hit a couple hundred,
Indian or Hunanese possibly a bit higher but not likely
by far. Think of it this way. A plate has maybe half a
pound of flavory food and an equal amount of starchy
waste of time food. Cayenne, a convenient source of
heat, runs about 30K units. Adding a teaspoon would
bring the savory part to 600 units and the meal as
a whole to 300, but I don't think even the cuisines
mentioned normally use hot pepper in that quantity.

 I seem to remember some sort of Scoville scale rating on
 NB> the Quaker Steak & Lube menu that put their hot sauce above that,
 NB> too....  but then, the hot sauce heat would be diluted by the rest of
 NB> the ingredients in the burger, for instance, I guess..  :)

That's hot for the sake of hot, which is sort of a waste
and a futility. And I think that's mostly the wing sauces
they're talking about, so you figure that even grossly
oversauced as most "hot wings" tend to be, they're not more
than a few percent sauce, so the real number for the dish
is a few percent of the thousands claimed.

I've discovered I hate pretty much all wing sauces except
the zero-Scoville teriyaki, and even that is most of the
time dislikeable for being too sweet and salty. Recently
I had a $13 food coupon so ordered the $12 wings, dry with
"Thai HOT sauce" on the side. The wings were okay, not so
great for $1.20 each segment, but the sauce, I figured I'd
drink it on the side, but it turned out to be indistinguishable
from Trader Joe's, which might rate 50 if that.

 ML> red. Jalapeno sort of comes close (which is why I didn't
 ML> favor these in the past, but now that some cultivars have
 ML> come out with heat ratings up to 10x what the originals
 ML> had, the price (green flavors where you don't necessarily
 ML> want them) to performance (spiciness) ratio has improved.
 NB> So perhaps the jalapeno already fills that slot...?  

As I said, sort of, but yes.

 ML> I'd like to think so, because then my (mostly psychological)
 ML> burden would be less. On the other hand, the situation has
 ML> blipped downward - there are now week-plus-old raw meat in the
 ML> fridge
 NB> Well past a usuable, even with spices, use date...?

Not my problem.

 ML> and two partial trays of corn muffins on the dining
 ML> table. 
 NB> Sigh.....

And when the inevitable happens - mice, insects - he remedies
the situation with traps on the one hand and chemicals on the
other. Yes, I've suggested that removing the bait would be
more effective and better in every way, but that has fallen
on blind ears.

 ML> in the kitchen limit my cooking to small projects using my
 ML> emergency stash, which consists of angel hair pasta, rice,
 ML> Vietnamese garlic chips (a decade old! and they still taste
 ML> the same), olive oil, some spices including a lot of hot
 ML> pepper, salt, pepper, and instant soup. 
 NB> Enough to quiet the stomach, but not particularly excite the taste
 NB> buds... ;0  

The result actually is not bad, and the taste buds are
excited enough but in a bit of a monotonous way.

 NB> And you are getting rather nasty weather there, too, I hear...

It was a mere flesh wound compared to what New England got.
So what did I do? Went to New England, where I am now. Still
over a foot on the ground here at Rosemary's, where they got
half of Boston's and a third of Worcester's.
 
 ML> and I'll brave the winds and the unreliable bus and go out
 ML> tomorrow for one of those rare steaks.
 NB> Hope that worked out well...  :)   Can't say as I could blame you one
 NB> whit... ;)

Didn't do it. Eventually took my brother to Texas Roadhouse
and then flew ont and on the way paid a dreamed-about visi
to Sam & Harry's, where the steak, though good, was not as
good as before (the place also now has a fancy menu with
pictures instead of the computer-typed one of last year).
I've been getting 12-ouncers or better at every opportunity
since, thus putting my budget into worse jeopardy than before.

 NB>> Yeah... One wonders later if one should just have not worried about
 NB>> it and/or just visited anyway... 
 ML> That was what some people said at the time, but the hospital
 ML> strongly disrecommended it.
 NB> They didn't want to be held responsible for any plague transmission,
 NB> or even the merest possibility thereof... 

It was, I admit, a scary and unsettled time, and I suppose
they were worried not only about my well-being, but what
if I got infected and then transmitted the unknown disease
to numerous others, and, horrors, the outbreak was traced
back to Sloan-Kettering?

Bloody Mary
cat: booze
servings: 1

1 1/2 oz vodka 
3 dr tabasco (to 5)
3 dr worcestershire sauce (to 5)
1 dab horseradish
1 ds celery salt
1 ds black pepper
1 ds lemon juice
tomato juice to fill
garnish - celery stalk or lime wedge

Recipe says stir in highball glass.

From what I've seen at bars, the ingredients get
shaken together and strained into a highball glass
with ice.

http://viminal.me.psu.edu/~nari/html/ctailszero.html

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