Fourteen Passive-Aggressive Appetizers from the New Yorker:

Vegetarian friends? Try veggie rumaki: wrap a strip of imitation bacon around a water chestnut, spear with a toothpick, and broil—but instead of imitation bacon use real bacon, and instead of a water chestnut use veal.

Posted in Linkage on Saturday July 19, 2008. Shoutouts.

1. Rogan Josh in a can is the devil’s work.
2. A cheeseburger, consumed in a drunken state, stands a high chance of being the tastiest thing you will even eat.
3. Rogan Josh in a can continues to be the devil’s work for several days after initial consumption.

Posted in Gastros on Saturday May 17, 2008. Shoutouts.

Posted in Gastros on Sunday May 4, 2008. Shoutouts.

After spending half an hour walking to the supermarket, half an hour wandering the aisles and then half an hour walking home, only to find I hadn’t bought a single thing written on the piece of paper in my pocket. I’m beginning to wonder if I might have shopping-list dyslexia.

I did, however, manage to buy dried apricots, a tin of red kidney beans and German sausages in a jar. Mortals should cower before the aforementioned trio of staple ingredients: comfort food, from which you can whip up a thousand tasty dishes at a moments notice. Gordon Ramsay, watch out, my Frijole ala Apricots is turning heads.

Posted in Gastros on Monday April 14, 2008. Shoutouts.

Mid last year, Maccas in Australia launched Make Up Your Own Mind, a slickly produced vehicle the company used (to great effect) to dispel myths about fingers in milkshakes, burgers made of un-beef and other assorted urban legends. To be fair, there was a lot of good, reasonable information about the company on the site, even if the spin made you feel a little dizzy at times.

Even though the Australian version was widely lampooned here by groups such as The Chaser, it seems that McDonald’s in the UK have decided to launch their own version of the site. The twist? This time, they’ve decided to answer customer’s questions. Every, single, one of them.

Highlights include:

Is it true you put cow ears in your milkshake?

1. No, this is not true.

The brilliant:

Do you think macdonalds shoulds be banned?

1. No, McDonald’s doesn’t think so.

And of course the eloquence and grammatical finesse in gems such as:

It seams to me that you have removed something from the buns as they just dont have any taste or have that little crunch that i enjoyed has gone can you explain? if a change was made please dont say it was because it made it healthier as do gooders has spoilt enough in mac donalds as it is

1. Sorry to hear that you are enjoying the buns a little less – but nothing has been removed from, or added to, McDonald’s burger buns.

There’s hours of fun to be had, dig in.

Posted in Gastros on Tuesday June 19, 2007. Shoutouts.

The Wisdom of Children in the New Yorker:

I. A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids’ Table

MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want to become crazy.
DAD: O.K.
GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.
DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.
UNCLE: I’m having sex right now.
DAD: We all are.

I remember the frustrating cross-over period where you were big enough for the adult table, but you had your expectations shattered because everything they talked about was so boring. All I wanted to talk about was how the broccoli were actually tiny trees and there were even tinier people in the tiny trees and if you looked back and forth at the tiny trees really quickly you could catch the tiny people swinging off the tiny branches. But only if you caught them by suprise. Look! Look! Look!

And suddenly you’re back on the kids’ table. And you haven’t even had a chance to explain about the sound milk makes when it goes backwards down the straw.

Posted in Mwah on Friday March 23, 2007. Shoutouts [2].

Just in from the “things that make you dribble on your keyboard” department comes this vicious spin on Yakitori skewered chicken sticks: Kushiyaki Salmon wrapped in Smoked Bacon. One question, why can’t I get these at Tanpopo? Somebody better get on that, and quick.

Posted in Gastros on Tuesday February 13, 2007. Shoutouts [3].

In the 1930s, MacRobertson’s Confectionery trialled several new ideas for their childrens’ range. An employee suggested that as “women and children were afraid of mice,” rather than a chocolate mouse, a chocolate frog would be more popular with children. Three days later, what would become Australia’s most popular children’s confectionery, the Freddo Frog, was born. Its supposed creator, Harry Melbourne, died last week, having never received a cent in royalties. However, to this day there remains confusion as to whether he, or rather the inventor of the Cherry Ripe, Lesley Atkison, was in fact responsible.

While I was reading up on the Froggy Chocolate Conspiracy I was fascinated to find out that Freddo was also the star of Australia’s first cartoon that ran for several years in the 1960s.

Posted in Gastros on Tuesday February 6, 2007. Shoutouts.

I bought an Ice Tea this afternoon and on the back of the label was written “Tea contains many good things.” Yes, very many good things! This must be good for me. This “Mango Flavoured Tea Drink.” Wait a minute, is that like the “Orange Flavoured Juice Drinks” that taste like vit-c tablet infused sugary water, or the even more nefarious “Cream Flavoured Dairy Product” that is neither cream-flavoured nor what I would understand as a dairy product. In much smaller print, the ingredients list the third ingredient, 4% by volume, as tea extract. Right after water and sugar.

So, what is tea extract exactly?

Posted in Gastros on Wednesday January 31, 2007. Shoutouts.

Yesterday, I rediscovered Lamingtons. The really moist and delicious kind in which your fingers leave indentations as you pick them up, and the coconut clings to everything you touch. The kind that, as a kid, I used to save up an extra couple of dollars for, so that when we had a lamington drive at school, I could buy an extra box of half chocolate, half strawberry ones and eat them all as I walked home. Judiciously wash my fingers with the hose before I went inside. Do the same thing the next year, and the next.

“Australian Cuisine” is an oxymoron. It’s true, we have nothing of our own that would come close to classing as high cuisine. But we have Lamingtons, and that makes me happy.

Posted in Gastros on Saturday January 20, 2007. Shoutouts.