So what is everybody's favourite foods and/or drinks?
Me...pickled black olives, or any olives other than those awful purplish kalamata olives...aka calamity olives, those are revolting.
Beef jerky. I LOVE beef jerky. Especially spicy hot pepper-coated jerky. Lol, when I kicked The Bitch, my psychotic, thieving crazy borderline personality disorder/bipolar, compulsive liar former housemate out of my house, I pinched every last bit of beef jerky she had in her food stores and ate the entire lot, she stole a bunch of my stuff, tried to steal my digital camera, did steal my dad's camera, which we have never found to this day. Stole my meds and hid them from me to make me withdraw from painkillers and appear like a hero when she came to the 'rescue' with some pain meds of her own, so she had it coming. What goes around, comes around, and that beef jerky had to come around to me
Porridge, with butter and salt added in the cooking process, and then lashings of salted butter put on top to form a lake of melted butter on the top of the bowl. I think I might just have a big bowl of buttery porridge for my breakfast today come to think of it. Or instead of butter, a spoonful or two of either golden syrup or honey. Yum. I love it when the syrup melts and forms a big sugary lake on top of the hot porridge.
Cheese slices, although he doesn't care for dairylea cheese slices, the kraft brand processed cheese slices are the ones he likes. He just munched down two packs of cheese slices and a big jar of pickled black olives.
Stilton cheese on crackers. Shredded mozarella cheese by the bagful.
And to combine the two...he loves a plain mozarella/cheese and tomato paste pizza, with olives sliced up and added to the cheese topping, as well as pickled olives tossed on top, with a little mozarella cheese put on top of the whole olives to glue them onto the pizza and make sure they stay there until its time to eat.
Subway sandwiches, he likes lashings of extra cheese, all of the different cheeses subway offers, with meatballs and as many handfuls of sliced black olives as the subway workers are willing to give him. He generally persuades whoever is serving to give him extra, as he just can't resist.
Big, juicy charcoal pit/canada grill style cheese burgers, again with extra cheese slices put in there. Or macdonalds cheeseburgers, served plain, none of those nasty pickles or sauces, and nothing with veg in there, he can't eat vegetables, due to sensory taste and texture reasons.
Chinese food-roast crispy
and pancakes, or tofu in spicy black bean sauce. Or crispy shredded beef in batter. All served with egg fried rice, with no vegetables. He gets more tofu too, if he orders without veg, as the veg takes up space in the serving containers, and generally gets it slightly cheaper too if he orders from his local chinese, where the owner knows exactly what he wants, thanks to being such a regular customer
Or chinese style king prawns in sweet and sour chilli sauce. Yum.
Pot noodles. beef flavour, chicken&mushroom (I pick out the nasty ass sweetcorn bits, or tomato bits first) Or the extra hot flavour. I like the curry flavoured ones too
Toffee popcorn. Mmm...unhealthy probably, but he just LOVES bags of toffee coated popcorn, full of sugar and probably doubly unhealthy, but he can't resist the sugary goodness and the sensory-delightful chewy feeling once the toffee begins to soften.
Drinks wise...dandelion and burdock, coke, or beer. Lots and lots of beer. Dark rum too. Lambs or captain morgan, perhaps mixed with coke, but he prefers just a nice big shot of dark navy rum, and a pint of kronenberg. Not a fan of white rum, such as barcardi, coconut rum though, thats delicious and he can drink that by the bottle.
Another favourite is tia maria, a double shot of tia maria poured into a freshly brewed espresso coffee, bailly's poured into coffee is another favourite.
Turkish coffee...he brought some back from turkey on holiday, its damn strong stuff, but so, so tasty he wants some just thinking about it. Or turkish coffee spiked with a little coffee liqueur.
Lady grey tea. he likes to brew it up with a little fresh lemon balm. A handful of freshly picked balm from his garden then used as the water to brew his tea. Works nicely with earl grey too although he prefers lady grey by a long shot. The GABA-transaminase inhibiting properties of some of the gently sedating active compounds in lemon balm act nicely to sooth any rough edges from the caffeine and prevent it having any anxiogenic effect, and the effects some other stuff in there as nicotinic acetylcholine receptor modulators helps, to improve memory, as well as complimenting the way caffeine helps concentration.
Packed full of antioxidants too so its bound to be healthy. His balm plants are just beginning to regrow from dying back over winter, got some nice healthy looking plants just beginning to sprout. And there is a local herb garden in a park that is open to the public, and anyone is free to take a little of any of the edible/medicinal plants growing there. And there is a nice damson tree there, which makes for a great snack while I'm out harvesting some balm for a cup or two of tea, there are absolutely masses of balm plants there, its where I got my plants from, as a girl who is a relative of the person who owns the garden gave me permission to dig up a balm plant or two to take back home to plant in his own garden. So I took a couple of small plants, dug them into the garden, and now he has his own that sprouts up every year. Although he still harvests a bit from the herb garden, as there are so many plants there, his own plants couldn't supply enough for all the balm tea he wants to drink, and nobody will miss a few handfuls of balm leaves that he sticks in his brew from time to time. The balm adds a lovely citrus taste to the tea.
He likes his tea, balm-flavoured or otherwise, sweetened with a couple of teaspoons full of honey, rather than sugar.
Pancakes, UK style, not the fluffyish american style pancakes, but the ones with eggy batter, shallow fried, then flavoured with either maple syrup, honey, or treacle drizzled over the top, or the traditionally done sugar and lemon.
Steak. lots and lots of steak. Preferably either rump or fillet, fried and marinated in a mixture of soy and worcestershire sauce, covered in black pepper and half a bottle each of tabasco sauce, and the extra hot tabasco sauce, along with brown sauce, such as 'daddie's sauce' or spicy hot devil's brown sauce. And then more black pepper and extra hot tabasco sauce after its done cooking. Served with shiitake mushrooms, or morels in gravy. And a nice cold beer to wash it all down alongside the steaks. Generally two steaks at least, preferably more and at least one pint of beer per steak.
Wild mushrooms-fried puffball in batter, morels, fried ink caps (avoid alcohol, as many Coprinus species contain a compound called coprine, which inhibits an enzyme called aldehyde dehydrogenase, which prevents acetaldehyde being metabolised, causing a hideously unpleasant reaction similar to antabuse, the drug used to treat alcoholics via aversive therapy. Its non-fatal, but nasty enough to make someone wish themselves dead)
Fried morels in gravy, the gravy spiced with a little fly agaric, the glutamate receptor agonists in fly agarics stimulate the taste receptors on the tongue that sense 'umami', the japanese term for savoury, meaty taste. They have to be heat-cured first to render them nontoxic. Fly agaric is toxic, if not prepared right, but they can be eaten after boiling, throwing the water out, then reboiling at least once. Or heat-cured, dried and either used as a trance inducing drug, or a few pinches, maybe a teaspoon full of powdered fly agaric added to gravy to give it that extra meaty taste. They can be brewed into an endurance-boosting tea too, that helps one resist cold weather.
Fried parasol mushrooms, fried Boletus edulis/cep/penny bun mushrooms, fried slippery jack or larch boletes. Sulfur polypore is another favourite. Some people react badly to this mushroom, but the reaction is fairly uncommon. Try only in small quantities until one knows weather they can eat this mushroom. Again a few people can't eat slippery jack, but the reaction is pretty rare. They need the cap peeling first, to remove a layer of slime. Hence the slippery bit in the name. Honey mushrooms too. And again a few people can't eat them, so try in small amounts first until one knows if they can be eaten. None of those reactions will kill, just give one an upset stomach etc. With sulfur polypore, the trees on which they grow can determine edibility. Bad reactions tend to be from those that grow on toxic trees, or those which grow on eucalyptus spp. Do not eat any growing from eucalypts, or yew trees etc.
Chanterelles, picked wild and fried. In case one can't tell...yes, I like my wild mushrooms, and love going foraging for them, I like to take a little dose of one or other of my favourite psychedelics, and going mushroom hunting while tripping. Maybe a few magic mushrooms, while I go picking, its one of my favourite pastimes. And I love going out to pick liberty caps, or wavy cap magic mushrooms. The latter have poisonous lookalikes which would be fatal if eaten (deadly Conocybe mushrooms, or deadly Galerinas, which contain the same lethal amatoxins as found in the notorious deathcaps, or destroying angels, a sporeprint is essential for picking wavy caps, the dark purplish sporeprint separates these two nasties out, as they both have rust brown spores, Psilocybe mushrooms have a dark purplish black sporeprint and both of the deadly species can often grow alongside the wavy caps in the same patch of wood chips. The two nasty families contain amatoxins, which destroy the liver, and have a delayed action before onset of symptoms, by which time the damage is already done )
The Russula family, otherwise known as brittlegills, are an example of a family where color changing reagents are sometimes essential for identification and where the microscope is very, very useful indeed, many look very similar to their relatives. None will kill, apart from the myotoxic R.subnigricans, which causes severe, potentially fatal rhabdomyolysis. Checking spore prints under the microscope is sometimes essential for identifying members of this family, as well as staining with chemicals, and/or smell of the mushrooms, or tasting a tiny portion, chewing and spitting can be an essential part of the identification process when looking for Russulas. The tastes and smells range from fruity, to fishy, or even crab flavour/scented. Any that are hot and acrid tasting are likely toxic, and are likely to be those which severely upset the stomach and sicken the would-be mushroom hunter.
Some milk caps (Lactarius spp., so named for the fact they bleed a milky liquid when damaged) are pretty good to eat too. Some again are toxic. Color change of the milk, along with the taste of a small portion, chewed and spat, are essential diagnostic characteristics for this family. Burning hot ones again are likely to be those which are inedible, and cause severe gastrointestinal upset. Not likely to be fatal however. Very few milk caps are toxic enough to kill. L.torminosus might do, but its pretty damn unlikely.Taste, spit is again essential, and a good guide book covering the family is needed.
I did have a bad reaction once and was sick all night, and very nauseated after eating stinkhorn eggs, but I knew what they were, and they are listed as edible in Phillips et. al.
I just couldn't eat them without reacting badly. Never actually been poisoned, and do not plan to be either
Yes...I like my wild mushrooms. And I know what to pick and what not to pick. I've never been poisoned. Taught myself to know all about whats safe and what is not since I was around 4-5 years old. And when needs be, I have an excellent microscope, going from 40-2000x magnification to check the size/shape of mushroom spores, amongst other uses, and I know how to stain mushrooms with various chemicals that can give a further level of identification, as many fungi react with iodine tincture to give various color changes, or other chemicals. Strong alkalis, such as potassium or sodium hydroxide give a yellow color with many fungi, and iron sulfate or chloride give color changes with others. Ammonia solution is another useful reagent for identifying mushrooms.
And candy...I have a very sweet tooth. Favourites are those liquorice sticks with the sherbet inside. Either red or black liquorice. Aniseed balls. Liquorice pontefract cakes (no cake involved there, they are disks of chewy black liquorice), Blackcurrant and liquorice, (yes..I like my liquorice alright, its one of my very favourites) Fisherman's friends, a spicy hot type of sort-of minty lozenge. Victory Vs. Although I like those less now they took out the traces of diethyl ether they used to flavour them with. They are a sort of liquorice-y lozenge similar to fisherman's friends. Used to be flavoured with a hint of ether. They took it out though recently and they just aren't nearly as good anymore
Or those chewy little blue things. Millions, I think they are called. Bubblegum flavoured and completely addictively tasty. Nerds too, little nuggets of tastyness. And those gigantic everlasting gobstoppers. About the size of a tennis ball, and they last for AGES. What else...those atomic fireball brand miniature gobstoppers. Blazing hot, with a tiny bit of aniseed in the center.
Some of the old-fashioned sweets are the best. And whats with that...I just realised I referred to myself in the third person quite often in this post...can't be arsed going back to fix that now. What on earth is with me doing that?
