What Are You Ingesting?

[mlooney 3,417]

2 hours ago, mlooney said:

Giving serious thought to German food tonight.

 

Got out voted.  Has steak and baked potatoes.  Outback, so nothing to write home about, but not horrid either.  6.5 out of 10.

 

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

Dinner was anti-climactic. Pizza Hut Super Supreme w/no olives. Sort of a downer after the Kvass earlier on, but I had a 50%-off coupon for the pizza. It's all good.

At least the day started well. I made cream gravy. It's been ages since I've had a] the milk and b] the energy to stand at the stove and nurse what could be considered a Texas version of a bechamel sauce. (Lousy lumbar compression fracture keeps me away from the stove most of the time.) I think I need a higher roux-to-milk mixture, since most of the thickening came from the reduction of the milk. (At least I can still do that without causing the sauce to separate.)

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

1 hour ago, mlooney said:

Got out voted.  Has steak and baked potatoes.  Outback, so nothing to write home about, but not horrid either.  6.5 out of 10.

If you ever find yourself in the northeastern suburbs of Dallas, plan a trip to Fritzl's Euro Grill. (Warning: Facebook Link.) They're just east of where Mrs. Prof and I live. One guy does all the cooking, and Good Lord, can he ever cook. Not just German/Austrian main dishes, but desserts that'll bring a tear to your eye. Get there early, since the place usually gets packed shortly after opening at 5:00 p.m. and often sells out of food prior to closing at 9:00 p.m. Service can be slow, but that's usually because Mr. Fritzl himself plays waiter as well as chef. Once he's concentrating on your food, you have his full attention.

That said, I've found that I can almost duplicate his fried potatoes using a Bratkartoffeln mit Zweibeln (Kartoffelland Fried Potatoes & Onions, 400g) pack from GermanDeli.com. Comes with everything you need - oil, potatoes, onions, seasoning. All you have to do is lay the potatoes flat in a pan and nurse them so that they don't burn (and so they cook on both sides). Nom.

[mlooney 3,417]

6 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

If you ever find yourself in the northeastern suburbs of Dallas, plan a trip to Fritzl's Euro Grill. (Warning: Facebook Link.) They're just east of where Mrs. Prof and I live

Noted for possible later use.

[mlooney 3,417]

A Dr Pepper with sugar.  First one in roughly a year.  I used to drink like 3 to 6 a day.  I expect this 12 pack to last at least 2 weeks.

[ijuin 572]

While I understand the need to avoid sugar, just about every artificial sweetener out there tastes like ass to me, to the degree that I would sooner drink raw sewage than most "diet" drinks. Instead, I go to stuff that isn't supposed to taste sweet in the first place, like unsweetened teas or just plain water.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

2 hours ago, ijuin said:

While I understand the need to avoid sugar, just about every artificial sweetener out there tastes like ass to me, to the degree that I would sooner drink raw sewage than most "diet" drinks. Instead, I go to stuff that isn't supposed to taste sweet in the first place, like unsweetened teas or just plain water.

My sweetener of choice is aspartame (a.k.a. Equal - the stuff in the blue packet). Saccharin tastes awful to me, and sucralose (a.k.a. Splenda (yellow packet)) literally gives me hives.

You can imagine how hard a sucralose allergy makes life for someone who's trying to lose weight. Almost all of the "diet plan" food/shakes/whatever has sucralose in it. Hell, even some medications have sucralose. My doctor gave me a freaking nasal spray that had sucralose in it. Hard to believe.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

Growing up in the 70s, I was bombarded with the horror stories of saccharin.  I can not trust any Sugar substitute.

[Don Edwards 548]

2 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Growing up in the 70s, I was bombarded with the horror stories of saccharin.  I can not trust any Sugar substitute.

The horror stories of saccharin were a lie, or at best a serious misrepresentation, to begin with.

Kind of like the horror stories of birth control pills causing cancer in lab animals. (The claim was true... for one specific strain of lab animals, carefully selectively bred to have an elevated probability of developing cancer when injected with a nearly-lethal dose of the medication. You know, it's a lot easier to study cancer if you have a reliable way of getting cancers in front of you to study.)

[mlooney 3,417]

Two bananas, a fried cherry pie and my daily Dr Pepper.  And two analgesics, but that not really part of the "meal", and I use that term lightly.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

French fries with mustard.

I was thinking about what are the best toppings for French fries.
Ketchup is not on my list.

In No Particular Order

Malt Vinegar.
Shrimp Cocktail Sauce
Sour Cream
Mustard
Mayonnaise
Steak Sauce
Gravy-Beef
Gravy-Poultry
Gravy-Sausage
Cheese
Chili
Tartar Sauce
Salsa
Barbecue Sauce
Sweet and Sour
Au Jus
Bacon
Tabasco

What am I forgetting?
 

[mlooney 3,417]

4 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

What am I forgetting?

Nothing.  But, please not all of those at once.

[ijuin 572]

On 2/4/2017 at 7:36 AM, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Growing up in the 70s, I was bombarded with the horror stories of saccharin.  I can not trust any Sugar substitute.

It's my understanding that the rats were fed an amount equivalent to a human consuming over a humdred grams of pure saccharin per day--dozens of times more than any human would ever eat. With an overdose like that, many common food ingredients become lethal--caffeine for example, or theobromine.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

15 hours ago, ijuin said:

It's my understanding that the rats were fed an amount equivalent to a human consuming over a humdred grams of pure saccharin per day--dozens of times more than any human would ever eat. With an overdose like that, many common food ingredients become lethal--caffeine for example, or theobromine.

This reminds me a little of my calculations after reading this page on XKCD. I worked out that if a human being ate a ton of bananas every day for a year, it would receive so large a potassium-induced radiation dose as to make death from radiation sickness a near certainty. When I informed my father of this unimaginable health hazard (he is an M.D. who has worked in clinical chemistry for decades) he rather dryly informed me that he could see other health-related problems that would make this a nonissue long before even getting near a fatal dose of radiation.

In short, my genius quite simply goes unappreciated. I am going back to work on my brilliant idea for a banana-fueled nuclear power plant now.

[ijuin 572]

Yes, I rather doubt that a human's digestive system would be capable of processing more than about twenty kilograms of bananas per day at most...

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

43 minutes ago, ijuin said:

Yes, I rather doubt that a human's digestive system would be capable of processing more than about twenty kilograms of bananas per day at most...

I would pay good money not to see this.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

Digesting the remainder of a Dominos Italian sandwich, plus some of their bacon-tomato chicken. Ordered both while under the influence of La Trappe Quadrupel last night. (Great ale - almost like drinking a piece of banana bread.)

[ijuin 572]

Trying to imagine how drinking a piece of banana bread could be considered a good thing.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

6 hours ago, ijuin said:

Yes, I rather doubt that a human's digestive system would be capable of processing more than about twenty kilograms of bananas per day at most...

Pfft. Then the time needed to achieve the fatal radiation dosage would be extended to fifty years.

And to be frank, on that diet I would probably be wanting to die in less than a week.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

11 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

In short, my genius quite simply goes unappreciated. I am going back to work on my brilliant idea for a banana-fueled nuclear power plant now.

Do we need to inform the United Nations?  We will want international inspectors to  ensure that all the bananas are being used for power generation and medical procedures.  There will be extreme sanctions if they find even one weaponized plantain.

 

[Scotty 1,061]

/me hides his collection of Bananarangs.

[Don Edwards 548]

14 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

This reminds me a little of my calculations after reading this page on XKCD. I worked out that if a human being ate a ton of bananas every day for a year, it would receive so large a potassium-induced radiation dose as to make death from radiation sickness a near certainty. When I informed my father of this unimaginable health hazard (he is an M.D. who has worked in clinical chemistry for decades) he rather dryly informed me that he could see other health-related problems that would make this a nonissue long before even getting near a fatal dose of radiation.

In short, my genius quite simply goes unappreciated. I am going back to work on my brilliant idea for a banana-fueled nuclear power plant now.

Alar, a fungicide once used on apples, was banned on a similar basis. They routinely test chemicals as possible carcinogens at a dosage level called "lethal dose 50" - which means that if you give that dosage to 100 laboratory animals, 50 of them will die of direct chemical overdose. It stands to reason that the other 50 will mostly be pretty sick. Now, out of those sick survivors, how many develop cancer?

With Alar, this test determined that it isn't a carcinogen. Then they did something pretty much unprecedented. They tested at "lethal dose 75" - you can figure out what that means. And at that dosage, it's a carcinogen. So it was banned.

Now the thing is, Alar was applied to the *outside* of apples, in very minute doses. You'd have to eat a few tons of apples in a short period to get even to "lethal dose 50". And that's assuming you don't wash the apples before peeling them. Washing in water will remove most of the Alar.

And the flip side is that many of the fungi that Alar keeps from growing on the apples, are themselves carcinogens - that would dramatically fail and be banned at "lethal dose 50" if they were industrial products rather than natural parasites.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

Pasteurized, mass produced "apple cider".

One thing I miss about living in the snowbelt was that every little town had an orchard that produced its own cider.  These would be sold in local groceries or you could buy it straight from the orchard.

Apple orchards are not big business on Florida's Gulf Coast.  What we have here are Orange Groves.  And how do you compare Apples to Oranges?

 

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

3 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

And how do you compare Apples to Oranges?

Usually with a scale and a measuring tape. Either that, or by which one is cheaper on shopping day.

[mlooney 3,417]

I've had the trinity of hot morning drinks today.  Tea, Hot chocolate and coffee.   The hot chocolate was at the doctors office, no way I'm drinking their coffee.  Tea and coffee at home.