Archive for the 'Food' Category

Tea

Published on May 4, 2010 in Tea. 2 Comments Tags: .

I love tea, but recently I’ve started to worry that maybe I love tea a bit much. I’ve been getting odd headaches when I go without for any length of time, and I’ve got a horrible feeling that my overindulgence is adding to my stress levels when I’m at The Work.I’ve tried cutting down while I’m working, but I seem to end up tired and irritable before. That’s bad enough, but my wandering concentration also seems to cause the clock to run ten times slower than it should.

As a result of the warning signs I’ve been trying to cut down, and I’ve even taken the radical step of switching to Tetley Decaf in an effort to wean myself off the caffeine. It’s going slowly, but I’m starting to make some progress.

I’ll admit that maybe tea has become a bit of a crutch for me over the last five or six years. In days gone by I’d enjoy a good old cup of tea with my breakfast, maybe one in the middle of the morning and one at night a while before I went to bed. The rest of my fluid intake was more or else made up byconsuming vast quantities of Irn Bru and Coca-Cola. I sure at one point, without a hint of hyperbolae, that I was drinking at least a two litre bottle of Coke a day and often much more. You’ll agree that’s a hell of a lot of sugar and phosphoric acid, and it definitely wasn’t healthy.

TTFN TGIF

Published on March 10, 2010 in Food. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

El Kat and I took a trip out to TGI Fridays on Buchanan Street last night for one of our infrequent evening soirées that we have in an attempt to treat my Grumbling Unshaven Hermit Disorder.

In the past TGI’s fayre has always been good, not outstanding, but good for a chain restaurant. They do seem to have an obsession with putting Jack Daniels Sauce on everything, but it generally adds to the flavour rather than being overpowering. The Buchanan Street store was recently refurbished so we were expecting an OK meal at a fair price, and poor Kat is probably sick of having to go into Pizza Hut for Stuffed Crust pizzas.

I love those Stuffed Crust Pizzas!

Sadly this story doesn’t have a happy ending. First of all they managed to sit the pair of us in one of those half moon booths designed for drunken hen parties to crush into. The reupholstered couches were comfortable enough, and there was plenty of elbow room, but on the downside a few other tables had to put up with us staring right at them throughout our meal. We made a valiant effort to avoid seemingly like we were staring at the trio of people were directly opposite us when we arrived, but I apologise if they felt uncomfortable.

Our waitress was efficient, maybe overly efficient as she was round wanting to know if we were ready to order/getting on OK/enjoying ourselves/finished/finished yet/finished now/how about now/now/OK finished now? At least she didn’t seem to be in a particular hurry to get us out the door, and there was no hint of exasperation in her voice so I assume she was just being helpful.

El Kat ordered some Spicy Buffalo Wings and Sizzling Chicken and I got some Potato Skins, of course, and a Jack Daniels Monterey Burger. Our appetizers arrived promptly enough, but there was a horrible taste of salt when I bit into the first Potato Skin. I wasn’t just a nip of salt either, but a full on mouthful like the salt shaker had been accidentally spilt on top of them. Since the skins consist of potato, cheese and bacon I’m fairly sure that salt isn’t a regular ingredient: Nasty!

Meanwhile I noticed that the trio opposite us were picking at their food and looking around like a gaggle of nervous meerkats. Their food looked decidedly dodgy with burnt burger buns, droopy lettuce and apparently cold fries. Not exactly what you want to hear just before your own meals appear. Kat’s Sizzling Chicken seemed OK, but myMonterey burger was intensely salty tasted, as were the fries, and the greenery in the burger itself was droopy and malnourished looking. I ate it of course, there’s weans starving in Africa as you know, but quickly started to regret it. The entire thing started talking to me almost straight away, and I developed an overwhelming desire to fall asleep as did Kat. It’s almost as though they laced our food with Roofies in an attempt to keep us in the place buying cocktails. Kat seemed OK at first, but we weren’t five minutes out of the place though when she developed severe indigestion and and pains in her stomach. Thankfully it wasn’t food poisoning or anything, but that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant.

Sorry El Kat! I’ll pick somewhere better next time!

Chocolate Aftershocks

Published on December 5, 2009 in Food and Sweets. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

It seems that, to my great annoyance,  I may have to add chocolate to the list of things that are currently giving me the dry-boak. I got some chocolate chip cookies today in Morrisons at Partick. A little self indulgent, and hardly helpful to a man that’s supposed to be attemtping to improve his fitness, but I can’t really seem to resist the ocassional sweet.  I’m thinking though, after having acid indigestion and a horrible stuffed up, bloated feeling that I might be better laying the hell off chocolate entirely from now on. Every time I have some recently it seems to have done two things.

Firstly it seems to spike the shit out of my blood sugar levels, but then it starts to crash fairly quickly. I’ve noticed it most often if I have a sneaky bar of chocolate out of the vending machine at work. The bar makes me hyper for about half an hour to an hour, and after that I get irritable, tired and start to get a headache which usually persists for the rest of the day.  Secondly I get bad acid indigestion fairly quickly, and it drives me nuts. It’s right up there with the stupid effect that onions have been having on me, and the horrible reaction I get to almost all Indian food.

Rumbling Stumbling Onions

Published on November 30, 2009 in Food. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I’m beginning to suspect that I’ve developed some kind of intolerance for onions in recent months. Every single time I eat anything with onions in it I get a horrible sick feeling; which is bad enough, but it’s accompanied by a horrible bloated feeling. Maybe my digestive system isn’t what it used to be. I know that Mrs McDowall recently discovered that she suffers from an allergy to onions, but I don’t think that it’s an allergic reaction I’ve been having. It’s more like my stomach has become intolerant of the damn things or at least is having some trouble processing them.

The bloated feeling is annoying, but it tends to be coupled with some rather horrible gaseous side effects. The end result is that whenever I eat onions I end up feeling like a Bile Demon from the game Dungeon Keeper, but with legs of course. I wouldn’t mind as much because I’m not a great fan of onions, except when they’re pickled, but as I said not so long ago EVERYTHING seems to be filled with onions lately.

Strangely I often get a similar reaction with eggs, especially fried eggs, so I tend to avoid them whenever possible despite my eternal love of that old family staple of mashed up boiled eggs in a mug.

The Great Potato Skin Fail

Published on September 13, 2009 in Food and Ranting. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Has anyone else noted that onions, and specifically red onions, seem to be creeping into every facet of the restaurant and fast food business? I can’t seem to get anything today without some bit of stingy, crunchy onion turning up inside it.

The worst offender so far has been Frankie and Benny’s Restaurant chain. It’s a shame because I love going to Frankie and Benny’s to take in the faux Italian-American décor, good food and generally friendly service.

OK that’s mostly bullshit.

The main reason I love going to Frankie and Benny’s specifically because I adore their roasted potato skins with cheese and bacon bits. I could eat them all day long and never get bored.  They were simple, straightforward and no doubt fattening as f**k, but they’re tasty so that doesn’t matter. Every visit I made to F&B’s would begin with some potato skins despite El Kat’s prompting that maybe I should try something different. I say, NO! As long as we’re in Frankie and Benny’s I’ll be whacking back the potato skins, or so I thought.

Frankie and Benny’s had other ideas it seems, and suddenly one day I cheerfully demanded Loaded Potato skins from the friendly waiter only for him to apologise profusely that they no longer served them. So it was with a heavy heart that munched down some chicken things and refused to return to F&B’s until my favourite starter was restored to its rightful place on the menu.

El Kat, who is ever tolerant of my foible and idiosyncratic ways, shrugged and said OK have it your way you six foot pest.  Of course she said this in full knowledge that my daft taboo did not apply to her if I was there, and while out with some of her family at F&B’s she spotted the return of potato skins to the menu.

Naturally upon hearing this news I demanded that we go straight there this weekend, and I fired in trying to order potato skins even before we were properly seated. The friendly waiter duly obliged and a familiar plate of three potato skins appeared in front of me. They looked better than ever with each one looked stuffed to the gunwales and coated with mighty layers of cheese. I grabbed the first and took a giant enthusiastic bite, and that’s when I got what we in Ayrshire refer to as “a gunk”.

A crunching, mashing, distinctly organic texture assailed my senses. I sensed a great disturbance in the force. There was more to those loaded potato skins than just cheese, bacon and potato. Truth be told the taste of the entire thing was overwhelmed by the presence of GOD DAMNED RED ONION. I put them down in disgust. I couldn’t bring myself to eat another bite. This wasn’t what I signed on for! I wanted potato, bacon and cheese, not some damn miniature salad mixture sneaking about disguised as my sacred starter.

My sadness and disappointment were almost palpable, and El Kat reassured me that the mean proprietors of Frankie and Benny’s would be punished when the revolution came. I nodded in sage agreement and we departed from that place of culinary betrayal determined to fight on against the ever encroaching forces of the onion invaders.

Genius, simple Ice Cream Genius

Published on March 1, 2009 in Food. 0 Comments

I think it’s fair to say that if Leonardo da Vinci was alive today it’s likely that he would be responsible for a great many inventions and theories that would revolutionise the modern world as much as he did in his own time.

If he was alive today I personally think he would have been responsible for this particular act of genius:

yorkiemc

That’s right it’s a McDonald’s McFlurry with YORKIE BITS in it.

Hot damn!

Fat Fighting F*ckwits

Published on January 6, 2009 in Fitness, Food, People Be Fools and Ranting. 0 Comments

Well the first full working week of the New Year is underway and the annual weight loss resolutions are being made. I’ve already forcibly had to remove myself from the canteen and several other public areas at The Work to avoid the local population’s discussion of their fat fighting plans.

So far I’ve seen one five foot  nothing fatty restricting herself to a thousand calories per day, and those consist mainly tuna by the looks of it. Several other dieters have decided to try the latest fad diets which range from the cookie diet to simply attempting to not eat at all. None of their ideas are physically, or more importantly, psychologically sustainable in the long term and I’m already taking bets as to which one of them will be the first down to the snack machine next Monday.

Naturally not one of them has chosen to moderate their alcohol intake, increase their physical activity or do anything that actually might actually have any real effect. Six of them have joined, or rejoined, a gym and several have signed up for all sorts of low impact aerobic classes. Not one of them has considered parking their cars at the far end of the car park though because that’s too far for them to walk.

Every time I hear them chattering on about diets and magic pills I want to grab them, give them a shake and say, “Look it’s not rocket science, just take in less calories than you use in your day to day existence and you’ll lose weight without damaging yourself.”