[Sca-cooks] Food Descriptions, was -- Top 10 pantry items

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Aug 5, 2007, at 1:17 PM, Nick Sasso wrote:

>> It's really no big deal. It's made from fish. It tastes like fish. It
>> is _not_ rotten. It's got a lot of salt in it. Use it in place of
>> salt in dishes for which a fishy flavor is a reasonable expectation.
>
> Yup.  It is enzymatically 'digested' fish tissues.  Mmmmmm . . .  
> sounds so
> much more appetizing put that way!

You wouldn't by any chance be issuing a challenge to describe random  
cookery-related chemical reactions in a negative way just for fun,  
would you? Because I'm sure I have a really big bag of those around  
here someplace... ;-)

My point being that if your goal is to gross somebody out, it's  
really not very difficult with even the most commonplace of foods. On  
the other hand, even though many would say that gratuitously grossing  
somebody out is bad manners, it's something some people seem to  
really enjoy doing on a daily basis.

Personally, I think it's a throwback to the whole xenophobic "us/ 
them" approach to life. _We_ don't eat disgusting food (ideally  
stated while chewing a Chicken McNugget), but _they_ do, so we're  
better than them.

For some reason I'm reminded of those guys (I forget their "stage"  
name) who had set up a website spoofing that of the World Financial  
Organization (of whom they presumably disapprove), only to find  
themselves getting mistaken invitations to come and speak on a topic  
of their choosing at various business conventions, meetings of  
university-based Young Entrepreneurs groups, etc. Which, of course,  
they cheerfully accepted. One of the things they did was to set up a  
complete, and rather effective presentation, animated PowerPoint,  
videos, free samples, you name it, on the benefits of recycling human  
waste into fast food of various types for developing third-world  
markets. The samples were actual McDonald's hamburgers, rewrapped...  
their working slogan was something like, "We've been telling the  
Third World to eat s*** for decades -- why not sell it to them, too?"

It was pretty amazing how many of their listeners fell for it, and  
were in fact avidly in favor of the idea. The PowerPoint presentation  
was pretty funny, too.

Description is everything...

Adamantius