Condensed version of conversation last night at First Thursday

[moon_custafer]

(Don has just moved to a new apartment, and has a real kitchen for, well, possibly for the first time.)

Don: I need to go back to the Megalomart. I don't have dishtowels, or a dishrack, or...dishes. I've got lots of silver-plated teaspoons, from my grandmother. Do people still use teaspoons?

moon_custafer: Yes.

Don: I don't drink tea or coffee, but if I have people over they might want it, so I should keep the teaspoons. Also teapots are amusing. I don't understand coffee-making though.

moon_custafer: I use a French press.

Don: All the coffee-makers I looked at were really expensive.

moon_custafer: That's why the French press - it's a coffeepot, and you put the coffee in, and...

Don: it percolates?

moon_custafer: No, you let it sit for...quite a long time, and then there's a strainer thing that you push down and - and it's very dramatic.

green_trilobite: I think you should go with the private eye in this film I saw, where the dame offers him coffee and apologizes that it's instant, and he says "Is there any other kind?"

Don: So, what is Maxwell House anyway?

green_trilobite: It's instant coffee crystals.

moon_custafer: They make the coffee, and then they boil it down, and you just add water to turn it back into coffee.

Don: Well, until a few years ago, coffee made me nauseous, and now - well, this (gestures to ice tea) is more caffeine than I should be having, so if guests want coffee they'll get instant. I should get sugar tongs though. Where do you get sugar tongs?

moon_custafer: Sugar tongs? I don't think they make sugar tongs any more. I've never seen them, at least.

Don: People... just use spoons?

green_trilobite: Yes.

Don: Does sugar still come in lumps?

Comments

[tully-monster.livejournal.com]

It would be charming if he could offer his guests sugar lumps with tongs, though. You can get them at specialty kitchen stores, if there are any around.

I don't use them anymore because I put Splenda in my tea now, but if he wants to be really fancy he could give them lumps of brown Demerara sugar.

How old is this guy, anyways?

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Forty-eight this month, but he has odd gaps in his knowledge of everyday life (or at least what I consider everyday life). Our conversation last night also turned up that he is the proud owner of a set of cheese knives, but doesn't know what a colander is. I did recommend he check out the cooking for engineers (http://www.cookingforengineers.com/) site.

What's an every day life?

[(Anonymous)]

Never had one of those..... I come from a long line of Crohn's Disease and Irritable Bowel Syndrome sufferers (my brother is "Mr. C" in all of the medical studies: I got off easy!) so there are a lot of everyday foods and drinks that make me very sick: - Tea - a tiny quantity burns a hole in my stomach (literally). I have tried dozens of teas and consulted about low acid teas with tea experts whose families have run tea plantations for centuries. The teas that I drank as a result of these consultations burned holes in my stomach. - Coffee - made me nauseous to the point of being unable to stand but due to a GI-tract reset (long gross story) a few years ago this effect went away but a single cup is enough to give me jitters for days. What would be the point of DeCaf? So why would I have any knowledge whatsoever about their preparation? The current apartment will be the first dwelling that I've lived in where entertaining guests will be possible and so I'm looking into these things now as I would look into sword and torch swallowing should a lot of potential guests be in the habit of doing those things. Also: Alcohol - my stomach instantly transforms every molecule of alcohol introduced into it into three molecules of vomit. A rumball will cause all food in my stomach to eject: or pieces of stomach lining can be whipped out should no food be available. I once opened an account with a local bartender for 20 shot glasses of different kinds of alcohol: the challenge being to find some buffer (eg. milk) or low enough concentration of alcohol to avoid this effect. After a few months we had gotten up to 15 sips and 15 technicolour yawns and gave up at that point as we figured the extra cleaning bills incurred by the bar had used up the other five shots. Extremely diluted alcohol such as food cooked in a something that used to have some cooking sherry in it or dealcoholized beer can sometimes avoid the liquid laugh: thus allowing the booze to enter my bloodstream to trigger a migraine headache and painful loss of consciousness without anything enjoyable happening beforehand. All booze, from moonshine to vintage wine tastes exactly the same to me: like vomit. Tobacco - was severely allergic to all tobacco products so no clubs, bars, dances or concerts for me as they allowed smokers in. For no particular reason I see (via comparison with someone who was equally sensitive) that this allergy is going away. There has also been a very recent concept of "anti-smoking bylaws" so I suppose I could go to such venues now. I wonder what you do in them? I've heard rumours and seen movies but I wonder how they compare to real life? Spices - long and painful experimentation shows that all spices derived from roots (wasabi, horse-radish) or barks (cinnamon) are OK: all others are deadly poisons with too many gruesome side-effects to list in full but I note that sub-atomic amounts leaking to my plate from surrounding plates have caused bloody sores in embarrassing places. If you can think of a painful sensation or membrane malfunction (blistering, bleeding, rotting) I can tell you which spice will trigger it for me. Black table pepper (as in salt-n-pepper)is just above my spice tolerance (not a bark or a root) so my apartment has only a salt shaker. /Don P.S. A pet peeve of mine is people who assume that all food sensitivities are the result of deep-seated psychological problems. I guess that all those kids dying of toxic shock from minute quantities of peanuts just can't face life! All my symptoms happen whether or not I am aware of the presence of the materials that cause them and mistakes in labeling have caused suspense but no symptoms: double-blind proof. I have the expert opinions of a GI-tract specialist, a psychologist and a neurologist that my problems have relatively, absolutely and virtually nothing to do with my neural hardware or software. In latter life I expect to have to have a series of painful operations shortening my small intestine to remove the sections with holes worn in them by my wild and carefree diet: my brother started his operations at the age of 17.

Formating problems

[(Anonymous)]

What happened to the paragraphs in this? This is not what what was shown in the preview. I checked the "Don't auto-format" button and manually put in carriage returns: what malfunctioned and removed them? Can anyone tell me how to get LJ to pay attention to what I type instead of botching the format? /Don

Re: Formating problems

[(Anonymous)]

LJ formatting is weird.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make fun of you. I'll take the entry down if you like.

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

It's probably a good thing that I was sitting at the other table. I'm useless in a kitchen, but I think even I would have been boggling at hearing this conversation live.