Overrated Foods (Warning-Long Rant)

Georgiana

OVERRATED FOODS !

Strawberries have to be one of the most overrated foods ever. What on earth is so special about strawberries that merits their elevated status? I just don’t get it. We are meant to go into a swoon at phrases such as “strawberries and cream” or “strawberries and champagne” I get the enthusiasm for champagne but what exactly is the strawberry meant to do for me. Okey they are a primary colour. And they have a little juice in the flesh. And they are sometimes vaguely sweet but often vaguely bitter as well. That’s about it. A banana is often sweeter, more reassuring to the stomach and has a wonderful colour. And the sight and juicy experience of a good orange is surely wonderful. (Do you recall how Brian Keenan in captivity didn’t eat the orange they gave him because he enjoyed looking at it so much) Strawberries have seeds all over their surface which you have no option but to eat. They often come with a stalk and leaf still attached which you have to grapple with as well as under ripe inedible bits around the stalk. These horrible bits end up littering your plate and looking disgusting. And why on earth are raspberries the poor relation of strawberries. Personally I’d have the raspberry any time. I may be the only person in the world who thinks like this but all in all, I just don’t get the enthusiasm for strawberries, with or without cream.

A food which is omnipresent and deemed as necessary to sandwich making as bread, is lettuce. The assumptions made by those selling sandwiches about the population’s desire for lettuce in their sandwiches would make an interesting subject for a thesis. I hate lettuce. I hate it with a deep hatred. Something about large green uncooked leaves and the human palate does not fit in my mind. Maybe its from years of watching cows eat grass from the kitchen window in rural Ireland as a child. There is no substance to a lettuce leaf. It has no depth. You cannot bite into it. You must create a wad of it or stick it to something else in order to eat it. There is no taste to lettuce. Lettuce affects me as a foreign body in the mouth making me want to gag. Or learn how to chew my cud. Especially those coarse outer leaves. I will not accept lettuce being thrust upon me every time I want a quick lunch. But lettuce today is what potatoes were to our grandmothers. The only thing lettuce has going for it is that it has the green stuff which you are supposed to get into your system every day. “Two or more servings of green vegetables” says every leaflet advising on diet. So we consume this tasteless animal food by the ton adding it in large handfuls to just about everything. If I was imprisoned and tortured I might agree to eat one or two very fresh crisp salted inner lettuce leaves with a touch of oil and balsamic vinegar . But death is preferable to limp soggy lettuce stuck between a slice of bread and some other food such as chicken or tuna. The kind that contaminates nearly every ready made sandwich in Ireland. And for which you are expected to fork out several euro. To make matters worse the soggy mess often has huge inedible bitter stalks in it and sometimes suspicious rust coloured marks. I won’t even start about the lettuce being stuck to the butter/margarine.

Another vastly overrated food is pasta. I do not comprehend how people can say, as they frequently do, “ Pasta is wonderful”. This seems to be a fashionable thing to say. Why exactly is pasta wonderful ? Of itself it has no taste. To compensate for this fact, someone dreamed up the idea of cutting the stuff into different shapes. So people on food programmes can go on about the “wonderful ribbons” and “mouth watering swirls”. I will concede that the sauces served on the pasta can indeed be wonderful. So let’s be accurate here. It’s the sauce and not the tasteless stuff it’s stuck onto that should get the credit. That stuff is just cheap carbohydrate which has done a good job of feeding the Italians over the years. Italian potatoes, without the lovely floury taste.


Now pasta with green salad on the side and strawberries for afters and I’m definitely off!

munkeehaven

hmmmm:rolleyes:

Capt'n Midnight

You've been eating the commercial berries then - grown for size & colour not flavour. There was a company in the UK wot sold canned strawberies - one year they decided not to add artificial colouring - sales dropped 50%

Lettuce - it's for colouring - cabbage is a food

most people eat pasta with some sauce to give it a flavour.

weemcd

Originally posted by Georgiana


And why on earth are raspberries the poor relation of strawberries. Personally I’d have the raspberry any time. I may be the only person in the world who thinks like this but all in all, I just don’t get the enthusiasm for strawberries, with or without cream.


Now pasta with green salad on the side and strawberries for afters and I’m definitely off!

Agreed, i think raspberries kick strawberry ass and i despise lettuce. nice post

munkeehaven

have you not tasted those succelent apple sized strawberries ?? yum.strawberries i think are so popular because alot of middle-aged people buy them to brighten up their dulling sex lives, you know lets try something oh so daring ... and feed each other while trying to oh so look seductive and they also buy the cream. they have been watching too much tv, with all that strawberry chomping and spreading of cream in various places. strawberries are sex-food. just like melted chocolate,oysters,and grapes.personally magnums are the best things for the bedroom:D

segadreamcast

Whoa whoa whoa. Gonna have to stand up and defend pasta here. It has a distinct, unique, rich flavour if cooked correctly.

'Oh goodness, it's not nice without the sauce mummy - watch me write a meandering, pretentious rant while I shoot down foods which aren't to my liking.'

Do you eat cereal without milk?
Bread without butter?
Robinsons without water?

Yes, pasta alone has a dull taste - yet, the texture is still there - *combine* this with something else and it is transformed from the mundane into the delightful. Combining taste, aroma and texture to form one of the most wonderful foods imaginable. ..

*Ahem*

However, I refuse to go off on a tangent and be entrapped by trying to be as overly ostentatious as you have, so I leave you with this.

Fact #1: Pasta rules all.

That is all.

dudara

Don't you be criticising strawberries here. I love them, especially the semi-sweet, semi-bitter ones. Just buy a punnet, cut them up and pour over some unwhipped cream and the tiniest amount of sugar and you have summer in a bowl. They're light and just sweet enough. mmm

I hate floppy lettuce though, and that frisee lettuce. It's like eating string. However, I do like Cos and Iceberg lettuces. They're lovely in salads, all crunchy and cool.

RE*AC*TOR

God I coudn't disagree with you more. Some really nice strawberries with a vintage champagne for breakfast is just about one of the nicest things you can do. And the cream combination is certainly lovely too.
Although lettuce adds little to sandwiches people can enjoy it as its crisp and adds moisture.
Pasta is no more boring than rice, in fact probably less so.

Now a food that is overrated is Lobster, don't get me wrong, its nice - but it certainly doesn't deserve it status as the king of shellfish - crab has a better defined, more agreeable flavour at a fraction of the price.

The Real B-man

Originally posted by munkeehaven
hmmmm:rolleyes:

exactly

rainbow kirby

Robinsons without water?

really nice if you get the right flavour!

munkeehaven

really nice if you get the right flavour!

yeah if u like a bout of diarrohea......i know a little kid who did that, ended up being as hyper as phuck and was on the toilet the whole night.not good at all.

sceptre

Originally posted by NoelRock
Do you eat cereal without milk?
Bread without butter?
Robinsons without water?

I'd have to say an occasional yes to all three. Especially the bread. I'm not big on dry unboiled pasta though

Georgiana

Hi NoelRock

Since this forum relates to food, surely I am entitled to shoot down foods which are not to my liking in the same way as anyone can praise foods which are to their liking - such as pasta in your case.

Is the discussion censored to include only sterile exchange of factual information ?? I thought disccussion boards existed to allow people to sound off on their views and have a bit of craic by expressing themselves in their own way, as well as exchange information, so long as they are not offensive to others, which I wasn't.

I have no idea why you are getting all offensive on behalf of a food.
Its amazes me how quick some people are, under the cover of anonymity, to react offensively to harmless inoffensive contributions in no way directed at them, in a way they wouldn't do to ones face. What is the need to be offensive to someone you never met because you dislike their style of writing and disagree with their tastes in food. Nobody required anyone to read my ostentatious rambling post and I did put a warning that it was a rant! It was just composed as a bit of idle fun in an idle moment actually. Enjoy your pasta anyway!

segadreamcast

Originally posted by Georgiana
Hi NoelRock

Since this forum relates to food, surely I am entitled to shoot down foods which are not to my liking in the same way as anyone can praise foods which are to their liking - such as pasta in your case.

Is the discussion censored to include only sterile exchange of factual information ?? I thought disccussion boards existed to allow people to sound off on their views and have a bit of craic by expressing themselves in their own way, as well as exchange information, so long as they are not offensive to others, which I wasn't.

I have no idea why you are getting all offensive on behalf of a food.
Its amazes me how quick some people are, under the cover of anonymity, to react offensively to harmless inoffensive contributions in no way directed at them, in a way they wouldn't do to ones face. What is the need to be offensive to someone you never met because you dislike their style of writing and disagree with their tastes in food. Nobody required anyone to read my ostentatious rambling post and I did put a warning that it was a rant! It was just composed as a bit of idle fun in an idle moment actually. Enjoy your pasta anyway!

There is no anonymity in my posts. Noel Rock is my name. If you googled or registry searched a bit - you could easily find my address, phone number etc (which I'm sure a few will now be obliged to do).

I was, infact, only joking with my 'mortally offended' tone in response to your gravely solemn tone to which you treated the foods in question... No real offence taken of course, I just enjoy pasta - which is the point I was trying to convey - did you get it ?

Heh heh heh, steak with pasta and a mushroom sauce tonight - jesus, I have issues...

No lettuce mind you can't stand it either.

If you want to rant about celery - I'll be totally behind you though!

(And yes, I too enjoy bread without butter for the occasional snack - but still, I needed a third example to round the point off ...)

Georgiana

Well I'm certainly with you on the celery question, Noel Rock. And fair play to you for using your real name. I read your post after reading a totally over the top relpy to a different post I contributed to another thread so I was beginning to feel everyone was having a go at me, for no good reason.

Tonight I had porridge and a piece of cheddar on bread for my evening meal-my cupboard is bare and I havn't the energy to go shopping! I love food but there is a tyranny in having to feed oneself (not to mention ones children!) so often. I might have even eaten a teeny bit of pasta with or without sauce if I had it! But not lettuce!

On another note altogether, but still to do with food, there was a child intervidewd on the radio one morning who had been successful in some creativity competition. She had come up with the idea of "happy food". She described rather poignantly how so many people are sad in the world and her ambition is to produce food which has the effect of making people happy. It was a touching little interview. I didn't like to ring up and tell her that drink and drugs do the trick, in the short term anyway!

Now there I am meandering again, but hopefully not too ostentatious.