I happen to LIKE Spam. So there!! Nothing like a fried Spam sandwich with mustard. Yum.

I indulge about once every 5 years or so.

fried spam for breakfast...yum...

Mmm. Fried bologna sandwiches. My DH won't allow them in the house.

Did anyone notice we turned this thing to food again?

Claire: Fried bologna sandwiches? Ewww..the smell is enough to make me hurl. That could be my diet aid..when I feel hungry..cook a fried bologna sandwich and my appetite is out the door.

Spam scares me. You know the whole, "Grade D but edible" meat theory..

Clint, it would never work out between us. Fried bologna sandwiches are wonderful- especially on soft white bread. I wish I had one right now.

The smell of canned tuna makes me want to throw up my spleen.

Yep ;) Canned tuna doesn't really bother me..it just makes me think "cat food". However, raw yellow-fin tuna is THE BOMB. I have it at least once a week at a popular sushi place a couple of blocks from my work.

"Grade F: Mostly Circus Animals" (Label seen in school cafeteria on The Simpsons)

I'd forgotten all about fried bologna sandwiches. A few years ago I remembered liking fried Spam so I tried it again. Evidently my tastes have changed.

Sunday's roasted lamb shanks were accompanied by the Liberty School Cabernet. Not a 90+ point wine, but it holds fond associations. To bring this thread back on topic I shall refer to it as

Mechanics School Rebuilt Carbureternet

Now if you really want to smell something to make you barf, try a grilled tuna sandwich. Love the taste, but the smell.......

There's also something kind of daring about eating hot mayo.

K

Gag. Tuna melts. Nasty cat food & mayo placed on top of an English muffin, topped with a slice of tomato and a sprinkle of cheese. My mom used to make them all the time- but she would warn me first so I could make my own dinner and avoid the smell if possible.

Still wishing I had a fried bologna samich.

Mayo is just disgusting. I have never been able to eat it on ANYTHING.

Mayo is not disgusting at all. It is (another american word) Yummy.
But, of course, looking at the bottle, we are not eating the same thing.
Reading from bottle
THOMY
Delikatess
Mayonnaise
Made in Germany.
Tuna with diced spring onions plus the above = Yum (on a bread roll)

Getting back on topic. I've been told not to drink the wine when i visit the damp and dismal isle. It is described as possum piss (Australian for terrible wine)

Back to Mayo.

The jar stuff can be kind of bland depending on the brand. HellmannÂs is the best by far. If you truly want an orgasmic experience with Mayo (don't go there - well, maybe), make your own. In a food processor it only takes seconds and is WONDERFUL.

Don't think i want to have an orgasmic experience with Mayo (there you lot go again.fiddling with the queen's english) I'm going outside to pot a few orchids.
Mayo indeed.

Mayo, yes ... Miracle Whip NOoOOOOOoOoOoOooo!!!!

Have you noticed that marketing people are fibbers. The blurb on the net says "all the great taste" and half the fat of Mayonnaise.

"a grilled tuna sandwich. Love the taste, but the smell......."

Oh, you shoulda been here this eve. I was whipping up some dressing for some tasty Thai beef spring rolls and The Assistant came home just as I was whisking together some vinegar and fish sauce over low heat. He nearly went back to work. As I'd been with it from the start the smell was no biggie. I'll probably notice it when I go away and come back tomorrow.

Tuna and mayo as Arthur's described above is pure heaven.

Raised on the blandness of typ euro-american food I've got a lot of pungency to catch up on :)

Arthur - "fiddling with the queen's english"

It could be worse. I could be using the king's english. You know, OUR king.

Why isn't everyone watching the state of the union? Bad Americans, bad Americans................

Fish sauce doesn't bother me.

Yeah. Ironic that our ancestors tried to escape King George or King Whomever...and 200+ years later we end up with another one..ARGH!

Kev, you had to get me going again!

They didn't want to escape, they just didn't like paying their taxes. Nothing has changed! Perhaps George can introduce a Mayo tax.
Mayo because no one can spell Mayonnaise. It is now Mayo everywhere there or just an invention on this thread.
Is fish sauce, tatare sauce?

I read that King George has three more years in office. What do you call unbranded wine in bottle? Cleanskins here.

Wine without a label? That would be rot-gut here.
We only brand horses and cattle ;)

Mayo tax would be fine with me, as I don't buy the stuff.

Fish sauce? Isn't that a nasty Asian delicacy? You know, dark brown and kinda stinky. Tartar sauce is the proper term. Tartare is left for Beef.

I'd have watched the State of the Union if I had a TV. Mayo is synonomous with mayonnaise here.

To quote Wikipedia:

"Fish sauce is a condiment derived from fish that have been allowed to ferment. The term describes a wide range of products used in many different cultures for different periods of time. Fish sauce is much used in Southeast Asian and southern Chinese cooking to add saltiness to dishes. In Southeast Asian cuisines, it is largely used as a dipping condiment for fish, shrimp, pork, and chicken. However in southern China, it is only used as a cooking oil or cooking ingredient for soups and casseroles."

Taking the above one step further and providing more info you have no use for:

From The Classic Cuisine of Vietnam by Bach Ngo & Gloria Zimmerman (a very Asian name don't you think?)

"Fish sauce is to Vietnamese cooking what salt is to Western and soy sauce to Chinese cooking. It is included in practically all recipes. Prepared from fresh anchovies and salt, layered in huge wooden barrels, the manufacture of fish sauce is a major industry. The factories are located along the coast to assure the freshness of the fish to be processed. Fermentation is started once a year, during the fishing season. After about 3 months in the barrel, liquid drips from an open spigot, to be poured back into the top of the barrel. After about 6 months the fish sauce is produced."

Your lesson for the day.

Where's Sue? I bet he could tell us about garum, too.

Huh. I thought you guys were cooking with fish emulsion.

Miracle whip tastes like its turned.

Does anyone have a favorite wine glass? I did have these huge green glass goblets that weighed half my body weight, but my DH broke them. Now I have a glasses that are a little snifter shaped without the stem. Like a highball glass with a wider bottom.

"Does anyone have a favorite wine glass?"

Yes, the particular one that happens to be in my hand at a given moment :)

Mikasa has some really pretty ones. I got these for Christmas a couple of years ago. Very Italian countryside :)

{{gwi:133517}}

I think everything tastes better out of a thin cup or glass. I like very thin wine glasses and can't stand drinking coffee or tea out of a mug. Seems like I read something scientific about this at one point in time. There's some reason for it, but can't remember now.

Cringe, Kev, because right now i'm drinking coffee out of a mug. But don't worry, i'm a slob. There is a new thread about fashion (i think) where i'll not be making an appearance.
The fish sauce sounds interesting though the manufacturing process doesn't exactly enthuse, but there must be lots of stuff like that. Best that you only see and eat the finished product.

Kev, you may be on to something there. My mom who is a total wine head said stemless glasses were all the rage in the wine world. She bought some like the ones I described, but hers were so thin they made me nervous to hold.

I am aslo drinking out of a coffee cup- Harley Davidson of course.:)

A dear friend of mine who thinks nothing of dropping six figures on a painting now and then uses stemless for his wine. They're Flintstones jelly jars but perfecly serviceable.

I've only seen stemless in some of the more casual restaurants while the few upper end feedbags I've attended lately are still using stemware. It was ages ago, but when I was in the south of France all the restaurants (all affordably casual) were just using small tumblers.

The florist in my 'hood has a line of tumblers that I'd like to have but they really are incredibly, frighteningly thin with beautiful twisted glass bands and other ornamentation.

I did some Googling and can't find the info I need to make my case. I'm sure you all think I'm nuts or worse.

I don't drink wine very often, but haven't you ever noticed how much better coffee or tea tastes out of a china cup? It has something to do with the thinness of the cup and how the coffee or tea enters the mouth or something odd like that.

Toss out those mugs and haul out that Wedgwood.

Before my new glasses, I drank wine out of our chili pepper tumblers. :)

Kev, us thinking you're nuts has nothing to do with this thin glass is better conversation. :)

Kev,

I think it's in your head. Some people think soda tastes better out of a glass bottle than a plastic bottle.

I can't drink Pepsi out of plastic bottles, but I do like it out of cans. There is a different taste...I promise.

Soda DOES taste better in glass. Cans are a far second and I don't drink soda out of those huge 20 oz bottles. No one should drink 20 oz. of soda at a time. If you don't think cola melts your insides you should see what it does to rust.

*taking another sip of the first Mountain Dew she's had in eons, waiting for the gut rot to set in.*

... I know you're "on" soda right now - I agree it taste better in a glass or from a glass bottle, same with wine - *has* to be served in a nice thin crystal tulip glass! as for coffee, when you need to rush out of the house in the morning, a mug is just fine! lol... but just want to get back quickly on "fish sauce"... you use the "pure" fish sauce to cook only, rarely serve it straight from the bottle, admit with some exception... but when it is served with food, most of the time it's diluted with a combination of lime juice, water, sugar, crushed garlic and hot pepper (optional - but IMO, a must!)... have you ever had delicious Vietnamese spring rolls, or grilled meat marinated with lemon grass, dip in diluted fish sauce??? you ought to try it, I guarantee you'd like it, though I admit it's not likely you'd come across excellent VN spring rolls in restaurants...
cat80

I'm gald we had- or are having- this conversation on fish sauce. Tonight I am trying a Thai chicken and pineapple dish (not sure how authentic)that asks for fish sauce. If I can find it in the store I will use it.

Ah yes, and the wine glass has to be 'lipless'. Otherwise you get drips down the glass. Very uncivilized.

Uncivilized..?

So speaks the girl with a trout in one hand and a Mountain Dew in the other...

just kiddin' hon..you know I love ya.

Oh Clint! I was just going to comment on hijacking this thread for a conversation between you and I- but its my thread so who cares!

There was a conversation on another forum about orchid bag babies. I mentioned I got a Luthera Claire Bradshaw out of one of them so they can be a pretty good deal. Someone else posted saying that Claire Bradshaw lives around the corner from them! I had no idea she was a real living person! Forums are awesome!

I put the trout down for a sec to type this. :)

VN springrolls are the best. Luckily we have a very large Asian population here. Love that food............

My favorite too, I mean when *I* make it!!! LOL... hey Claire, were you able to get the fish sauce? most Asian grocery store should carry it...

Asian grocery store? Why!?! Kevin posted the technique for making it higher up there on this page. Though I suppose if you didn't want to wait a year you could just buy it. *sigh*

Ohhhhh Shady, I'm definitely coming to eat at your house...grilled Tuna....fish...surimi and sushimi....yum.

Mayo I think is just shortened for Mayonaise....you know, Arthur, the American tendency to shorten everything...including our present King.

The only thing which worries me about making my own mayonaise is the raw egg thing again....but hey, I like Miracle Whip on pumpernickle. And yes, I like fried spam, but could never stomach fried bologna.

I'm also an iconoclast because I saw these new "stemless" wine glasses and thought it was a sacrilege...the point to the stems on a wine glass is so you don't warm the wine with your fingers whilst holding the glass.

I too like thin wine glasses, tea cups and coffee cups...but I have a strange problem...I get the urge to bite them. Fortunately, I have controled myself, but I get this urge.....

Hi Shady Character! Trust me, no one in the right mind would want to make fish sauce at home - it's lot more involved than the brief and simple description from Bach Ngo's cook book. Besides the odor generated from the fermation of the fish, there're also tons of other ingredients added to the fermation. These "secret" ingredients determine a high quality fish sauce from a mediocre one. The whole process for making fish sauce can be liken to making wine! It's very complicated. Why do I know? My family used to own a fish sauce factory, and all the years we had this factory, I only went there once because of the smell. I know it's a much wiser decision to spend a few bucks to buy a bottle at the grocery store. And like wine, there are different quality fish sauce out there.
cat80

Aw, you know I was just teasin :) It would have been fun though to hear back that someone tried it and the stories of family upheaval and newspaper headlines that resulted. I may have to rethink the shady character tagline: maybe it's not about shade gardening after all ;)

I'm only on the second bottle of fish sauce in my life and I can really tell there's a big difference in quality. The first was the stuff the lady who taught my Thai cooking class provided and it was awesome--big square plastic squeeze bottle that ended up having a big salt crystal in the bottom it was so salty. The second is made in Thailand but possibly packaged more for the American palate. It's got some flavor, but there's something too "clear" for lack of a better word about it. Reminds me of just fishy soy sauce.

So, that's what that thing is rattling around my fish sauce bottle. Thanks. Another mystery solved.

yeah, I know "Shady", I felt weird addressed you as Shady... lol... but if anyone tried to make fish sauce at home, it wouldn't be upheaval in the family but the neighborhood as well!!! lol...
But I'm impressed that you're on your 2d bottle! you must cook a lot of Asian foods? There are a number of good VN fish sauce available at stores, the good ones cost a little more, and don't have salt deposits at the bottom of the bottle. But unfortunately, these kinds are made for mass production, they can't be the best.

I found fish sauce at a 'gourmet' grocery store. The kind where they have a cooler just for cheese and the ladies shop in fur coats.

I'm betting its not the best quality fish sauce, but it did its job in a pinch.

Fried bologna rules!