h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I hate all this fascination with "Low fat" products. It's getting to the point where you can't buy anything without someone trying to cause you to waste away to nothing. I like my beverages to be proper, red-can full-fat Coke, with extra lard, and a pork pie in it.

A pork pie???

What's wrong with pork pie?

They don't actually have pork in them

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are you sure???

Mmmmmm...... pies...

I think I'd heard before that Australian pork pies haven't got any pork in them. I'd like to reassure you that your English pork pie has got plenty of pork, and lots of sizzling hot jelly that runs out onto your plate as soon as you cut into the pie, and lovely crumbly pastry that...

If you'll excuse me, I think it's time I had lunch.

What exactly IS a pork pie? Is it like the aussie 'meat' pie that's actually only about 10% meat (the rest being offal), or is it actually pork???

I think (I'm not sure) that what we in Britain call a "pork pie" or "meat pie" or occasionally "Melton Mowbray pork pie" is the ancestor of what the Australians call a "meat pie".

At its best, it's served piping hot, a cylindrical lump of pork shoulder 10-15 cm in diameter, seasoned with black pepper and salt and encased in lovely crumbly pastry. In between the meat and the pastry is a layer of stock that melts, seeps out over your plate as you cut into the pastry, serves as a counterpoint to the dryness of the pastry, damages your arteries and makes the washing-up difficult.

At its worst, it's a cold picnic item, bought in plastic wrapping, 5-6 cm in diameter. The meat is reconstituted, the stock is solid jelly and the pastry is a bit soggy. And even then it's quite gorgeous.

Does the above entry look like half a guide entry to you? If so, perhaps you'd like to add a description of aussie meat pies and the 2 could be combined into something submittable.

Yes, yes indeed!

Have a look at /a25200....tell me if what I've done isn't OK, I haven't done anything towards submitting it yet...I'll get rid of it if you don't like it!

Damn. That should be /a205200.

Yes, I liked it. I'll try to combine the two bits later today/tonight (depending who's reading this), and leave you a message, then we can leave this forum free for people who actually want to compare sparkling vegetable beverages.

(for the record, my preference is Pepsi Max. I'm not proud of it, but it's true.)

Sorry, ignore most of that last reply. I think I'd either looked at an early draft of it, or not scrolled down to where you'd pasted in my contribution. So my actual view is: nice one - time to press the 'submit' button.

Erm.. anyway, ranting about coke and low fat stuff an' stuff........(hint)........

I apologise, humbly and profusely, for diverting the thread of the conversation away from the subject of cola beverages. To make up for it, here's some contention:

I prefer Diet Coke. I think it tastes a bit nicer than real Coke. I'm not proud of it, but it's true.

What I don't understand though, is that despite the fact that I always have Diet Coke with my KFC or my chips or my Big Mac, I don't seem to be getting any thinner. That's not fair.

I am most definately in favour of just plain Coke. Diet Coke tastes like crap, and all other colas are poor imitations of the real thing.

You get that a lot nowadays, things like 'Roly-Cola'. As that fat guy off the telly said, "its crap pop!"

First of all: Diet Coke, IMHO, should just die(t)!

As my overriding principle in these matters, I just don't understand things with "diet" or "low fat" in them. The original products just *always* taste better -- and if you need to balance your diet, just have less of it (and then probably more water, vegetables, bread, exercise and all that).

Neither do I get the idea behind caffeine free coffee or alcohol free beer. I mean, what is the main idea behind the original products..????

So, let's get more of the true red can stuff (only, where I live, you can only buy coke in cans if there's also rum in there, too -- soft drinks must be in recyclable glass or plastic bottles).

Calories do taste better than vitamins, don't you think?

Cheers!

*drinks coke too fast in delightful exitement and gets all those fizzy bubbles up his nose*

Ever gone for 'The Buzz' and drunk 15 cans of coke in as short a time as possible? On a cadet camp a few years ago, we weren't allowed any alcohol on camp, so we got shitfaced on coke instead. RedBull works in much the same way.

On one camp I went on about 6 years ago, we had to take our own food, etc. When one of the guys went to the shops to get some food we took one of the cans out of his esky and started shaking it and throwing it around. One person was lookout and, when he started coming back, we put the can back. Then we asked him if he was thirsty...

BTW Diet is a four letter word.

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