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

Now see here, you.

That is only the kind of stuff that we do on dull week-ends between the formal seasons of hockey, baseball and PROPER football. I really wish you Euro-people could get that straight.

you see... I've only really come into contact with Canadians via TV...

Ah, then you'll just have to find an opportunity some year to come on over ... pay this little country a visit.

well, as my mum would remind me, waaaay back when...

My dad was in the Army and we had to do with horses in our place. We had Mounties to visit, and I fell heavily in with one of them... I must have been 8 or 9. They used to give us their lunch boxes sometimes - Growly Packs they called them - which had wonderful things like salmon in them

Atlantic salmon is still one of my favourite meals, though Pacific stuff takes just a bit odd to me. Every week or two, we'll do some up for a supper, ... lightly seasoned, a light coat of bread crumbs to seal in the flavour, and then just a slow bake in the oven. Moist, flakey and soooooo yummy.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm the best we do, fish wise, a the moment is either tinned tuna or fish-fingers...

you'd think with a for a father they'd be prepared to try trout or fresh salmon, wouldn't you?

Some time around the late 1840's, a handful of my progenitors crossed the Atlantic pond. From "Prussia", as the census takings reveal. A bit of chasing indicates the Rhein region having been their starting point. (And family tradition has it that their love of horses, not necessarily their own, might have 'encouraged' their departure. )

Anyway, my village that I grew in was all old-German, and so I grew with what-ever a cow, pig or poultry could offer up. And what-ever fish-stuff was found in local streams and lakes. When I finally met things like shrimp, salmon, scallops, ...

Now? if it's stopped moving, what-ever the species, I'm game to give it a go.

*remembers to type and walk at the same time*

I have to say that the gruesomes are pretty ok when it comes to anything apart from meat & fish. And as a lapsed vegetarian who is tending back that way I'm not really complaining.

In fact they are not normal. Asked what their favourite food is, they reply: Sauerkraut, spinach, broccoli.

I am breeding monsters...

Isn't there some kind of treatment for that? I can understand the sauerkraut, simply because it's as much a staple of life as peanut butter. But broccoli? Spinach?

My daughter is willing to try some new stuff, but nothing really too radical. And slowly ... having taken 22 years of familiarity, ... my missus is pretty open to many new things.

Mind, having been a , and knowing the content of a haggis, there WILL be things that she refuses to even try.

my will try anything (food wise... ) once

I've been to Korea - 'nuff said <-- not all of it, most Korean food is yummy

I have one picky Gruesome and one up for anything-as-long-as-it's-not-a-mushroom

we have interesting meals when they are choosing.

To give you an idea of how simple our diet was when I was youngish ... I first met edible mushrooms the same summer that I met pizza, shrimp and "fish and chips". I would have been about 13 at the time. A tiny snack-shack started up, and had all of these novel things.

I come from a long line of Prussian (German) heritage, where-in meat (4 or 2 legged), spuds and a veg are supper. No more, no less. Dessert was Easter, Christmas and family birthdays.

yes, living in Germany can be an.. ahem... culinary challenge.

Which makes it all the more that when used to work for an agency, on more than one occasion he was sent back for being English!

the Gruesomes get to choose all the food on Sunday. They want bangers & mash & sauerkraut. No sauerkraut. But maybe we have some red cabbage in the freezer that's under 5 years old.

When I was a kid we ate loads of really different stuff. In fact we used to be regarded as a bit exotic by school friends who "came for tea"

If I went to someone's house it was likely to be sausage-hot-pot or eggs beans & chips. If someone came to us it could be indian, chinese or italian (back in the 70s when Spaghetti Bolognase was extremely daring) & I'm always glad of that.

Chinese meals at home were always a great feast with everyone involved in the cooking, then everything on a trolley and eaten from bowls, with chopsticks sitting on the floor in the living room.

thanks mum and dad

That same summer, we too met some Chinese ideas. Egg-rolls, sweet and sour chicken and pork things ... A whole new world briefly opened up to me. Then the usual again. Later, I joined our military, and you know how little imagination goes in to a common Mess Hall.

But then, my first posting was St John's, Newfoundland. A totally foreign place to start with, but also a city !!! With restaurants !!! In '78, there was no Thai, Czech or anything seriously imaginative. But Italian, Chinese, ... If I would have been earning more money, I probably would have become HUGE that first year.

Milady also grew with a very minimal palate, and then becoming the military (the training, at least) introduced her to new ideas. Since meeting me, she has become daring and will try many things. Though some, the concept alone of what it is (like escargots), she's happy enough to leave well alone.

Do you sproglings show any interest or talent in the making of their Sunday choices? I quite like the idea of them having the choice ...

bleuch! Escargots (although there is a place near here which does them on toast, with wild mushrooms in a red-wine sauce which is nice. It would be nice without them too, though.

The gruesomes like to try something new - or help to cook on Sunday. So we often end up making things like spaghetti with a multicoloured multitextured vegetable sauce.

But some days they will insist that creamed spinach and broccoli is a perfectly good Sunday lunch!

Another thing we try is they'll nominate some food (egg, spinach and potato) and we'll do it in a different way. One they came up with was mashed potato piped into a shallow bowl, filled with spinach with an egg on top and then baked in the grill with cheese on top. We used parmesan - and they can't get it down their little gullets fast enough.

But often I'll nudge them in a particular direction - or tell them about what we ate at home when I was a kid. Chinese-style soup goes down well, because we use chopsticks, leave the nodles long (ok, so Japanese style, really...) and they're allowed to slurp!

It's once every year or two that I do the escargots, ... backed in the garlic butter, and hopefully with a melted cheese over.

That "let's see what we can make" idea sounds like great fun. I'm not a huge fan of spinach, and asparagus has about as much natural flavour as fiddle-heads (a Nova Scotian green), but with accents and flavours added,... nice.

I tried chop-sticks once, and have since decided that I kinda like both eyes where nature put them. So if a fork, spoon or can't be found, ... well, ... someone or something did give me fingers.

And excuse me, but have you sought treatments? A Mom that allows sloppage and slurping can't be a totally sound Mom. A very one, but still ...

well... we have a programme here for kids called Die Sendung mit der Maus. It's very worthy and teaches us loads of stuff. One of which was that the slurping cools the noodles.

I've become a lot more able to tune it out since I started working with Koreans

I get on fine with all the obnoxious noises that my grandkids make while eating. I believe it is due to tinnitus and simple hearing loss, not tolerance or learning.

Any-hoodle, what kind of stuff is happening in your world today? It's just coming on 5:30 in the o-dark-ness of the day. But after a day of eliminating 410Kg of clutter yesterday (the scales measured it before I paid for the disposal) followed by a very cold and wet 2 hours at our local Remembrance Day ceremonies, ... we need a warm, dry and in-door day.

Haven't been around much, being dislocated about 2,300 miles or so, but I just noticed your name-tag. Stuff gone pretty sour lately?

being dislocated by about 2,300 miles sounds painful

lost his job "because of seasonality" (works in a golf club) after having worked all hours over the summer being told "don't worry, it evens itself out over winter"

and now he hasn't had his salary paid for last month (it's usually on the account well before the last day of the month). Unusually he hasn't found anything else yet - usually he's managed to find something else within hours of starting to look for a new job.

ho hum

#1 gruesome is falling down at school - no idea what to do at this stage and since we're going from 4th to 5th grade, the way the German school system works she's now pretty much got her life set out: crap school followed by crap job. And any attempt by me to get her to move her backside and practice maths (her worst subject) results in a screaming match and me being called the worst mother in the world and wishig I'd stuck to my "never having kids" attitude I had for 33 years...

and I hate my job.

so basically... nothing new in my life that hasn't been there all year except that i'm turning 43 at the end of this week, so as well as no longer being the answer, I'm having a(nother, or ongoing) mid-life crisis!


so, how are you?

oh poop... sorry!
didn't actually mean to sic that all on you!