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

Today, I have had the strangest craving for Heinz ketchup.

It's not something I use very often. The only bottle in the house was a low sugar, low salt version. This somehow didn't fit the bill, so I had to get a bottle of th traditional kind.

After I got it, the day has been a constant struggle to think of things to put it on. A few times I couldn't think of anything, so I just ate it off the spoon.

Strange.

I think I'll make chips. Hmm, cheese on toast might be a good ketchup delivery device.

I don't know what's behind this...there must be insufficient vinegar and lycopene in my red corpuscles.

Cheese on toast is a bloody good ketchup delivery device, as is scrambled eggs on toast. Or just toast.

Personally I've always been a fan of the inch-thick (ugh) tomato ketchup sandwich, as invented by Marlon from The Perishers Just watch who you're pointing it at when you bite http://www.shadowgallery.co.uk/perishers/sandwich.gif

Think how much you could fill in a pitta bread!

Cheese on toast was the business. That bit of extra mature cheddar is a lovely bit of cheese, but it does whiff a bit like cats' pee when it's grilling!

Cheese is one of my guilty pleasures. Ketchup, not so much. Sometimes I crave tomatoes at breakfast, but raw tomatoes will do fine in a salad with lemon juice. Other times it's tomato juice I want.

tomato ketchup cries out for crispy fish finger sandwiches. Or a proper chip butty (real potatoes, fat lightly squishy chips, a white breadcake and lots of butter)

I still have fish fingers in the freezer from a previous craving - that'll do for this evening!

Corned beef sandwichs, on rubbish white bread, and with tons of toamto ketchup can't have eaten it for .... decades though, so it might not be so good as I seem to recall

Chip butties though - those are one of the few things I would never eat without a blast of ketchup on 'em.

I don't eat fried potatoes any more, but if I did I would want ketchup to put on them. Likewise burgers, which *need* something tomatoey on them...

what I'd really like right now is a doorstop of white bread (preferably the crust) liberally sprinkled with Henderson's Relish

A12460619

or

http://www.hendersonsrelish.com/home.htm


Then liberally (and I mean a good thick layer) of good beef dripping (if not from my mum, then from Lily's bakery on Penistone Road, Hillsborough) topped with a goodly quantity of the beef jelly from under the dripping and then a liberal sprinkling of salt.

And a giant mug of Yorkshire tea out of a proper (what I call a) Yorkshire mug (white and blue striped ceramic thing)

I have been craving that for a while. And writing that has made my mouth water.

hmm
the Entry is here

http://h2g2.com/edited_entry/A12460619

Considering all the lard and dripping and butter we used to eat (and I used to sprinkle salt on my dripping toast), it's a wonder we're all still alive, if the expert nutritionists are to be believed

What do you mean 'used to eat'.... some of us still do.... Only butter in this house, none of that abomination rubbish spread!

I have a rule of thumb about food. If the dog goes bonkers trying to beg, steal or cajole some, it will be very unhealthy and very tasty. If he's not interested in the slightest, it will be very, very good for you, but taste like crap.

He has got a very sophisticated palate for beer, for example.

But I haven't given him any for five or six years because he has a wonky pancreas.

Well, it turns out that butter was better. The margarines that were sold to us as healthier alternatives to butter were laden with trans fats.

I believe most brands have removed their trans fats now. Still, I never trust the health reports on the evening news or from most sources anymore. I don't know how many times I've heard that coffee and eggs have been declared unhealthy and then a few years later as healthy and back and forth repeatedly. Salt as well. I do eat a lot of salt, but I also drink a lot of water so I figure it's a wash.

I just visited the doctor for my annual fluid level check and inspection. They scheduled me for a 7:00am blood draw and a 9:00am Doctors consult... way too soon to get all the test results. But with that early of an appointment there was only one person ahead of me so I saw the doctor even sooner. So, with very little wait time, my normally observed borderline high blood pressure was 126/62. As I suspected, if I'm not made to wait my blood pressure is fine. I don't have White Coat syndrome, I'm just intolerant of long wait times and the solitary confinement of the exam room.

I think part of the problem is that healthy vs. unhealthy is a false dichotomy. Something might have a good effect on one organ or bodily process, and a bad effect on another. We are complicated organisms, and so are all the organisms we eat. There are an awful lot of chemical and biological processes going on, and it would be an astounding coincidence if they were either all "good for you", or all "bad for you".

Okay, if you're going to picky, Sho

Considering all the lard and dripping and butter [and full-fat milk] that we consumed during our childhood years which, the experts insist today (although they often change their minds on such things) ought to have been so bad for us that we should have all had heart attacks by now, and which children today consume far less of...

Personally, I save all the fat that comes out whenever I fry bacon and keep it in a jar in the fridge, and come 9pm or 10pm, when I get a little peckish for something, I'll spread some of it on some bread, sprinkle on some salt, and open a bottle of beer

It seems that the Food Network, or Alton Brown's production company, or Alton Brown, have removed all the Good Eats episodes from YouTube. The Case For Butter is one of my favourites,

I eat butter because it tastes nice, and its filling, and has a loverly 'mouth feel', and in cooking, it is the appropiate fat to use, in many circumstances, and other fats, just don't 'work' sufficiently well. It really doesn't matter how much butter I eat... or if I give it up entirely... I be teh outcome is still the same... I'll die anyhow... eventually... Our mere moment of existance on this plannet is so short, however long it is, in human years, that a few dozen years, or decades either way, doesn't really make any significent differnce, to anything, as fr as I can tell Anyhow, its an interesting race to see if the cancer or heart disease will win out eventually I'm still not sure which way to bet though...
main problem with butter, and suchlike, is cholesterole, and if I recall vaguely correctly, blood cholesterole levels have scant relationship to dietry colesterole intake, and more connection with an individuals genetics, as cholesterole is produced in the liver, from other dietry fats... Afterall we'd die with no cholesterole, its a vital par to fhte cell membrane in animal cells...

I am very picky Gosho as you well know

We eat butter, full fat cheese and all the rest. I can't be having all that low-fat nonsense. Fat makes things taste good