liuzhou

I have no idea what you find suggestive about the caption or what you imagine it is I was suggesting. I named the topic so because of the name of the yellow lychees in Chinese. And I have no idea what image you are talking about, either. There are 12 images in my post - none of which are suggestive in any way.

Britain has been losing its pubs for years. This BBC article from 2009 says that 52 pubs closed every week. In 2020, with Covid , it is estimated that 6,000 licensed premises were lost, 2,500 of which were pubs. Obviously Covid has had a devasting impact, but the trend was there long before. I'm working on something longer and more detailed about pubs and food which I will post sometime in the next few days.

Thanks. It was in the 1980s that I was there a lot. Natasha wasn't mandated but necessary for me to do my work. I was free to go most places. I lived very near a large tourist hotel where many foreigners stayed - usually in tour groups. Every day, there were gangs of young, male (usually) Russians outside the hotel selling far from the best caviar at vastly inflated prices. Inside was mostly full of young, female Russians trading in a very different commodity. I used to hang out in a hidden bar in the basement. Unlike in the main bar, which was usually full of drunken Finns (alcohol in Finland was extremely expensive (still is), so a lot of visitors from that country thought the bar was cheap (it wasn't) and rather overdid things). The basement bar took roubles only whereas the main bar only accepted USD. Really it was a bar for the staff and locals. And me. The main offering was local beer (not good) and what the barman called "Cocktail". This was a mix of Georgian Brandy, Russian champagne and decent vodka in equal proportions. Deadly and so cheap it was almost free. In fact, as the evening passed the barman got bored and just left the three bottles on the bartop and left us to help ourselves! Luckily, I lived only a short, two minute stagger away. No caviar was on offer in the basement. I don't remember there being any food. Everything was available upstairs. And I mean everything from caviar to nuclear warheads!

Many years ago, when I was working closely with the USSR*, I was regularly treated to caviar feasts, both in Moscow and London. It was always served with champagne - in Russia with Russian champagne (surprisingly good) and in London with the real French deal. Also, caviar was nearly always served on its own or simply with blinis and sour cream. It is not something you want to complicate. Caviar is a real prima donna and doesn't take well to being overshadowed. * No, I am not a spy, nor have I ever been a spy (which is exactly what a spy would say, I know). A bit more explanation here.

According to the fount of all misinformation, Wikipedia, the lychee entry states that "the outside of the fruit is pink-red". Ignorant fools! A few weeks ago, a friend sent me a jar of lychee honey from the family plot. Yesterday, I went to visit her and was taken to see the lychees. This involved quite a trek uphill! Anyway, we got there. The lychees (荔枝 - lì zhī) are being harvested as quickly as they can be, in order to get them to market in perfect condition before the season ends soon. The first thing I noticed was the surprising range of colours in the fruit. I immediately assumed that they were at different stages or degrees of ripeness. The "stupid foreigner", aka me, was soon put straight. "No! They are all ripe. That is why we are hurrryng to harvest them!" I didn't hear the "idiot!" at the end of the sentence, but it was all there in the tone!* It appears that lychees are pink/red when they are pink/red, but not pink/red when they are not pink/red. In fact they come in different colours. Some were politely growing to Wiki specfications; others were doing as they damn-well pleased and they were pleased to be yellow (some with a scattering of red freckles to increase their allure) These yellow babies are not only yellow, but are larger than the red ones (the last two pictures show my friend's average sized lady-hand for scale. They are also noticeably more sweet and juicy. The yellow ones are known as 情人荔 (qíng rén lì) meaning 'lover lychee' as the fruits are heart-shaped. Finally, I saw these. 青荔 (qīng lì) meaning 'green lychee'. These, I was told, are a new cultivar and still very rare (and expensive). The family has only been harvesting these for two years. They are ripe. I know. I ate the one in the centre of that last image! * Actually, everyone was very polite, welcoming and happy to explain anything I asked about.

Well, I know what I'd do. I'd just lock the world out then open the can and the champagne and deposit the contents of both into my cakehole. There really is no better way.

Chicken (leg meat), black garlic, capers, chilli, white wine, black and white pepper, black vinegar, snow peas. Served over orzo.

I found this recipe from the Guardian today interesting, not so much for the chocolate cake, but for the author's use of betroot skin powder made from the skins.

Proper pilaf is not made with leftover rice. The point is to cook the rice in a stock with spices so that it soaks up the flavours. Pre-cooked rice won't do that.

I sure have. I remember it well. You wouldn't get Xi Jinping saying anything like that!

I was reading something today totally unrelated to anything food related when I came across something which grabbed my attention. As I'm sure everyone knows, English has these little idioms we use when someone asks a dumb question with an obvious answer. We use rhetorical question such as: "Do bears shit in the woods?" "Is the pope a catholic?" The writer of the piece I was reading used "Do children hate broccoli?" with exactly the same meaning - "Of course. Everyone knows that!" Other languages have the same constructs. That one works in English, but if I were to translate it to Chinese, it wouldn't work that way at all. It would just be a rather strange but literal question. And I see that not only as a linguistic difference, but a cultural one regarding children's food choices. For the record, both my children loved broccoli; it was me who was reticent on the matter. Still not my favourite.

Thanks for that Anna. That list of lost pubs is depressingly long, though. My sister ran a pub for a few years but ran into financial problems and lost it. It has lain abandoned ever since. Sad.

A fully costed business plan.

I don't think I've ever read her toast instructions (or did I just instinctively bury them in my subconcious to preserve what little remains of my sanity?), but I still make my hummus to her recipe to this day.

The luosifen chips I mentioned up-thread have proved impossible to find in Liuzhou where the dish originated. They wouldn't dare! But at great expense and personal hardship, I've managed to track a bag down purely for this topic! So, here they are. The ingredients (and everything else) are in given Chinese, of course. In English they are: Potato, vegetable oil, snail noodle seasoning (sugar, edible flavouring, MSG (monosodium glutamate), salt, garlic powder, maltodextrin, mixed soy sauce powder/chilli, white vinegar powder, tomato powder, yeast extract, citric acid, 5-flavor nucleotides disodium, ginger powder, whey powder, apartamame (containing phenylalamine)). None of these appear in real luosifen apart from the salt! And most of the ingredients which DO appear in real luosifen are missing: snails, pork, pickled bamboo, black cardamom, fennel seed, dried tangerine peel, cassia bark, cloves, pepper, bay leaf, licorice root, peanuts, sand ginger, and star anise, etc. None of the things they use in their packaging illustration are in the product. They smell just like any other variety of flavoured chip. None of the distinctive luosifen smell whatsoever. Don't ask me what they taste like. I'm not in the habit of putting shit in my mouth!

There is more on Saint Delia here on the Guardian site today to mark her 80th birthday.. And here's my daughter's copy of her Complete Cookery Course. It was originally published in three volumes. This was the first collected edition. Whether I gave it to her or she bought it, neither of us remember.

I definitely got served when I was 15, but I was (still am) quite tall. I don't recall ever vomiting in a pub, but then again, if I did there's a good chance I wouldn't remember. When I was studying for my master's degree, I had a part time job leading tourists on a literary pub crawl around London, particularly Bloomsbury. Virginia Woolf, Shelley and Dickens were my neighbours along with many lesser figures. I never drank on those crawls, maintaining a professional standard. Actually, I was never much of a beer drinker until I came to China and couldn't easily get anything else I was prepared to drink.

11C. Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Please Image: Public Domain As in many countries, the sale of alcohol is strictly controlled in the UK, particularly in terms of opening hours for pubs, etc. National alcohol regulations had first been introduced in the late 18th century as a reaction to the notorious gin addiction problem as depicted by William Hogarth in the famous Gin Lane print of 1751, actually one of a pair, the other being Beer Street, reproduced above. However, it was the outbreak of Word War One in 1914 that had the longest lasting impact on British society. The 1914 government was concerned that wide availability of alcohol would hamper the war effort and slow down production of armaments etc. Pub opening times were restricted to 12 noon to 2:40 pm for lunch, then they were permitted to open again at 6:30 pm before closing at 10:30 pm. These laws were strictly enforced. With only minor changes along the way, these wartime restrictions remained in force right into the 21st century. When I was 18 (the legal age for drinking in pubs then and now) and had my first (legal) pint in a British pub in the late 1960s, the opening hours in England and Wales were 11 am to 11 pm (11 am to 10 pm in Scotland) and this remained the case for years to come. Sign in Scottish pub, 2019. My image. These restrictions hit a snag in the 1970s and 80s, when a new-found affluence among the young, coupled with other social changes, led to a toxic culture in which young men (mostly) developed a habit of spending time in the pub, drinking more frantically as closing time approached knowing their supply would be cut off at precisely 11 pm. At 11, they poured into the streets, drunk and often aggressive, still wanting more to drink. The only way to get more drink was to head to a restaurant, where different rules applied. So long as you bought a meal, alcohol could be served at virtually any time. The cheapest restaurants still open tended to be Indian or Chinese. So, in they would pile, demanding lager¹ and the hottest curries their low self-esteem thought they had to eat to prove their virility. Often while racially abusing the staff and upsetting other customers. Then vomiting, usually outside in the street as they left, but occasionally not getting that far. Lager 2021 (Five minutes ago!) - My image It was with this in mind, no doubt, that partly inspired British comedy scriptwriter John Sullivan, creator of Britain’s favourite (still) situation comedy “Only Fools and Horses” to have the show’s lead character Derek Trotter, better known as Del Boy, played by David Jason, say in one 1983 episode “I thought I might go down and have a couple of light ales² down the Nag's Head, and then go on to the Star of Bengal for a Ruby Murray.³” The “beer followed by curry and more beer” culture was nailed, although in the sitcom without the racism, violence or vomit. Not everyone drank lager. I remember being in one Indian restaurant near London, sometime in the 1980s and seeing one young man drinking bad white wine – by the pint glass! Scotland escaped the worst of what became known as the “lager lout” culture by repealing the World War One laws in 1976, effectively allowing pubs to open any time they liked. Few still stayed open after midnight, but there were few signs of the drunken chaos more conservative elements had predicted. England and Wales delayed real reform until 2005, bringing it more in line with Scotland. So pubs today can legally open 24 hours a day, although very few do. Most still close around midnight. Northern Ireland licensing laws remain very restricted. Many restaurants dealt with the lager lout problem simply by raising their standards and offering more inventive dishes at higher prices, while dropping the vindaloos and especially the phal they had previously invented to attract business. They no longer wanted that business, so they priced them out of the market. I won’t say that the old style Indian restaurants have disappeared entirely; nor have the idiots. But things have definitely improved for everyone: the restaurants, the sensible customers, the police. And for Indian food in Britain ¹ British lager tends to be stronger than many American lagers. The lager of choice for many of the louts was Carlsberg Special Brew, at that time 9% by volume. (It has since been reduced to 7.5%) ² Del Boy never drank light ales; his preference was for outrageously pretentious cocktails. He is just using this here as a form of metonymy to refer to alcoholic drinks in general. ³ John Sullivan created this example of London rhyming slang specifically for the episode and it caught on, as did many of his other linguistic inventions used by the show’s characters. There are thirteen phrases in the OED which he either invented or popularised. Finally, here is a famous example of what closing time in a British pub was like! Recorded in 1980.

Oh yes, They are being sold in China. In supermarkets and convenience stores, mainly. Also, online.

Actually, the Chinese brands are more normal. These "seemingly unfathomable" types are all Lay's, an American company owned by Pepsico.

Certainly not! That was just my intro to the topic. My two kids, born, bred and still in Britain, were always and are still adventurous eaters, but I'd heard and read parents talk about difficulties with their children, although I never thought about it much. Then, one day I realised I wasn't hearing those stories any more. The only significant thing that had changed was I'd moved to China, so I started loking closer. I am mainly just interested in exploring whether or not there are cultural differences in children's food choices and aversions. But it's not my thread. I just started it. Whatever direction it goes in, so long as it stays on topic, is up to everyone else. In fact, I look forward to it widening. I lived in Italy for a couple of years, many years ago, and would love to hear about your experience. This topic wasn't something on my radar back then.

It's been 38℃ / 100℉ for most of the day. Now it's 9 pm and 35℃ / 95℉. So, this made for a quick, simple but satisfying and tasty dish. Followed by a bowl of cherries and some Marvin Gaye. Orzo with squid, shrimp. snow pea slivers, garlic, ginger, chilli and white wine.