Plantes Vertes

Soba, does 'farm egg' mean something specific like 'free-range', or do you mean you got it from the farm?

See, Modernist Cuisine just don't think big enough

I was picturing a single gigantic bowl-sized blob of spherified soup, with the noodles draped over the top like hair.

Morissey = Cynar The bitterest vegetable of all.

Today I visited the garden of the poet John Betjeman in West Ilsley, Berkshire. I learned that wild garlic can be quite invasive... We got permission to pick some for dinner. It's waiting outside the back door. Don't bring this stuff inside until you need it!

It's a fraught point. You don't normally tip a pub barman and by analogy most people wouldn't tip a bar barman, but people who stay in hotels tend to tip the staff and by extension you might tip a hotel barman. Then in bars where you receive table service the servers are equivalent to restaurant waiters, whom you do tip, and anyway, the person making your ten-ingredient tiki drink or inventing something off the cuff to suit your particular idiosyncracies isn't doing the same job as the one pulling you a pint of Stella in the Nag's Head, so some people would tip a bar barman. There are bars (I think Ceviche does this) where if you sit at the bar they don't add a service charge and if you get a table they do. Executive summary: no-one will be surprised or disappointed if you don't tip in a bar that doesn't add service charge.

My mother has an exceptional sense of smell and taste. I suppose that's the reason behind her preference for very simple food. Today for lunch we had half a potato, some mushrooms and a boiled celery! I went so far as to have salt on mine.

Smith + Cross - the Tom Waits of rum Or rather, Tom Waits - the Smith + Cross of men

I've always just taken that at face value

My grandma's recipe stresses creaming the butter and sugar together, then whisking in the eggs one by one and folding the flour in gently to preserve the air bubbles.

Victoria sponge for a friend's birthday. Mixed it the old-fashioned way, with my arm!

I have heard/read good opinions of Yalla Yalla, Peckham Bazaar (menu changes), Andy's Taverna, Vrisaki, Konaki for restaurants, or you could try Phoenica Mediterranean Food Hall or Green Valley for takeaway.

Service charge is a lot more common in hotel and restaurant bars than others; it's not the rule. Milk & Honey adds 10%, 69 Colebrooke Row has none, Happiness Forgets has none (I think). Does it make a difference that people seemed to drink a lot more spirits in the early C20th (based on my exhaustive survey of Bogart films)?

Is this the hooch talking?

Shows what I know!

I did a series of mini versions some time last year and forced them down one by one before making the big batch I think I follow you ... I was considering the same thing, but I didn't get whether the Blind Pig version was made with green or ripe walnuts...? Ignorance has never stopped me crashing forward with misguided experiments before, though... EDIT: Must be green walnuts, on reflection, as I remember being told that it took a matter of hours, and I can't see that being successful with ripe ones.

A generous Gallic amphibian who swims the eG pond provided mine

The walnut infusion recipe, as requested. 1 part by weight freshly chopped ripe (brown) walnuts 2 parts by weight rectified spirit Infuse for 1-2 days, strain through muslin/coffee filter. Don't infuse for longer as this results in horrible bitterness. I wanted to try adding nut flavours without extra sweetness so I kept the infusion undiluted/unsweetened, adding sugar and water as needed for individual drinks. I noted that somewhere or other recommended 3:3:1 infusion:simple:water to produce something potable but I don't know any more where I got that...

I'll post it in the MxMo thread. I actually found a tiny drop in the back of my mother's fridge the other day (along with my long-lost rhubarb, grapefruit and thyme bitterses) and was thinking of doing something with it for the challenge...

I agree that Soylent is not as bad as some other things, but that doesn't make it good... better availability of and education about food would be better. It's awful to think that society has failed people to the point where they don't have access to a sustainable diet, but worse to envisage just giving up on them and replacing their food with Soylent. I also worry that people are eating burger diets because they are freighted with a gigantic amount of fat, salt and sugar, which make those foods tasty, and that Soylent with its er... neutral flavour would not appeal as much in general. Yes, I have met people like that too and admit that this is just totally beyond my understanding, so perhaps I'm not empathising properly. My take is also influenced by the description of Soylent in the article ('diluted pancake batter'), which to me sounds actively disgusting. Maybe it's not so bad. I'll just have to accept that some people are not like me

Depends on money and space and stuff, but perhaps it would be worth looking for an insulated cold-plate ice bin on ebay or somewhere. That would have a drainage hole and at least stop the ice melting too quickly. ETA Also, very exciting! Congratulations.

I like an Improved Holland Gin Cocktail with Maraschino.

I have a very strong reaction against this idea. I acknowledge that a large part comes from my own prejudices and priorities and that it's not fair to think that everyone should share those, but still... I would only want to eat Soylent if stuck in the dessert having consumed all my companions. First of all, it seems mad that someone would prefer to consume a 'doughlike' liquid instead of tasty beautiful food. Not everyone cares about eating to the same degree but I don't see why, given that you have to procure and ingest something to keep you alive, you would actively choose to make that thing Soylent rather than any of the innumerable delicious and nutritious foodstuffs that nature and human effort provide. Secondly, the inventor seems to disrespect and disregard the revered and generally cherished food customs of the whole world, just because they don't signify much to him. Does he really want people to suck nutrient soup from a pouch instead of sharing a meal? Just because it is hard to make the time and find the energy to do this doesn't mean we should abandon the effort - people often don't have the time or money to make a pleasure of cooking and of course there are frequent situations where you have to or would rather do something else; just have some toast or a boiled egg. There's no need to diminish food to a medical obligation just because you don't want to or aren't able to participate in its pleasures yourself. Thirdly, I find it somehow morally lazy to want to expunge food from your lifestyle because you can't be bothered to cook! It's like deciding to use paper plates instead of crockery because you don't want the hassle of washing up. I do things I don't especially enjoy because they're necessary for hygiene, social life, financial security etc. Healthy food that is easy to prepare is absolutely abundant in this man's wealth bracket and part of the world; only total maladjustment and ineptitude could intervene between him and a simple healthy diet of normal food. A sandwich and a banana would be nutritionally sound and take a minute to get on the plate. I just object to the failed logic which says that when he freely and willingly fed himself on rubbish and found that it wasn't good, we need to get rid of food altogether and replace it with something else. Thirdly, eating food is not a 'fragile' way of obtaining nourishment at all - at the level of the individual it's a system that has been refined over millennia through evolution (we're omnivores after all - we can survive and thrive perfectly well on a very wide range of food types), and at the level of society it's a complete delusion to think that the solution to the environmental and ethical problems of food production is to stop eating food and consume chemical slurry from a lab; how will these chemicals be produced and distributed? How will the hungry get access to them? Who will patent and sell them? We need to behave prudently and morally and use technology to make producing food less burdensome and dangerous for people and the Earth, not just... give up on eating. Finally, exactly this idea has existed and been in use in hospitals for at least twenty years that I know of and probably a lot longer, and it strikes me as quite risible for the redevelopment of a currently widespread and in circumstances vital substance to be named 'life-hacking'. It's like inventing motor-propelled transport in 2013 and calling yourself smart. I absolutely see why you would want this in very restricted circumstances like space travel, but not really beyond that.

From the NY article: He tried McDonalds dollar meals and an all-kale diet; he concluded that food was no good. I don't think he really exhausted all the possibilities.