Trend The Consequences

Yesterday was the beginning of a brave new blog; Trend The Consequences. 

Following the daring adventures of 2 fashionable hopefuls, every week a current or future trend will be analysed from the buying experience through to the walk to BK at 3am.  No detail will be spared so expect excessively long posts but also expect to come out of a reading session completely in the know for your next style move.

There's a good chance that my attention will be so focused that I may do posts on here at an even slower rate. 

Becoming a Vegetarian

Thanks to a deceptively displeasing victory by the England rugby team yesterday I decided a suitable gesture of my gratitude was needed.  I also wanted to honour All-round-good-guy Billy Twelvetrees and his ability to be responsible for everything good and bad without ever meaning to be near the ball.  So to satisfy both these urges by dulling my world I thought I'd try to live as a vegetarian.

This was the wrong move as it turns out. It is impossible to quell any Twelvetrees based desires even with tasty meat and to think tofu alone could do this was poor judgement.

Wikipedia tells me it is made by coagulating soy juice

At Tescos a few days ago I insisted that I needed to buy some tofu, this should have been seen as a warning sign in the first place as I never buy food for use beyond the current day.  On Saturday evening I deemed some form of batter was the best way to serve it.  I was limited to a recipe that just used egg for the batter as I was missing most ingredients needed for tempura.

These beautiful silken slivers were shallow fried and I was feeling pretty good.  Maybe the best I'd felt since arriving at livelounge on Friday. Definitely better than the crushing disappointment of seeing Johnny leave the club minutes later in his usual self righteous fashion.

After this I thought I'd fry up the remaining eggy juice which turned out very bad 

It tasted like fried omelet and it was

The tofu, well it tasted like a block of bland more jellyish egg white in some fried egg.  I read tofu is versatile but that just means it's able to be bad in many situations.  In fact I just saw the boy 6 nations advert and I'd say they are equal in badness.

Today things are back to normal (sorry about the tomatoes)

The worst news is I still have half of the tofu block left.  I will probably have to use it raw in a sandwich tomorrow :(

If after reading all this you feel inspired to try some yourself Amazon happens to sell tofu and recipe books

The Professional Recommendation

A sausage maker butcher guy on Sunday Brunch just said you shouldn't pierce sausages!  That's good news for my credibility I think but I can't remember what I have written previously, but why did he reveal his answer in under 1 minute rather than over a 5 part blog post?


Also, interestingly, Blogger doesn't have "blog" as a correct word in its spell checker.

Gin and Tonic Stir Fry

Possibly because I wanted something to write about yesterday I pushed the boundaries of common sense and basic decency.  Because my kitchen is so understocked with pretty much and items when I was attempting to cook dinner last night I just used whatever I could find in the cupboard along with some shoddy looking chicken thighs that I bought for some reason.  So a fairly bland stir fry was on the cards, the only excitement being that I used the food processorto chop the onion and pepper, this all changed when I got the gin out to prepare a gin and tonic...

The first thought I had was to add some gin, the sauce was looking dull and uneventful, I was confident the gin would maybe change this, potentially for the worse.  I added a few drops and was briefly rewarded with that unpleasant smell of gin.  Thinking that was still boring I then added a fair glug of tonic which produced a hiss from the pan and to my horror everything started foaming in a way that makes you think you're an idiot, thankfully the foam dispersed and I was left with basically no benefits.

I went to sample the food with some concern that I'd screwed myself over and had wasted my time with the awkward chicken thighs.  Thankfully when I tasted a bit of chicken and noodles the only thing I could taste was the excessive levels of fish and soy sauce that I had added.  If anything the gin did nothing and the tonic even less.  The salt overload nearly destroyed me.

Gin and Juice Do' Saturday

As we all know, the "sport" section of this blog is pretty limited, if it's not about basketball it's meaningless guess work and if it is about basketball it's more meaningful guess work.  The NBA Draft was on Thursday and as little happened of excitement it now means that the Internet is boring until November and there will be pretty much nothing for me to write about, especially as I need the actual sports journalists to comment on things first before I can get the rehashing on.  I could do some kayaking but that is unpleasant and is well covered by Stuff the Consequences.

So what's the point of all this?  Well tonight is Gin and Juice Do' Saturday, again little point to this post except that I ate steak in preparation.  It was nice as well but that goes without saying, nothing bad has happened in this kitchen since last week when my wild mushroom omelette was the worst food ever.

The no carbs wasn't on purpose but my gnochi were past fresh.  All cooked and eaten while topless, but to compensate I was wearing pants and trousers (no socks).

 

 Oh look it's gin and juice

We're Through - FA Cup and Liverpool

So I'm attempting to type this on my phone as my new internet isn't activated yet and won't be for an increasing amount of days every day :'(  it won't be a long read.

The title is a little misleading but as ever in an egomaniacal lifestyle that's the intention. The reference is to a handy phrase used in work to stop and forget arguments - which I am usually enjoying.

This evening is the FA cup final between Liverpool and Chelsea, and while excited I am also emotionally dead to it.  This season has been dire reminding me of a few years ago when liverpool's play drove me to basketball (although I don't recall if that season was bad and may have been the year they got to the champions league final and lost). 

I'm confident recent results won't effect this match at all, based on how much more awful Liverpool have become since they won the league cup earlier in the year.  A quick word to Chelsea, drogber seemed nice on graham Norton last night but hopefully he's sad tonight.

So all in all I hope Liverpool win tonight but even if they do I'm still saying we're through for this year.  Luckily that doesn't mean its over for ever just that this year is written off and forgotten and a fresh start will hopefully be coming soon.

There we go, a sports post for the first time in ages.  Also finale of homeland tomorrow and I'm going to miss it and with no internet what the bell am I going to do?

More sausage science Part 2

Given the backlash the previous 2 posts about sausages have caused ("chipolatas don't count you idiot", "why would I look on twitter for you stupid posts?" and so on) I thought it best to conclude this mess once and for all.

This time using COOP Butchers Choice Cumberland sausages so that I definitely fit with the proper sausage crowd but also not fancy so as to be thought of as too exclusive to represent to the real eater.  Eight sausages, a variety of puncturing, and the results weren't stark.  In fact they were pretty boring.

Here's the proof:

What ever you think the setup was here you're wrong.  It's clear to see the 4th from the left is the most bent followed by the one on the far right.  The crazy thing is that the 2 on the left were the unpunctured sausages, the 4th from the left had 3 punctures!  Madness.  The one on the far right had 2 holes in the middle.

From this I am concluding that I won't bother puncturing in the future and to show my conviction to this school of thought I didn't this morning.  I also conclude that it is probably the grill pan and the sausages position and rotation half way through that has a bigger impact.  That or the COOP sausages are generally bend proof.

Very good, now that's out of the way I hope to get back to something none sausage based in the distant future.