Category Archives: food & drink

the morning after

04 Thursday Oct 2007

Posted by in food & drink, friends, sevilla, tapas

≈ 3 Comments

wine-bottles.jpg

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time … 😉

And actually it was well worth it, even though this morning my eyeballs looked like the proverbial two pee-holes in the snow.

What happened was this. Nog and I went out for our usual tapas after finishing our Wednesday evening classes, which is one of our little weekly routines. And we decided to go back to one of our favourite places called Enrique Becerra because I wanted to give the waiters the URL for my Sevilla Tapas blog so they could see the latest photos that I’d taken there. And also to get some more food shots to add to the page.

And while we were eating we heard a couple speaking in English, wondering if they should stay there or go elsewhere. And so I turned around and told them they should definitely stay because the food was excellent. And so we got to talking and I explained about my tapa blog and they totally got into it – offering me to take photos of their food too before they tucked in. Well, one thing led to another (mostly to do with more wine being ordered) and we all ended up spending a lovely and more than somewhat drunken evening together. 🙂

Finally lurched home some time after midnight and so during my first class this morning I was in serious ‘zombie teacher’ mode. But my student thought that my explanation was quite funny and forgave me for being less ‘with it’ than usual.

Anyhow, you can see the photos I took last night (5-11) on the Enrique Becerra page .

poison popcorn!

07 Friday Sep 2007

Posted by in food & drink, health & happiness, life stuff, weird

≈ 13 Comments

poison-popcorn.jpg

Doctor reports 1st consumer case of microwave popcorn lung

Microwave popcorn lung??? Good heavens. I wondered if I should cancel my standing request for Orville’s , but in fact I prefer the plain flavour (as opposed to ‘butter’ flavoured) and although I’m quite hooked on popcorn I certainly don’t eat two bags a day, nor do I sniff in the fumes like the guy in the article.

I imagine that eating anything to that excess would cause health problems, but apparently factory workers have been suffering from ‘popcorn lung’ – a potentially fatal disease – for years due to constant contact with diacetyl. Yet it took this one consumer to be diagnosed before Big Food did anything about it. Hmmm… perhaps I should consider boycotting ConAgra products altogether.

~ first seen at Wandering Coyote’s ~

~ fab pic from Sid in the City ~

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what kind of wine are you?

06 Thursday Sep 2007

Posted by in art, food & drink, fun stuff, quizzes

≈ 12 Comments


You Are Sauvignon Blanc

Engaging and energetic, you have a lot to offer the world – most of it they’ve never seen anywhere else!

You are the type of person who carves your own path in life… and you invite everyone else to come along.

The only thing predictable about you is that you could have anything up your sleeve.

You’re all about sampling all of life’s experiences. Both the savory and unsavory ones.

Deep down you are: Laid back and young at heart

Your partying style: Anything goes… seriously!
Your company is enjoyed best with: Smoked meats or spicy food

What Kind of Wine Are You?

f_redwine.gif Swiped from SG V who usually swipes quizzes from me (that are usually swiped from somewhere else), but who didn’t happen to like yesterday’s ‘How Creative Are You?’ quiz so he found this one instead, which I have to say I also like better … but I still think those coloured pencils are rather cute, don’t you?f_bubbly.gif

And yes, this is soooooo me!  🙂

what? no virgin chicken?

01 Saturday Sep 2007

Posted by in culture, food & drink, humour, language, politics

≈ 6 Comments

chinese-menu.jpg

Whadda bunch of spoil sports!

I can’t tell you how many times a perfectly normal evening out for a couple of tapas has turned into a total knee-slapping giggle fest when some well-meaning waiter provides us with a menu in English. I half suspect they do these wonky translations on purpose, but it’s great fun and always adds to our enjoyment. But apparently the Chinese think differently …

China dishes up menu translations

China is taking action on the English translations of its restaurant menus in its campaign to brush up the country’s image for next year’s Olympics.

The Beijing Tourism Bureau has released a list of 2,753 dishes and drinks it thinks could do with a wording rethink.

Translations such as “virgin chicken” for a young chicken dish and “burnt lion’s head” for pork meatballs are confusing for foreigners, it says.

This is so totally wrong!!! In fact, people would end up ordering all those weirdly named things just so they could tell people ‘back home’ that they’d tried them. And anyhow, there is something rather charming about not being overly slick and being seen as having taken a stab at writing an English menu but not giving it too much importance. Because the important thing should be the food and the ‘ambientation’ (one of my favourite Spanglish words, found on a humourously mistranslated sign).

I feel quite sorry for all those visitors who are going to miss out on this simple pleasure by receiving only government approved menus.

You can click on the Belching f_dragon.gif menu to get a better look at it.