As a resident of Glasgow for these past four years, I have mixed feelings about Edinburgh. It's a very pretty city, and the museums and New College Library are nice, but I could happily skip having to wade through tourists on the Royal Mile--only having never actually lived in Edinburgh, I've never quite figured out where else one is supposed to go beyond the noisy crowded parts.
Plus, it does get tiring when people come to visit and only want to spend time in The Other City.
Of course, I don't think cities are the best parts of Scotland, anyways.
The last time I was in Edinburgh, I was sitting in the gallery observing these proceedings. Truly depressing. (Erm... the things said during the proceedings, not the outcome itself.)
Craig R. @ 540:
I was already making a chocolate cake (the famous Guinness Stout Cake, although in this case I was using something brewed in the Hebrides) and had stout left over from that, and in a moment of madness decided to toss it in the mushroom soup, since there really wasn't enough to make a satisfying drink. The boiling was a natural extension of a) what one must do to effectively thin the stock paste and b) what I'd already been doing to make the cake.
Best mushroom soup I've ever eaten.
Serge @ 545:
...and then they put him in the stock.
Clifton Royston 516, Rikibeth 518:
A recent accidental discovery is that dissolving condensed vegetable or mushroom stock in boiled stout, rather than boiled water, yields a much more robust, suitable-for-brown-gravy-making flavour. It's not really a beef substitute--you can definitely taste the difference--but it will do the same job as a base for layering other flavours over.
Plus, beer makes everything better.
Everyone on the Poutine thread: Poutine is heaven on a plate (or, rather, in a styrofoam cup), you *can* get it with mushroom gravy if you know where to look, it tastes just fine if you do, and you're making me hungry!
Bill Stewart @47:
I don't know about making something else taste exactly like bacon (I will confess the words 'Why would you want to?' are flitting through my mind), but my mother used to make a bacon-based vegetable soup that I used to love, and smoked salt is definitely the answer for duplicating the necessary note of bacon-ness in that dish. I don't know about liquid smoke, having never encountered it.
(Bacon meme? Do I even want to know?)
Portabello had actually been my first thought, as they achieve the appropriately rubbery texture fairly easily. Sean, the garlic sounds like a delicious idea, though it's got gears grinding on a multitude of other upgrades.
I will give this some thought, a bit of test-kitchening, and report back--though it may be awhile, as kitchen experimentation is currently suspended in an effort to actually finish writing my doctoral thesis sometime this year.
Rymenhild@9-
As this dish is a Ode To Processed Food, I think your substitutions are probably spot-on. But as I don't have easy access to those kinds of meat replacements (vegetarianism isn't big in this part of Scotland) I'll be giving it a bit more thought.
It's the hot dogs that are the real issue. I've had some luck approximating a bacon-like flavour using smoked sea salt, so maybe salting mushroom caps and baking them till they achieve a chewy consistency?
Wow. That's truly impressive. I shall have to devote some thought to a suitable veggie answer to this wonder.
So I did, Xopher. Bit too much birthday mead on this end...
John Houghton @316:
I think you meant 'Everywhere but the USA, Burma, and Libera'.
Peter Erwin@148 (and others above):
This entire discussion reminds me of a conversation amongst a group of hapless, newly-arrived international research students (myself included), all trying to figure out which of the rules of usage we had grown up with still applied in this brave new world we'd landed in. That/which came up, and we ended up fairly equally divided into those who lived and died by it and those who had never heard of such a distinction--at which point, a more senior member of staff cut in with 'Oh, don't listen to [person]--he splits his infinitives!'
Thomas@58--Not to even attempt to defend all writing instructors ever[1], because I have run across some who do make 'Thus it was, is, and ever shall be world without end' claims about grammar, but more often when I hear people defending hard and fast rules (that really aren't), or attempt to impose them on students myself, it's in the context of 'you cannot do this because it will make you sound uneducated and people will laugh at you. Don't give people a reason to laugh at you.'
[1]First off, I'm not even a writing instructor; I teach religious studies--but the method of assessment for students is essays, which means that either I teach them something about how to produce clear, comprehensible, academic prose[2] or they keep losing marks and I keep crying over my marking.
[2] Of course, the small details we're talking about here-- different to/different from, or that/which-- are usually the least of a student's worries.
(I cannot believe I have fallen backwards into half-defending prescriptive grammar.)
KeithS@52:
Thomas covered this beautifully. I'll only add that I learned the which/that rule from someone who used to copyedit for HarperCollins, and thus have been inclined to take it rather seriously when I'm preparing something for print in America.
Skimming very quickly over those comments, it occurred to me that a lot of the debate over women's dress is racially coded.
Me, I'm pretty thoroughly white.
I also prefer to have far less of my skin exposed than current fashions would dictate. I'm not really the target market for the burquini, but I can certainly appreciate why someone would want such a thing to exist.
This makes it difficult for me to buy clothing, on occasion, but I'm pretty sure nobody has ever looked at me and thought that I'm actively rejecting Western values because of the way I dress. (And I really do pity the fool who tries to tell me I'm being a tool of the patriarchy. Although, when I'm particularly bored, I do almost wish someone would try.)
Now, I also don't wear a headscarf, which seems to be the giant red flag--but I've known some headscarf wearing girls who show off a lot more in, say, the upper arm area than I do. There are whole universes of subtle shading that folks screaming and waving their hands over what kinds of female attire is and is not permissible within an advanced society seem to be missing. And I'm kinda OK with that.
Thomas @47: Thank you. That and a brief search of my own through Google Books persuades me to withold the Red Pen of Doom, and add this one to my list of 'things North Americans ought to know about British writing.'
Hrm. I suppose I ought to start keeping that list in written form, instead of as a mental checklist. It would probably be helpful to hand it off to new teaching assistants *before* they start marking papers.
(Trivia: Brits make no distinction between 'that' and 'which'; I have had to put great effort into unlearning that rule.)
Terry Karney @ 34: Oh, dear. Does this mean I need to go and apologise to all the (British) students I've marked down for writing style because they've used 'different to' in their papers?
(I'm trying to remember whether I've ever seen 'different to' used in an academic text, and while I can't be entirely sure that I haven't, I'm reasonably sure it would have leapt out at me and been incorporated into my mental landscape of language differences. Except that this is honestly the first time I can recall seeing that usage outside of a student essay.)
Dave Robinson @ 75: I spent some time earlier today contemplating what should be written on a sign for picketing Phelps's funeral, whenever that blessed event may occur. My best effort was:
'I respect the human dignity of the deceased too much to share my opinion on his current location.'
I think it still needs work.
Evelyn@10, Lee@14--you both beat me to it. I just heard of Phelps-a-thon today and I clapped my hands and cheered out loud from my desk (scared the hell out of my officemate, mind). But it was honestly the most brilliantly cheering thing I've read all week.
David @46, I am sorely tempted to add that to my arsenal of comments for students' papers.
Hmmm. I think my household would look at me strangely and ask if we were out of curry, since we are of the strange breed ('Canadians', from a certain point on the socio/economic/urban scale) that considers 'curried' to be the natural state of pierogies.
Although, having moved to the UK, I must say that smothering them with stilton and asparagus, when it's in season, is delicious as well.
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| 2009 | 23 |
| 2008 | 2 |
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