Innocuous things that make you irrationally angry (a list thread)

I hate these coffee jerks!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VssO5bKFJU0&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Lol @ the tea thing. I have an innocuous packet of regular tea bags in the office and (presumably because I'm British) all the Americans love commenting on it ALL THE TIME, all the while making numerous cups of exotic or fruit or weird tea from one of the million other boxes in there and talking about how tea's just fantastic, isn't it? And did you know you can get this great tea from this amazing place downtown? And I'm like yeah I'm just having a PG Tips.

PG Tips sounds p exotic tbh.

Yeah it's dead classy!
http://www.cakegroup.com/archive/lib/client_content/alnmonkey_0.jpg

Readability increasingly makes me IA.

why

Because I like seeing the page as The Creator intended, and b/c on my iPhone, if it can't deal with the page, there is no way of opening it in Safari or otherwise.

argh people referring to a 'cheeky pint' or a 'sneaky cocktail'. You're 30 years old, you can drink alcohol if you want without it being all "naughty" ffs

I Use Readability a lot.

i am irrationally angry

http://i.imgur.com/9ZJqr.jpg

30 minute bus ride, 3 pages that wouldn't load in Readability. Reloading did not work; there is no link to see it in a real goddamned browser. FUUUUUCK READABILITY!

That oil is sideways, I know that.

PIC not oil.

Being called 'Hun' and 'Hunny' (spelt that way).

Is readability like instapaper?

I don't use it on my phone, just on desktop browsers. Takes a paginated article with shitty sized fonts and makes it into one long one that is easily read.

I only use it b/c Echofon on iPhone opens all links in it and there is no way of changing that. Time for a new Twitter app, but I don't want to have to mess with it.

You have it configured wrong, echofon does not open in readability for me.

Weird. I have looked diligently and extensively and repeatedly for a way to reconfigure it but no dice.

Scientific or research articles that say "a search on amazon.com reveals X number of books on X, and Y number of books on Y" like AMAZON IS FUCKING SCIENCE. BECAUSE ITS NOT!

Cookie recipe that says "yields 40 cookies" & actually only yields 20 small cookies.

On a similar note, recipe sites where the commenters proudly say they substituted all the essential items! Vegetarian soup? "I loved this, I added some bacon and chicken stock though as it was too bland and hubby wont eat anything without meat in it!". *&^&^$

(for that matter, said commenters always framing things in the context of what "hubby will eat", as if they only exist as a chef for their damn family)

hubby can go microwave himself a hot pocket while wifey eats her delicious vegetarian soup!

Ohhhhhh substitution reviews make me CRAZYPANTS. If it's just one or two ingredients fine, but I've seen ones where they replace everything and give it 5 stars and its like, you just gave Your own recipe 5 stars because what you made is not THIS RECIPE. I make a really good braised pork ziti I got off epicurious.com and there's a review where the chick replaced the pork with GROUND SIRLOIN and basically made a pasta and meat sauce instead of a slow braised meat dish, Aggggghh!!!!

Exactly!!! Uggghhhh. I have also seen comments where p much everything bar the tomato sauce or whatever was replaced completely, I mean wtf!?

JBR OTM also :)

That all said, I'm all for experimenting with recipes/changing out things but you're making a new dish when you do, damn yer eyes.

why would you *look up* a pasta & meat sauce recipe?

a. brown some meat (add veg if you're going the full bolognese route)
b. add to sauce
c. cook pasta
d. mix, eat

My IA thing is if you're going to review a recipe, review the recipe as it's written. If it needs substitutions, say that. But all these self-indulgent assholes just use it as a conversation piece to talk about their OCD need to not cook anything remotely similar to the recipe, it drives me crazy.

argh people referring to a 'cheeky pint' or a 'sneaky cocktail'. You're 30 years old, you can drink alcohol if you want without it being all "naughty" ffs

Yeah this is shit, and it's spreading.

The tea thing I sort of see but think cheese or cake are the same in the UK. I hate people who talk about their love for cheese like they're talking about The Goonies.

why would you *look up* a pasta & meat sauce recipe?

if i was to make pasta and meat sauce i'd have to look up a recipe?

a) i don't know what "browning" meat means. where in the oven would you do this? and how long for? i need that in exact minutes otherwise i have no idea when it's done
b) where has this sauce magically sprung from?

i can do c) and d) and really this is why i just prefer to shove pesto on the pasta and fuck making a sauce

the veg would obviously make things more complicated. what veg? how much of it? when do you add it? again, how long?

Browning, there's a clue in the title of that technique...

In fairness tho sometime even for simple recipes it's good to look up a method, some chefs have good or clever ways of improving something ostensibly basic.

paint it brown?

do i put it under the grill or in the oven or in a frying pan or in a pot or what?

if the recipe contains a hard-to-buy ingredient in a minor role and you substituted it for something easier to buy and it worked out fine, that is useful to know, because my local shop is probably not going to have the former ingredient

if, on the other hand, you substituted out 6 major ingredients just because you could, or you've come onto a recipe with the title "slow-cooked pork with fennel" to go "this was nice but I don't have a slow cooker and I don't like fennel and my husband doesn't eat pork so I ate something completely different containing none of the keywords that made you, the reader, follow this link in the first place" then get off my recipe page

though I am terrible at following recipes, I always end up looking at about 5 recipes for the same thing online and trying to average them out and improvise a bit, and I am not a good enough cook to improvise, why can't I just learn to follow 1 set of instructions

(ia at self for terribleness at cooking)

Lex, in a pot or pan. Meat turns brown as it's cooked...you may have noticed this colour difference when eating meat, it's a diff colour to when it's raw, for example in the supermarket. That meat is raw. But if you bought a burger in a restaurant that meat would not be pink as it's been "cooked".

r you've come onto a recipe with the title "slow-cooked pork with fennel" to go "this was nice but I don't have a slow cooker and I don't like fennel and my husband doesn't eat pork so I ate something completely different containing none of the keywords that made you, the reader, follow this link in the first place"

Yeah this is what I meant, its a different dish if you do that! I mean, kudos for yr flexibility but dont review a recipe (esp by saying 'it sucked until I changed everything') that way arrrgh.

lol @ ronan's explanation.

Look I understand some people just Do Not Get cooking, but it baffles me that single ppl who have to manage alone dont, how do you eat!?

yes but there are many ways of cooking meat ronan, i was asking which one. "browning" tells me nothing.

not that i can do any of those ways but nm

I know the lex hates attempts to analyse this but I'm curious about ready meals, do you use oven ones? Cooking a piece of chicken or something in an oven would be exactly the same surely? also all meat does come with cooking instructions and times, if you buy at a supermarket rather than a butchers.

xpost fair enough, there's always google I guess.

yes but i don't eat that many ready meals. new covent garden soups and their ilk, mostly.

wouldn't know where to start cooking just a lump of meat tbh, also then you have to think about sauces and other things as well and it's just too much hassle.

You really dont, tbh. Buy a bag of readymade salad from tesco and a steak. Fry the steak 3-4 mins each side in a frypan, plonk it on a plate, salt and pepper it, chuck some dressing from a bottle onto the salad, mix, put on plate, eat. :)

Mind you cooking is my equivalent of other ppl going "oh really, Reason is o easy to use I write songs every day" and me wanting to kill them so I get why its not everyone's bag.

that does actually sound nice and simple and not like "cooking" at all.

though actually, another thing I like about ready meals is how idiot proof they are - I mean, I seem to always manage to either burn or undercook them anyway, so the thought of dealing with actual food really does scare me a bit.

I mean I regularly fuck up things like toast and boiled eggs and even sodding crackers and cheese the other day, you really cannot underestimate how awful I am in the kitchen.

toast = everyone fucks this up now and then!
boiled eggs = i am an excellent cook but the combination of precision and nothing to do for quite a long time after the first bit means i have exploded many eggs and ruined several pans while surfing the internet; eggs are NOT the easiest things really
crackers and cheese = haha ok clue: DON'T TRY AND COOK THESE

i think a handy list of meats/fish you can fry v.quickly would be prob a boon to you

Good boiled or fried eggs are actually relatively tricky. I hate frying eggs. I was going to suggest steak earlier. You don't have to fear it being uncooked at all really. Just let your pan get incredibly hot first.

i have a bit of a fear of frying too. don't like the idea of spitting oil and the washing up is always worse afterwards. really, all i'm ever prepared to do is shove a thing in the oven and wait until it's done, end, no extra sauces or accompaniments or hassle.