Marilyn Haggerty's amazing Olive Garden review and the subsequent viral shitstorm

oh like I hadn't already found that page

Very good, sir.

Also: lex, if THIS guy can do it:

http://www.9news.com/images/640/360/2/assetpool/photogallery/252423/51541336_10.jpg

http://www.9news.com/images/640/360/2/assetpool/photogallery/252423/83825922_10.jpg

romney looking good there

i want to own one of those last ones to cook for me

what is that two-spatulas bullshit

I guess I lucked out with some hardy basil. I started it 2 or 3 years ago, let it bloom and go to seed every fall, and it comes back in the same planter every spring. I don't even bother harvesting the seed.

If you try to keep just ONE PLANT alive for a long time you will be unhappy because I think the flavor goes off as the plant ages, plus it will just keep trying to bloom until it's exhausted. Maybe that's what people are saying? One plant in a pot indoors will eventually stop producing well. You have to let it die and re-seed for the best result.

Thai basil kicks regular basil's ass

why the hell did this thread blow up?

fuckin' bush. forgot all about that demented idiot.

If you try to keep just ONE PLANT alive for a long time you will be unhappy because I think the flavor goes off as the plant ages, plus it will just keep trying to bloom until it's exhausted. Maybe that's what people are saying?

Yes, they don't age very well. The flavor seems to fade out.

Is it part of the game to pretend that Lex isn't hamming it up beyond all fucking reason with the ignorance schtick? "put it in the microwave?" give it a rest. Yes put it in the fucking microwave, and leave it there forever.

he just rolled his eyes at your post. twice.

I believe that Lex can't cook and has no desire to learn and is a total klutz to the point of looking like he has Parkinson's, but the flaunting and basking in the attention is just pathetic.

he just did a triple eyeroll and then he clicked his teeth or smacked them or whatever the hell that thing is he does with his teeth that i read on some thread once.

i REALLY didn't want to work today apparently.

everyone deserves a day off. while at work.

for lex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wusGIl3v044

There was a thread on I Love Cooking that I can't find anymore. I think it was called "What is technically wrong with this" and it started with a pic of a plastic colander on top of a bowl. The OP kept insisting they wanted to learn to cook but then when people suggested super simple shit like microwaving basil, they countered with "but how would *I* know how to microwave basil????" and I wonder if it was Lex who started that thread.

This thread is making me crave my mom's microwaved basil.

just noticed something else weird about that video (aside from, you know, everything else):

"add some tacos -- olé!"

tacos are not spanish.

I believe that Lex can't cook and has no desire to learn and is a total klutz to the point of looking like he has Parkinson's, but the flaunting and basking in the attention is just pathetic.

― free societies must let drunken gay Texans have sex (Je55e), Wednesday, March 14, 2012 5:18 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, it's a self-defeating attitude, it's also p ironic because lex is always on people for listening to 'sad' music

pesto absent garlic is sad

yeah, it's a self-defeating attitude, it's also p ironic because lex is always on people for listening to 'sad' music

it's not a self-defeating attitude. it's a point of perverse pride, defining the self in terms of what one isn't. like not driving, not owning a television or hating comedy (or indie rock or whatever). nothing wrong with taking pride such things, and not everybody has to be interested in cookery.

I have thing about self-sufficiency and disliking willful ignorance, but really it's FINE if he lacks the ability to cook and has no interest in cooking, but it's irksome that at the mention of cooking, there he is with his almost boastful declarations of culinary incompetence and contempt for the kitchen.

I used to be that way about Madonna (and I still am tempted to be that way) which I actually realized as a side effect of therapy. Any time I was around gay guys and someone mentioned Madonna, I would start my litany against her (also, Mariah Carey, disco, and all dance, and dancing itself). I would put my ignorance and contempt in display as a defense against having to engage with others. I've slipped done it in the gay thread recently, but it's annoying and self-defeating.

I Veered off topic. Oops.

Anyway Lex, go see a shrink and boil yourself some peanuts for dinner.

other things in which city-dwellers often take a similarly perverse pride: never leaving the city and thus being ignorant about even nearby towns, loathing nature (hikes, camping, etc).

pesto comes out of JARS.

This disconnect is part of the issue Scott raises. Sure I'm a foodie snob though I probably cook (or prepare) well over 60% of what I eat but even if you're indifferent to food, knowing where it actually comes from, how it's grown, how it's marketed and sold, how to prepare it is part of being aware of your surroundings, it's like knowing that ads tend to exagerate and movie love stories aren't always the best templates for real-life romance. As Ned pointed out, pesto is pretty easy to make, and if it comes out of jars it has stuff in it which you might want to know about even if you go ahead and decide to eat it.

Once upon a time much of this processed food (bacon, canned tomatoes and fruit, beer, wine, dried, salted or confit meats or fish was simply a way you could make it through the winter before freezers and greenhouses and refrigerated trucks and genetically modified plants that can still be store-friendly a week or two after they've been trucked cross-continent. Now we can freeze things and refigerate them but we aren't growing our own food nor are we right near the places that do and food is something that comes out of jars rather than part of our ecosphere and our relationship to it one of alienation. I find that both troublesome (we fat!) and sad, since I like feeling connected to a place. and its would-be Lares.

it's not a self-defeating attitude. it's a point of perverse pride, defining the self in terms of what one isn't. like not driving, not owning a television or hating comedy (or indie rock or whatever). nothing wrong with taking pride such things, and not everybody has to be interested in cookery.

― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Wednesday, March 14, 2012 5:52 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but if *you* weren't interested in cookery would you just think "not interested" and move on, or tell everyone over and over and over why you're not interested?

maybe I'm asking the wrong poster here tho

pesto comes out of JARS.

rejected Malkmus lyric and pronunciation.

*this* Lex cooks like a champ! Hates pesto, though.

It wasn't always easy. I made some spectacularly bad meals (once cooked a chicken breast from frozen on a George Foreman grill til the outside looked right..) but I had my Grandma give me a couple of good recipes, lived off those for a year, then cautiously ventured out to impress a boy. I got better, so he married me.

Tracer(?) said baking bread is not worth it or similar up thread.. It's pretty great. I just got a bread maker so no work required, throw together ~$1's worth of ingredients, press button, receive bread. Freshest, nicest bread wet. So many options. I'm considering trying to make a real loaf soon though.. Baby steps.

Or at least make your identity as a cooking-hater interesting! Or have some sense of humor about it. Own up to trolling and challopsing!

Xp

jesse stop fixating on me.

fuck being "connected to the land" or whatever hippie bullshit about our ecosphere, couldn't give a single shit. if there's one thing i hate more than being told i should cook, it's to have it couched in some dumb eco morality.

tacos are not spanish.

you're right, they're a traditional Mexican dish.

I used to use a bread machine, but moved on to just using a KitchenAid stand mixer for mixing/kneading, then pop it right into the oven. The basic white bread recipe that comes with the mixer is the simplest thing ever, and it's really good! But as long as you've got the mixer and a dough hook you can make pretty much anything.

I do! But it intimidated me so I asked for the bread maker for Christmas, heh. Now every loaf has green onions sprinkled in. So good.

Or at least make your identity as a cooking-hater interesting! Or have some sense of humor about it. Own up to trolling and challopsing!

i am trying to have a sense of humour about the fact that people act like dicks about it. this only turns into a gigantic thing because people either refuse to believe me or harp on and on about how i should change or ask questions which i answer. fuck you, seriously. you don't know me so quit fucking judging, ok?

but if *you* weren't interested in cookery would you just think "not interested" and move on, or tell everyone over and over and over why you're not interested?

...maybe I'm asking the wrong poster here tho

― boxall, Wednesday, March 14, 2012 3:59 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol, touche. i'm something of a teenager about stuff like this, by which i mean that i do take pleasure in rejecting things, in defining myself by means of opposition. no so much as lex does, but he has few equals in that regard.

Some people just have trouble cooking. Some people don't. That's the way it is and there's nothing you can do to change it.

I think there's probably a few things you can do to change it

well exactly, yet people who cook are like no other group in didactically insisting their skill makes them superior to others, and making people who don't possess it feel worse. you don't get this sort of moralistic shit from people who possess any number of other talents.

xp

yet people who cook are like no other group in didactically insisting their skill makes them superior to others

layin on the hyperbole a little thick there

I thought evangelical Christians were worse about their obsessions.

fuck you, seriously. you don't know me so quit fucking judging, ok?

― lex pretend, Wednesday, March 14, 2012 7:22 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark

u judge people u dont know all the time...

"well exactly, yet people who cook are like no other group in didactically insisting their skill makes them superior to others, and making people who don't possess it feel worse"

What is the Britisher word for "hedge fund manager?"

well exactly, yet people who cook like r&b are like no other group in didactically insisting their skill makes them superior to others, and making people who don't possess it feel worse. you don't get this sort of moralistic shit from people who possess any number of other talents.

― lex pretend, Wednesday, March 14, 2012 7:46 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Naw people who cook are pretty bad, I can say as one of them. I skimmed over a whole book last night that was ~300 pages of "WHY don't people know SERRATED KNIVES are ONLY GOOD FOR BREAD"
and then it had a recipe for scrambled eggs.

"IF ONLY people knew how to properly cut up an onion, NO ONE WOULD BE FAT"

hardzungguzungguguzungguzung

xxp