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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Red_River_Flood

Duration: April 1997
Fatalities: 0
Damages: $3.5 billion[1]

carl agatha otm upthread. i'm one of them big ol' american girls but i mostly watch what i eat and make sensible choices. i've never been to an olive garden or cheesecake factory or pf changs or or or; the last time i went to a hometown buffet (cuz there was nothing else around) i got sick. i have never bought a "super big gulp" in my life.

however, whenever i go into a restaurant, i feel really self-conscious when i'm ordering and then when i'm eating -- if i have a moment of weakness and order a burger and fries, i'm suddenly THAT PERSON, y'know, the stereotype of the fattyfatfat who can't stop shoving grease and salt into my dorito-colored mouth and just sits around literally eating tubs of lard and costing my country money.

the reality is i go to the farmer's market every-ish week and subscribe to an organic produce delivery service. i cook at home several nights a week. i don't exercise enough, but most people don't.

ugh did this thread become a make fun of fat people and the gigantic portions they spend all day eating at the olive garden thread? i am just not going to read it and otm jody and jenny.

it didn't become that

people need to read my original post about this. i am NOT talking about beautiful and vibrant and decidedly HEALTHY looking american girls like get bent! and i do feel horrible that people feel self-conscious about what they eat in public. nobody should ever be made to feel any which way about what they eat/drink/smoke/etc.

and i have never in my life made a comment about what someone is eating or what they should or should not eat. people i don't know tell me i should quit smoking all the time and i've gotten used to it, but its something i would never say to another person.

and big gulp thing is more a post about lol first world priorities and what constitutes "fighting the good fight" for some people.

we already have a food fascist thread iirc

even if the fat people you're talking about aren't beautiful, you don't know what they eat or what their personal habits are by looking at them. i sense that that's a small part of the overall point you were making but it's a pet peeve.

and i do feel horrible that people feel self-conscious about what they eat in public.

a side note: i remember being in front of this overweight guy on line for a movie, and he was saying to his friend how the waiter at the restaurant they went to gave him an odd look for ordering a salad, like because he was fat he was SUPPOSED TO order some triple-decker bacon bomb with a double order of onion rings. and when the food came out, the busser initially put the salad down at someone else's seat, cuz there's no fucking way the fat guy ordered a salad, rite? so, damned if you do, damned if you don't. (even if it's all in the dude's head and he's being paranoid, i think you can see where the paranoia comes from.)

hey guys who wants to go to cheesecake factory

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61cj9k6rkAL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

xp: no, but i'd be down for margs at el torito! whooooooo

but its something i would never say to another person.

"Thank you for your impertinennt solicitude which I fear, alas, serves more as upkeep to your smug self-esteem than any real comcern for me, a complete stranger."

really all i should have said was: i think people are being slowly poisoned to death in this country and i think its a crime and i feel bad about it. that's all i should have said. i didn't mean to offend anyone.

I just came back from Applebee's, it was a lunch meeting. I couldn't order alcohol. :(

I have generally found Chili's to not be that bad, although it's been a while.

i there a national chain of semi-"fancy" sit-down dining places that tries to go the chipotle route: emphasizing green consciousness, freshness and health while still providing huge portions of salty/greasy good-badness? that strategy seems to have been very effective at the fast food lunch level. kind of surprised there isn't a dinner equivalent, outside the salad-bar buffet places that have been around since the 80s.

I went to an Applebee's with my mom once. They had a lot of interesting memorabilia on the walls. #haggertystyle

We had a Ponderosa Steakhouse in town (now, it's a Pizza Garden) that a buddy of mine worked at. He told me that nearly all their food - like, the mashed potatoes, the gravy, the mac&cheese sauce, the ice cream, everything was all just this powder they mixed with water and heated up. Which of course led to the conversation, "why not mix them all and drink it?" Well we did and then we both threw up. Really makes you think doesn't it?

i do believe that anything mixed with water and heated could possible pass for ice cream

frogbs on a roll

oh yeah. not the ice cream. i mean the ice cream was a powder. but they didn't heat it

frogbs on a lobster cheese roll

was the ice cream in the concoction you drank though, cuz if not I'd rather just imagine it was so don't tell me

it was. he took a bit from every single powder they had, including the ice cream and the other dessert stuff. I think he said there was like 12 different "foods" in there. The result was orangeish-brown, so we dyed it blue so it would look like Gatorade.

ah of course

aka the "tour of italy"

went to an Applebee's with my mom once. They had a lot of interesting memorabilia on the walls. #haggertystyle

I worked at Ruby Tuesday and I was impressed to learn that they hire a scout to buy local memorabilia to go on the walls at a new restaurant. One diner recognized herself in a old b&w photograph of a high school basketball team which was hanging on the wall near the kitchen.

I don't think they do the shit on the walls thing anymore, do they?

it was. he took a bit from every single powder they had, including the ice cream and the other dessert stuff. I think he said there was like 12 different "foods" in there. The result was orangeish-brown, so we dyed it blue so it would look like Gatorade.

http://images.wikia.com/looneytunes/images/b/bb/Hazel0149.jpg

a scout to buy local memorabilia to go on the walls at a new restaurant

this is just begging to be a jason reitman movie

I thought Friday's used to do this too...?

P.S. This, too, shall pass. I soon will take my hammer named Margo and go down to the river. There I will meditate on the 15 years that have passed since the flood of 1997.

^^this is amazing and comes completely out of nowhere after that homely, chatty letter. formidable.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Ruby Tuesday's because their first restaurant was in my hometown. Either it used to be better or I was a kid or both, but I really do think it used to be better. Pretty sure they still do the olde timey stuff on the walls.

I thought Friday's used to do this too...?

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, March 15, 2012 2:46 PM

Cracker Barrel, too, right? More rural/farm oriented stuff.

shameful admission: when I was younger, I thought that the name "Cracker Barrel" was a subversive inversion of the phrase "barrel full of monkeys"

ha!

i didn't know carl agatha was jenny. hi!

i'm pretty heartened to know other people approach food like i do, the cooking evangelists and their guilt trips can be overwhelming a lot of the time.

I defy anyone to be unable to make this amazing meal - http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/24/sausage-recipes-hugh-fearnley-whittingstall

right...this isn't about being stubborn but this is just outlining my reaction to that recipe, the bits i'd stumble over, and why there's no way i'm going to attempt it.

- i don't know how to peel parsnips. i mean, i know "how" to in a theoretical way but i don't know how to actually do it right, without making a hash of it and peeling off half the parsnip
- what is a "medium" onion? i don't know what a large or a small onion is. at this point i'm standing in front of the onions in the supermarket and i am paralysed by indecision
- what kind of sausages? there are many many many types of sausage in the supermarket. you need to tell me the EXACT PRODUCT TO BUY otherwise i just don't know. i hate ingredient shopping so so so fucking much
- "coarsely chopped flat leaf parsley" - is this a thing you can buy? pre-coarsely chopped? what is "flat leaf" parsley, is it different to normal parsley? how do you chop it coarsely as opposed to non-coarsely? basically how do i translate the stuff on the supermarket shelf into this ingredient? PANIC

- "quartering" a parsnip? see peeling it for how well quartering it is likely to go. i value my fingers
- i genuinely have no idea what "trimming" a "coarse, woody core" even means or how to do it
- i've tried to chop onions before. it didn't end well. HOW do you get the bits even remotely the same size/shape?
- i don't know what a roasting tin is or if i have one

- what happens when i roast these things for the specified length of time but it DOESN'T COME OUT RIGHT? so many recipes i try to follow but the food just doesn't cook like it says it will - like it's obviously not done yet or it's totally burnt. at which point i PANIC again (and often just halt the recipe completely because i'm too stressed)

second recipe falls at the "set aside to rest for two hours" bit. i don't have two hours, i want to eat NOW. i have never once in my life known what, or even whether, i want to eat two hours in advance.

third recipe...slicing potatoes ughhhhh. wtf is "sweating" an onion? how do i tell when an egg is "two thirds" set? what am i looking out for?

doesn't playing dumb get boring after a while

This is beautiful, lex

doesn't BEING dumb get boring after a while?

says the person 'confused by onions'

yeah lol at giving lex a hugh fearnley-whittingstall recipe as his first baby step, the guy's recipe for making tea is infamous, check this out. i swear to god this is real:

Now, to make my tea, I need two good-sized mugs. I boil the kettle. The hot water goes into one mug first, stays for a few seconds so the mug is heated, then goes into the second mug. The tea bag goes into the first, hot, mug, boiling water is poured in, to within a couple of millimetres of the top, and the two mugs, one containing brewing tea, and the other containing hot water, are left to stand. After about five minutes, the mug of brewed tea is placed in the sink, where some new hot water (freshly re-boiled) from the kettle, is sloshed into it, so it overflows by about half a mug. This is to stop the well-brewed tea being too strong. The full-to-overflowing mug is now tilted a little bit, so it spills out enough tea to allow room for some milk.

Remember the second mug, full of the hot (now not so hot, but still quite hot) water that was used to warm the first mug? That is now emptied. The tea bag is fished out from the first ‘brewing’ mug, and placed in the bottom of the empty ‘warm’ mug, where a small splash of milk is poured over it. The effect of the hot tea bag, and still-warm mug, is to take the chill off the milk – and impregnate it with a mild tea flavour. To encourage both these objectives, the mug is picked up and swirled, put down for a few seconds, picked up and swirled again, and left to stand for a short while longer. The tea-coloured, warm milk is now poured from tea-bag mug to brew mug, which is given a stir.

The resulting colour is observed. A little more milk may be necessary, in which case it will go via the still-warm tea bag mug, into the brew mug. When the colour is exactly right, I will stir in exactly one rounded teaspoonful of golden caster sugar. The tea, which at this point is still far too hot to drink, will now be left to stand for at least five minutes, before a sip is attempted.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2005/may/15/foodanddrink.features

lex, c'mon, if the meal isn't obviously done, continue cooking.

what if a bit of it is obviously not done but another bit of it is burnt? that always happens and recipes never tell you what to do at that point

the "burnt" bit usually doesn't matter

also that might be a hint that your oven is a little too hot and you should consider turning it down a few degrees from the temperature given in the recipe

chop off the done/overdone bit and keep cooking the rest. arguably what's necessary here is a book/article on how to save f'd up meals, which is like 80% of the real art of home cooking. i think good eats does a nice job with this stuff actually.

There are devices that can help with the intimidation factor for a cooking newb, such as a rice cooker or a George Foreman grill. With those two items it would be possible to make many variations on Chicken Breast w/Rice with very little chance of ruin.

All of the issues you raise are just you stressing yourself out for the sake of it. Grab whatever sausage catches your eye (I like Chorizo, or Hot Italian). Buy an onion - neither a tiny one nor a gigantic one. There'll be a bunch there - look at the options. Is there a regular sized one? Buy that! :)
I know not of these parsnips. Use a potato peeler, cut it in half, cut those pieces in half, boom, quartered.
Coarsely chopped means chop it up without too much fussing, whatever, if the pieces don't match it'll be okay. Ditto for the onions, you're not having the Queen nor Oprah over right? It's okay if some are a bit bigger.

Maybe your oven runs hot or cold judging by things being under/over done. Eyeball it. Peek at it five minutes before it should be done, leave it in if it isn't. Baking is a science, but cooking is like an orgy or some other, more appropriate metaphor.

many xps as I type slow I guess

Just saying. Maybe you weren't actually asking these questions. Thought it might help to get some advice from a hippie. It's alllll goood, man!

speaking as a guy who was nicknamed 'all thumbs' in one of the kitchens i worked in, its great to know that there's a lex out there to make me feel like jacques pepin

- i don't know how to peel parsnips. i mean, i know "how" to in a theoretical way but i don't know how to actually do it right, without making a hash of it and peeling off half the parsnip

use a peeler. get off all the darker skin until there's none left. it's ok if you take off a little too much, you'll still have some parsnip.

what is a "medium" onion? i don't know what a large or a small onion is. at this point i'm standing in front of the onions in the supermarket and i am paralysed by indecision

one that just looks sort of normal. not GIGANTIC and not TEENY.

- what kind of sausages? there are many many many types of sausage in the supermarket. you need to tell me the EXACT PRODUCT TO BUY otherwise i just don't know. i hate ingredient shopping so so so fucking much

it's up to you, any will work

"coarsely chopped flat leaf parsley" - is this a thing you can buy? pre-coarsely chopped? what is "flat leaf" parsley, is it different to normal parsley? how do you chop it coarsely as opposed to non-coarsely? basically how do i translate the stuff on the supermarket shelf into this ingredient? PANIC

there's 2 kinds of parsley, flat and curly. wtf the difference is i have no idea. coarsely chopped means chop it up and don't worry about the size of the pieces.

"quartering" a parsnip? see peeling it for how well quartering it is likely to go. i value my fingers

yeah, that's a little intimidating. cut it lengthwise, then cut the two long pieces in half.

i genuinely have no idea what "trimming" a "coarse, woody core" even means or how to do it

i have no idea wtf he is referring to here

- i've tried to chop onions before. it didn't end well. HOW do you get the bits even remotely the same size/shape?

they don't really have to be the same size and shape. just try to cut them sort of small i guess.

- i don't know what a roasting tin is or if i have one

something that's big enough to fit a chicken into that can go into the oven. google image search will help you here.

- what happens when i roast these things for the specified length of time but it DOESN'T COME OUT RIGHT? so many recipes i try to follow but the food just doesn't cook like it says it will - like it's obviously not done yet or it's totally burnt. at which point i PANIC again (and often just halt the recipe completely because i'm too stressed)

if you actually leave it in the oven for the time the recipe says, at the temperature the recipe says, it won't be burnt. if it's not cooked enough, put it in the oven for another 10 mins