start a victory garden and ration your IRRATIONALLY ANGRY feelings, part 3

there's a type of grilled fish in korean cuisine that is just 70% bones or something and it's served that way and i've gone out with women who love it and i'm like i do not want this obstacle when eating food

likewise with japanese food

luckily it's only the couple of dishes that do it (though samgyetang comes to mind)

i would say it's no big deal/easy to avoid them

i'll eat the bones off that one grilled small fish that japanese make no problems, though

Broken egg shells aren't really a staple in any culture. I guess lemongrass and bay leaves are things people forget to take out. Stems like cilantro? The stems have a lot of flavor. Bone fragments, I can kind of empathize. It's annoying but some people like to chew on the bones and it's for flavor.

ya i'll put up with non-fish bones for flavour

fish bones i can't do

you're otm on egg shells for sure

I had some chicken in a Chinese restaurant once where the chef had cut the pieces up with a cleaver, leaving lots of small but sharp bone fragments throughout. And I'm talking leg bones, not tiny delicate bones.

Yeah, I am not a fan of eating meat on the bone in general. Some people are way into it.

What about ribs?

Nope. Everything better off the bone. Even corn. I hate to do the work.

Oh, no doubt, I've found gross shit in food from all parts of the world. I just happened to have two recent experiences with an indian place (many, many bone fragments, and sticks) and a thai place (egg shells, and sticks again!). The bone fragments (I'm talking little shards, all smaller than a pinky finger nail and some quite sharp) in the indian are intentional, but still make it nigh impossible to eat and make the dining experience fraught and unpleasant

the indian place does just as nickn describes; chop everything up, bones and all, and let the customer figure it out. Why do I eat there you ask? Because it's a corporate cafeteria and they're one of the only external vendors and the alternative is flavorless institutional slop!

I really gotta start packing a lunch

I don't think this has anything to do with the ethnicity of the food or its preparers. A local bbq place I like walks the line between impressing me with good meats and really irritating the shit out of me because they slice/carve the meat on-demand and the dude who works there on the weekend keeps getting bone fragments in my pulled chicken sandwich

very true. the ethnicity of the restaurants I had bad experiences at was a coincidence. The more general principle for ALL restaurants: keep the inedible tooth-breaking shit out of my meal please!

Yeah, there has been kind of a recent push to look at these feelings and descriptions of certain cultures' food (especially asian) as being dirty or gross or cheap and where that comes from.

Goat and chicken bone fragments in every delicious Caribbean curry ever: annoying as hell but no less delicious.

Nope. Everything better off the bone. Even corn.

gonna have nightmares about corncob skeletons tonight, thx for that

The New Yorker published this story a few years ago about the Chinese immigrants who work in Chinese restaurants across the country and have to learn how to cook American "Chinese" food. This paragraph near the end always struck me:

When I arrived, the door was wide open, and Rain was sitting at a glass-topped table with his cousin and two friends. They wore plastic gloves to protect their hands as they munched on cured duck heads. Rain poured tea and told me, “Don’t feel like you have to eat the duck head.” A soup-filled wok bubbled on the stove, and his cousin, having retrieved a half bottle of wine he had stashed away, cooked rice noodles in the broth, tossing in oysters and cabbage and a handful of tiny, curled squids. “There’s no name for it,” Rain said. “It’s just a simple soup, with noodles. Call it seafood noodle soup.” He opened kitchen cabinets to show me the ingredients his cousin kept. “You see?” he said. “Chinese people use all of these sauces and ingredients for just one dish.” His cousin, gesturing toward the duck heads, said, “Do you know why Americans don’t like eating meat with bones in it? They’re too lazy!”

With the suddenly popularity of true crime im finding myself more and more infuriated with podcasts (im looking at you sword and scale) as well as all the mass shooting coverage refering to killers as 'Monsters' or 'Evil'. Guess what guys, killers are just like you and me and thats why you should really be terrified.

INTERLEAGUE PLAY

xpost Ha, exactly. Eating meat on the bone is way too much work for me. My mom will sit at the table for hours chewing on the bones. I can't do it.

gonna always think of "corn off the bone" when I see it now, hopefully

Seriously, f eating corn that way. It's not fun and you need floss immediately after.

this is well-trodden ground but jfc I hate ppl who leave their shopping carts in empty parking spaces. Like they don't even attempt to put it somewhere out of the way, it's just sitting in the middle of an empty spot bc they don't give a fuck

I mean, I kind of hate ppl who don't return carts period, but if you really can't be bothered, at least make it so that someone could pull into the space ffs

shopping carts just floating around the parking lot seems so foreign to me, partly because most places near me where you'd conceivably take the cart to your car have the cart corrals throughout the parking lot, and it's incredibly rare that people don't return them

it's some weird regional cultural thing, though, because when I was visiting a friend in another state there were carts all over the place in the grocery store parking lot!

thames water:

"Please would you rate our service on a scale of 1-5 (where 5 is great)?"

your service? it was an online form - *I* did all the work.

I answer my grocery store's surveys to get the bonus gas points.

The questions are always Did you interact with anyone in the meat department? Did you interact with anyone in the bakery? Did you interact with anyone in the dairy department? Was your cashier courteous and friendly?

Did I interact with anyone in the dairy department? What, the shadowy figures that lurk behind the gallons of milk and the containers of cream? Are they supposed to greet me? Am I supposed to offer them a confession of my sins? Those guys?

I also didn't interact with anyone in the canned goods. Maybe I'll come back at 4:30 tomorrow morning while they're stocking the shelves.

Unless, of course, it was the web server that was asking me how it was doing...

Supermarkets sometimes have cheese counters where you can buy posh cheese. Would that count as dairy dept?

It would be awesome to be greeted by the guy behind the milk jugs.

ppl who are not news ppl who post BREAKING when reposting breaking news on social media platforms

BREAKING: wind

Did I interact with anyone in the dairy department? What, the shadowy figures that lurk behind the gallons of milk and the containers of cream? Are they supposed to greet me? Am I supposed to offer them a confession of my sins? Those guys?

i've definitely been startled by a presence behind the milk more than once

Can I help you find anything, sir?

https://d2w9rnfcy7mm78.cloudfront.net/989448/large_9af265f85ba382837cbb9bfb9109d541.jpg

Our dairy department guys are always shooting the shit about video games and frantically trying to restock the yogurt. People eat so much yogurt.

I hate those surveys that everyone asks you to do on their receipts these days. It's like "hey, you look like a rat. would you rat out the produce guy for a chance to win a $500 gift card? we KNOW the baby spinach leaves aren't fresh. all you have to do is say it and he's gone."

When I worked at the liquor store, the keg boys would stand in the coolers and look for shoplifters through the Zima.

Did you interact with anyone in the meat department?

My new fave sexual euphemism, thankx

btw your mom and I interacted in the meat department, ifyouknowwhatimeanandithinkyoudo

Meat

Sandwich

hickory dickory dock etc

thrift

not 'not being able to afford things' but thrift, the at times compulsive desire to save, to cut out unnecessary expenditure, to make a nest egg, the pride in being financially sensible, comparing prices to get the best deal, the satisfaction in getting a lower price. money sends ppl insane and this is self-centred control freakery

damn, I would have you in a constant rage

my parents are thrifty (w/ ascetic sympathies) and distrustful of money, and I fight the former tendency in myself but I share the distrust of money and it makes me distrustful of the saving mentality, the fuss and the caution and the inhibition

I don't understand what "distrust of money" means. It sounds like being distrustful of a screwdriver or a frying pan or something.

I can think of some things that it might mean, but I'm definitely curious how it could propel different people in opposite directions, thrifty vs distrustful of thrifty.

well as I say they have ascetic tendencies (religious ofc), extol the simple life, and see money, like power, as potentially dangerous and best managed collectively rather than hoarded individually

I was on an expensive vacation last week, and my mother-in-law kept steering the conversation to things she had coupons for. Look! five dollars off! I guess theoretically it could add up, but honestly it just made me think "You know what's an even better deal? staying home and not doing any of this shit in the first place."

I won't speak for my wife, but we've had some disagreements over this. And I see her point? (Even if I disagree for the most part.)

She said recently, "Can we stop worrying about the Discover bill for a moment?" As in, years from now when the kids are grown and there are more memories than future between us, will I really spend time in the rocking chair, going Goddam, wish I could've paid that Discover bill off faster. Boy, had I only been able to qualify for a better interest rate on that Lowe's card....

She's right, to a point, but I'll also add that I hope I can afford a goddamm rocking chair in the year 2038.

There are lots of factors.

A certain measure of comfort and ease (not luxury, necessarily) helps me cope with the day-to-day anxieties and pressures and bullshit inherent in my life. It serves as a sort of padding. When there's some padding around me, I feel I can perform better as a father, husband, friend, son, brother, employee, and citizen.

Now I know I don't "deserve" comfort. But I like it and I can afford it. (Now. I spent plenty of my childhood and young adulthood being very close to the bone by necessity, not choice.)

Doubtless there are people out there living in an ascetic Thoureauesque fashion who are happy with very little and find it liberating. However. The way some people in my personal orbit practice thrift seems to be the antithesis of comfort and ease. It seems like more of a crusade, hairshirt, or addiction. Personally I don't want to always be looking for a slightly better deal on a $2 box of pasta; that sounds exhausting and anxiety-inducing.

Further, there is macro-thrift and micro-thrift. Buying a mcmansion in the middle of nowhere and then filling it with shit that was 20% off at Wal-Mart is not thrift. Driving a big honkin SUV, but going 10 miles our of your way to find gas that is three cents cheaper isn't thrift either.

Deciding on a modest overall lifestyle (which includes occasional splurges) might look thrifty in comparison.

Yus - one thing (basically the only thing) that money is good for is not worrying about things.

Puffin otm

I need to be thriftier in general, but there's a big difference between not owning lots of crap you don't need and refusing to invest in things that would easily prove their value, even if it's over time.