Things you hate III

The so-called 'Easy Peeler' - the fatherless, no-name ******* of the citrus fruit world.

I love satsumas, clementines, an old-fashioned tangerine or even the nardicot, but what exactly is an 'easy peeler' supposed to be?

I tell you what it is in a lot of cases, it's a bitter little grapefruit-flavoured excuse of a fruit in which the ease and convenience of taking the peel off has been traded for any trace of sweet deliciousness. Those sad-sacks who lack the required gumption and effort to spend a few seconds taking the peel off a tangerine, deserve every bitter note they get from their easy peelers. Not even fit for marmalade those things in my opinion.

Oh and also those who rule out 90% of the delicious grapes produced by mother nature because "they have pips in". You don't know what you're missing in your laziness you absolute gonks.

 

I’ve got to like tha Clive. I have long been confused by the difference between Clementines, satsumas and the long forgotten tangerine and have often been suckered by the lure of a simple life in the form of an easy peeler, so much so that it puts me of buying any of the aforementioned fruits until the following season when I repeat the process again.

I admit that I can be lazy in this respect and can rarely be bothered with the time consuming, over-packaged orange which, if you can get into it, splashes all over your fingers, drips onto you clothes and dribbles down your chin. Does remind me of Sunday football as a kid though!

I take a small exception slightly to the humble grapefruit. I like them and you know to occasionally expect a bitter experience unlike the expectation of when unwrapping an evil peeler.

Also grapes, now why in earth would they make a grape with pips if they can be manufactured without them? All that spitting out the bits you’ve accidentally crushed into a million pieces in your mouth, yuk.

Lastly I’ll add bananas. Generally, I love them, full of goodness, energy and potassium but.......they only have about 1/2 day when they are ripe. Eat them too soon and you fight to open them, you are then punished with a solid inner core that sucks all of the moisture from your mouth. Too late and there a mushy, over-sweet mess. Oh, and they should never be cooked! And never look anybody in the eye when eating a banana! Maybe you’ve lived somewhere they are grown and harvested naturally, I don’t know!

 

Of course bananas should absolutely never be cooked! And far less should they be sliced and made to float in a dish of tinned custard and presented as 'a desert'. Nobody is going to accept that.

However the reverse is true of the Plantain or cooking banana. In the same way as you get sweet apples and cooking apples, so you get sweet bananas and cooking plantains. These are definitely worth trying if you can find them in Caribbean or Asian shops. The ones you should look for are the big hard green 'macho' plantains as they're called which look like this:-



Avoid the 'half painted' plantain which is the same sort of size as the 'macho' but yellow and brown. Also avoid the little 'donkey' plantain which looks like this:-



If you can find macho plantains, split the skin with a knife (the skin is very thick) and take out the plantain. Don't throw the skins away though. Slice the plantain into rings and then fry them until they go a very light golden brown. Take them out and put the rings back into the skins. Then bash them with the heel of your hand until they flatten out into rosettes. Put 'em back in the pan and fry them off until they're a deep golden brown.

Sprinkle some salt over them and serve up with rice and beans. Cubans call these 'tostones' and they are very, very nice. Try them once and become an addict!

 

We like plantain in casa nutria, I'd give your suggestion a go one day. Do you put all plantain rings back into the skin and bash at it once (I imagine you'd get a large yellow mess) or do you put a few in at a time?

 

Very informative post, one worthy of the match day thread.

How about banana sandwiches? Not had them since last century. Sliced between two bits of white bread!

 

Just a few at a time - two or three and laid flat of course.

The plantain is very hard, so the point of the first bit of frying is to soften them up a little bit before the bashing, so they'll flatten out like in the picture. They should never be so soft they'll turn into a mush though!

 

Oh dear no. My mum used to give us those banana sandwiches with sugar sprinkled over them. Never really liked them that much.

Here's another idea for plantains though, which used the softer 'pintón' version. You see these a lot at latin american festivals - split down the middle, filled with cheese and ham and roasted. Nice but can be messy to eat. Are these similar to how you eat your platano @Otter?

 

My Oxo "Good grips" vegetable peeler. It's so good I managed to peel off the top of my thumb the other day.

 

My Job.

Today I've been criticised for not updating a spreadsheet with figures I've not been provided with or been informed that I need to get, or actually informed that I actually need to update the spreadsheet in the first place.

I've also been criticised because I didn't email my boss to inform her that someone called for her whilst she was out and that he'd be sending her an email.

 

I thought you were the boss, Meister ???

 

Bosses eh?


I ****'em....

 

I am but not at work. If I owned the company do you think I'd be wasting all my time on here?

 

I'll assume that you've not met mine, otherwise you have very low standards.

 

Looks like a heart attack in your hands! No the missus would cut the plantain in diagonal slices and fry them and put on a rice dish, she isn't particularly original with them I'm afraid.

 

The rule for citrus fruit is:
Full of pips = flavoursome and juicy
No pips = pappy, tasteless and probably dry.

Not sure if this applies to grapes as well but personally I don’t mind a little tannin from the pips.

 

The secret to peeling a regular orange is roll it around on the table a bit, pressing firmly with the palm of your hand. Peel comes off easier than a prom dress.

 

******* idiot pedestrians that wait at traffic crossing, instead of actually pressing the button first.

This is happening to me all the time in London. I want to yell at the pedestrians every bloody time. Really winds me up.

 

Even stranger is when there are seven people at a crossing and then an eighth person turns up and presses the button - as though none of the previous seven have thought of doing it!

 

I am always that 8th person.

 

As a pedestrian I get to the crossing at look at the traffic. If I see a gap in the traffic I dont; press the button and I wait to cross then. There's nothign worse than a pedestrian getting to the crossing, pressing the button straight away and crossing because theres a gap. 30 secs later the traffic has to stop for no one as they've long since gone.

Zebra crossings are far worse though
Pedestrians that stop at one and wait for slowing traffic to come to a complete halt before starting to cross.
Pedestrians that decide to have a conversation, mobile or otherwise on the pavement next to one and you don't know whether to stop or not.
Pedestrians that stop at the crossing on the pavement and then wait for someone else in their group to turn up before crossing.
When you get one pedestrian every 10 secs meaning that only a car at a time can go through.

Light controlled crossings are so much better, as long as they're phased properly with surrounding junctions.

 

That's the key. There's one outside Rickmansworth School that has way too short a time between red lights so that when the kids are coming out of school that single set of pedestrian lights causes utter chaos on the main road..

 

That's the issue. The local councils do not take traffic into account and are only interested in pedestrians. Eastcote is currently going through "regeneration work" which is essentially going to bugger up the traffic more than the last bright idea they had. What they don't realise is it's a main thoroughfare and they're pushing the traffic off into the residential rat runs and encouraging people to queue jump down the service roads. I would not be surprised if we see an increase in accidents because of this and I made the council aware of the issues during the consultation before the work commenced. Still as long as they have their "events space" It's fine.

 

Cadburys. Just started an xmas tub of heros and they taste orible. What's more the distribution is so uneven. Dissapointed.

 

When you've had to retreat back on to the pavement as a car carries on bombing past, on more than one occasion, I think I'll take that extra second to make sure I don't become another statistic.

 

Never seen it. Is it just you they're aiming at?

 

It’s happened to me more than once and I’ve seen one person actually hit on a zebra in Harpenden.

 

You sound really poor at your job. I expect HR will be having a quiet word in your ear later

 

One of the many functions extra to my job description that I actually have to do.
I shall give myself a good talking to, which will probably mean that I shall then complain to myself about that talking to and the case will have to be reviewed. Again muggins will have to do that also.

 

This isn’t really a things I hate, more of a things I’m bored of.

American mega series. The type we’ve all watched on Netflix and Amazon.

For me it started with 24, then not much else until Breaking Bad, I enjoyed these. To me they we new and different, when they finished a small hole in my weekend evenings appeared. What a saddo I hear you think.

I’ve watched Prison Break, Orphan Black, Orange Is The New Black, The Black List, House Of Cards, Bosch and Better Call Saul. As I type this we’ve just started Homeland but I can’t really be bothered with it or any of these series.
I’m probably already 50 episodes behind and I’ve had of the format. The FBI, CIA or some such agency chasing hidden threats, bugging, chasing and interrogating until they find that the person they have been chasing for 20 hours of my life is actually not so evil and is just being forced into it.
Then there’s the big bad reveal in season finale where a high level official we’ve trusted all along turns. Why can’t a story be told in a few episodes anymore? Why do they need all of these twists and turns? I’m off to the other room no to watch Take Me Out!

 

People who fart in crowds. Someone near me did it several times at West Ham today and it was vile. If I knew who it was I'd have kicked their balls so far up their selfish stinking rectum they wouldn't be able to fart or sh it for weeks. At least it was in the open air, it's far worse at gigs. Just have the decency to release your foul gases somewhere else and not metaphorically stick my head up your backside several times.

 

Your misfortune has at least made me laugh tonight!

 

'Safe Space' rooms and 'Gender Neutral' toilets. Country's lost the plot.

 

Never heard of safe spaces, you might need to explain.

As for gender neutral bogs, I can’t imagine any female would want to share a piss stinking, shiit stained toilet after most blokes have used it, even I hate sharing with them.

 

A space for people who 'feel marginalised' to come together, they're increasingly cropping up in particular in educational establishments (example of one at a the Young Labour AGM) :

https://twitter.com/mrwtch/status/959713708850151424


Why not just label 'Gender Neutral' toilets 'Toilets'?

 

Hmmm, my boss has moved the old first aid room at work and insists on calling it a quiet room. I wonder If this is the same thing?

I think I’m with you on these items.