Protestant World

And You Wont Matter Anymore

I have a love of shortest pop songs. The Marvelettes - Mr Postman usually works for me on a pub jukebox, but I think Buddy Holly's - It doesn't matter anymore was even shorter. 

That is until I was reviewing Her Majesty.

The images of Buddy Holly in the video are hot (or not) depending on how you look at other humans.

Does Taramasalata Freeze

This post isn't my usual blogging fare but I am fascinated with online super-niche questions and then getting some feedback in Google Analytics.

The short answer is yes it does freeze but the thawing process separates any oils or liquids and so the taramasalata or roe pate as our U.S. friends call it requires mixing up again or even better re-blending, if one were to have a dinner party for example.

I probably wouldn't try to freeze taramasalata again and recommend buying it fresh and eating as soon as possible.

Veganism Round Table - Mark Devlin

Fried leaks in butter, are awesome.

Technically I should be looking at a dairy cow alternative.

Step by step.

That Video I Had To Delete Is Now Available Here

Facebook Jail Video from Charles Frith on Vimeo.

I'm experimenting with cross platform content right now as censorship is at an all time high. Unless you're blogging trivial opinions. Then you can say anything you like. 

Intermittent Fasting - The Ultimate Overview | Conor Santry

Another excellent video, this time from Conor Santry proselytizing the life changing effects of intermittent fasting. One of the cognitive dissonance effects of the subject is that people can't get their heads around fasting being a lifestyle.

Surely we'd just wither away?

No is the answer and in fact if we study the growing body of health and fitness nuts who are adopting it, supplemented with the astonishing body of information on how good it is for the human body I think it's clear that the easiest solution to one of life's most burdensome issues (overeating, body shape etc) can be tackled with the simplest solution.

I lasted 6 days last week just fasting non stop and it allowed me to squeeze into some new trousers I'd already become to big for with overeating.

How To Do Intermittent Fasting And Never Get Hungry

I'm not suggesting mildly narcissist Hollywood wannabes are a good role model for all intellectual and personal development, but they are often obsessed with the latest information that works in terms of dietary and exercise information.

We're constantly bombarded by food imagery, and if living on my apartment floor, also surrounded 24/7 by some of the best chefs in Hong Kong, creating the most incredible aromas of tasty cooking wafting through the window. Last night the scent of gorgeous roast potatoes was heavy in the air. 

I realise that makes no sense at all in Causeway Bay but it is as it is. 

The only way to overcome this temptation to stuff my face is to deprogram with these excellent informative videos, and I think you'll find this one is excellent.

I'll go so far as to say that intermittent fasting is the single most interesting cult I've come across, and that it will be massive in the years to come and, forever after, for people seeking ways to overcome modern health and dietary challenges. Everything makes a lot of sense when considering what the human body was designed to do in an evolutionary setting, unlike that updated paleo information I came across recently.

NB: Creepy isn't it, how close Dave Dees illustration used above echoes the protest in North Dakota of Standing Rock Sioux Indians protesting an oil pipeline that was diverted away from white neighbourhoods and routed through their ancestral burial lands.

Water Fasting Done Right - Dr Daniel Pompa & Dr. Derrick Dempsey

I'm on Day Five of fasting. I've had a nibble of an apple or pear here and there but no meals. The only downside so far is I seem to need 3 hours of sleep at the moment, and I'm too chicken to go to bed at 3am to see if that's the case.

Not everybody has the same physiology, health and metabolism so I'm just going by how I feel. I intend to take up intermittent fasting when I break fast but I have a feeling I can go a week or two at the moment, possibly more.

There's so much great information out there on the subject, and I found in the early days that watching a video or just listening to them while I worked gave me a boost to stay the course.

The Power of Intermittent Fasting

Lately I've put on more weight than ever in my life. It's my fantastic cooking naturally. I have been able to tuck away ginormous saucepans of amazing home cooked food and load the plates up with rice too, and then just keep grazing all day frankly. 

I can't leave my own cooking alone.

Like everyone, I didn't want to stop eating as it's a reward mechanism. However, a friend has been raving about intermittent fasting. It's so simple that it doesn't make sense to begin with, but once you understand how simple it is, it's quite an extraordinary concept. It also costs fuck all, saves money and works quicker than anything.

I've gone the full Monty and just stopped eating so I'm going to see how long I can last without food (third day so far) and then I'll switch to the intermittent fasting, but I've seen the fastest results already. I find watching the videos keeps me focused.

I've also given up smoking again so I'm constantly looking for distractions, but it's an interesting combination giving up food and smoking at the same time.

Corporate Media Silent Over The Hottest Story On The Planet

Worldwide protests against Monsanto completely ignored by the media.

Monsanto are a corporation, the media are corporations. They take care of each other while the most dangerous company on the planet plots to control who can grow food and who can't. You need to wake up if this is lost on you. Time is running out.

Hard Core Thai Food

Above is the bean known as Sator in Thailand (or Peteh Petiah in Indonesian or Stink bean for some English speakers or Parkia Speciosa in Latin). I speak OK Thai and it is never complimented as well as my ability to eat local food so when the locals go over the top a bit on epicurean compliments for eating rotting fish bits in Papaya salad with plutonium grade chillies and crabs, I usually play it down by saying I can't eat Sator. It has a distinctive bitterness and allegedly stinks like methane though I've never smelled that.

Well life moves on and in my neighbourhood the food is so varied and extraordinary that I'm still trying a new dish every couple of weeks even though there's a list of favourites always to hand. A few weeks ago I accidentally ate the Sator bean in a typical Southern Thai style young coconut meat, stir-fried chicken number with garlic and I am now nuts about this bean (sic). It's an embarrassment. I'm now queuing up mid afternoon in case this favourite dish is on the menu. Any later and it's sold out. I complained to the local vendor that I need a little more certainty in monsoon rain conditions and he replied that his menu is a surprise every day. 

I responded that's the problem. I'm exactly the same. 

Anyway I'm mildly amused that two decades on I'm still making further inroads into Thai cuisine and that apparently nothing is really permanent for me. My food, my politics, my lifestyle, religious beliefs, philosophies, newspapers, shoes and clothes. I would say sexual preference but I really didn't know she was transsexual in the beginning. Fabulous surgery. Could happen to anyone.

It's all been up for grabs hasn't it? I apologise if my hyper-mercurial qualities have caused offence, confusion or upset to anybody in the past. It's not intended.

Deferred Gratification is Psychopathy

You all know the model. Leave the kid in the room with the Oreo or whatever and the ones who can defer gratification are later found to be more "successful" in life.

Bullshit (Just look at weasel beard above). That's not success. That's psychopathy.

It's industrial scale, corporate-brainwashing and nutmeg-psychology that flies in the face of of the very essence of being a human FUCKING being. 

I mentioned it back on Rob's blog a couple of days ago that the change from arboreal, fruitarian, peaceful and (ahem slightly orgiastic - yay for SEX) Homo Sapiens of an honourable and inspirational nature compared to the 21st century mendacity of homo mutatitis that hoard their grain and self implode on the metaphysics of attempting to temporarily own the perma-unobtainable, through war and coercion that leaves half the planet glued to the the carpet-embedded-sofa, cheered on by a TV & Fossil fuel Drug dependency while the other half are out in the fields on the other side of the planet,  tilling the soil for mere pennies a day while oscillating geographically and in a temporal sense from exhaustion into starvation and back into exhaustion again to grow food for "me me me" and not themselves. 


Is this the poetry of deferred gratification? 


Put off today what you can industrial-strength kill off tomorrow?

Surely the very essence of enlightenment is to live in the intelligent and harmonious moment instead of breeding a species that shit-hoards, spits on frugality, wastes 40% of it's food, crushes its global brethren and celebrates this as toxic material-science enlightenment?

Do me a favour. Eat that fucking pancake kiddo and live in the moment while we the supposed adults figure out how to take care of the urgent problems of today instead of breeding a child who becomes professionally psychopathic at ignoring and deferring the impending ecocide debt-blowback.

Chinese Food: A LINUX recipe.

I can't believe I missed this TED talk which appears to have been on the site since December last year and that Jason over at 88:Bar has picked up on. It's well worth a look and is particularly worthwhile when thinking about the importance of food outside of nutritional value alone. It's hugely important as a cultural and sociological dynamic. Much more than we would normally guess. Nice find Jason.

I'm Loving It

Holy crap I should really write a PhD thesis on McDonalds because like my Microsoft post they're so big they often get an enormous kicking over everything from the environment to fast culture and I guess there's lots for them to be responsible about, but really while trying to hunt down my most cerebral comment/thought piece - the one about the social function that McDonalds plays in Hong Kong I'm a bit lost. Mainly because it's an excellent brand platform and fits nicely to the commercial I've embedded below. So I'm not far off the mark.

I do remember from an observation I culled the last time I was here in Hong Kong, while frequenting the Causeway Bay restaurants for my beloved McBreakfast, and which I'm not sure if I wrote about on this blog, in the comments or somewhere else but which definitely have been used by me for other global brand categories in a few meeting rooms around the world when trying to contextualize the whole do-good-power or potential of planet sized brand spiel.

Not a subject I talk lightly of either.

But while I try in vain to hunt it down you might want to check out this execution by DDB Hong Kong because it really doesn't get much more contemporary and Asian, than with the Web Cam McDonalds 24/7 Home Delivery Service they're just rolling out here in HK (the commercial that is) and that's one I could write a few thousand words on because between you me and the internet I'm highly familiar with this service and can even reel off some off the finer points of the service in Bangkok such as breakfast kicks off at 5.00 am, the Spinach pies are awesome, and the delivery lads didn't mind doing a few errands for me as I tipped them handsomely and we both chuckled like mad when I gave back a hundred or so sachets of unused tomato ketchup and asked for more coffee creamer (thanks guys that was fun).

I will write a post about my kamikaze tipping in my last few months of Bangkok, because, well, I was in the mood and yet it led to some heated scenes of frenzied artificial popularity that I don't wish to repeat in. But anyway, watch the ad and see what you think. Can you understand it?

I have to say I'm a bit of unusual about the Cantonese accent. It's about as sexy as a Cockney one, which that too can work nicely although is highly subjective, unlike I think a thick Brummie accent which doesn't do as well. Anyway I love those drawn out vowels on Canto chicks.

This movie and specifically this clip might have something to do with it as I first watched Chung King Express in the 90's, and which I've lifted off (nicked) for both my creative briefs and on this blog. I mean check out that blue heart action on Fay Wong which is to die for and frankly there probably is no better director than Wong Kar Wai than in this movie, except for 'In the mood for love'. Possibly one of the most beautifuly directed movies ever (outside of the sensational Korean location based Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring by Kim Ki Duk of Korea)

I'd really like to embed a couple more clips, specificially the Korean movie I just mentioned and a last Fay Wong bopping to the Mamas and the Papas in the food stall but it's just too precious this formatting at the moment, so until another time you can check out more of the McDonalds information over here.

Sell the sizzle

 

I think it's the Swedish who have an expression for food that isn't  rude and translates as "the food was adequate". Anyway this is the closest Pizza restaurant to me in Beijing.

Food 2.0

One of my favourite twitterers is noodlepie who blogs over here. I really like it when he decides to cook something in the evening and nips out to the market to buy the fresh produce. I find it inspiring and I'm a wee bit jealous till I get my kitchen sorted out.

In the meantime all I can do is take the occasional picture of the food I'm eating and blog it. This has made me think I need to get stuck into Jaiku again now that Google have bought the company and temporarily put a hold on new members.

It does feel like the future is heading into a Jaiku/Facebook and location based contextual information mashup. I can't wait for that day. The day when I'm waiting for a plane or train and I can hook up with likeminded individuals who have time to kill and who can also teach me more in 20 minutes conversation than any book could. Now I like books, I'm currently rereading The Master and Margarita but I don't think there is any other better face to face time than chewing the fat with someone I know a little bit about as a result of blogs or whatever other social media is available. Even a few pictures can tell me a lot. So here is my Haggis moment at Heathrow.

Then my favourite Turkish joint in Croydon which does all this for a fiver


I had lunch with Rory the other day. It was a much grander affair and well worth the trek over to Docklands for the best conversationalist in town. No time to snap the food but I can vouch for First Edition's yummy Lamb. Here's the layout I caught while waiting for the great man to arrive.


Then there was that awesome Scone on Picadilly that stopped me outside the window and lured me inside with thick cream and heaps of fresh berries too.


Then there was that Champagne and Chips moment last night. I went for the Rock at the Rock & Sole in Covent Garden with dirty hand cut chips. It was lovely


And no food post would be complete without a pic of Lloyd Davies of Perfect Path tucking into a Breakfast Club Breakfast of Champions


At this rate I'm going to be resembling the Pied Piper pork-pie-star himself Rob Campbell which I guess means I should get on the Diet Tangos ASAP

Update: Quite by coincidence Graham Holliday of Noodle Pie has blogged about a response I made to his twitter over here on his Guardian Blog for food.