Comments

1. chigau (違う) says

   May 13, 2018 at 9:18 pm

   面白い。

2. blf says

   May 14, 2018 at 9:36 am

   Potatoes are a useful accessory for holding melted cheese. Dribble with MUSHROOMS! — and moar cheese, of course — being sure to leave even more cheese outside to divert you-know-who. Also, tunneling to an another multiverse will gain a few extra milliseconds before she arrives, so you might even have enough time to smell the dish before it feeds a certain penguin.

3. blf says

   May 14, 2018 at 11:40 am

   It is important to realise potatoes are the melted cheese containers. And not, say, books, Bacon, cheese slices and sawblades: the strangest bookmarks left at libraries:

   […]
   What is the cheesiest book you’ve ever read? For Washington DC librarian Anna Holmes, it wasn’t so much the book, as the slice of Kraft American that she found inside it, clearly used by a cheese[sic†]-loving patron as a bookmark. The library branch has seen three “cheese bookmark” incidents to date, according to Holmes, who made a plea on Twitter for readers to “PLEASE stop using cheese as a bookmark. Please. We give away actual bookmarks for free. Or like use a receipt or something. Just not perishables.”

   Whiffy as that sounds, that trio of dairy product delinquents are not the worst offenders, librarians across the world have revealed in response to Holmes’s plea. There are those who use banana skins, broccoli (“It was cooked and buttered well. I think the greasy stain made it easy for them to find their page”), cooked bacon and a fried chicken leg. Inedible but equally jarring fold-ins reported included Lego, flowers, money, a used condom, and a sawblade.

   Bacon, it turns out, appears to be a bit of a thing, with librarians previously reporting the discovery of surprise rashers all over the place. In his Salt Lake City branch, Josh Hanagarne also discovered “a lock of hair, like, the size a serial killer would take from a victim”, and “a Polaroid of a cat wearing a leather mask”.

   Conducting this important research also brought me to Forgotten Bookmarks, a gift of a website where used bookseller Michael Popek charts the things he finds inside the antiquarian books he buys. Some of the best include a marriage certificate dated 18 October 1899, found in an 1850 copy of the Bible, and a recipe for cheese souffle, found in Charles Darwin: Evolution and Natural Selection. […]

   That was originally, of course, an isolated population of educated cheeses, who feasted on Darwin’s work and evolved into something more papery.

   […] As Tom Clayton at Melville House ponders, how on earth does this scenario come about? “You’re halfway through breakfast{…} And you’re enjoying your library book, too. But! Then! The phone rings in the other room. You ignore it. It rings again. And again. It must be urgent. There’s only one logical thing to do in this situation: pop some bacon in your book.” Or maybe not.

     † Whilst Kraft American is not British Industrial Cheddar, nor that stuff in spray bottles Whose Name Shall Not Be Mentioned, it is also not cheese. Or edible. And, contrary to Ms Holmes, it is not known to perish. Fortunately, it is also not known to reproduce, albeit there are reports of migratory behaviour, with entire packs being found lurking in shopping bags. And now, apparently, books.

4. blf says

   May 14, 2018 at 12:45 pm

   Teh Potato Wars (part something-in-the-zillions), New ‘frite’ stalls revive Belgian culinary claims over ‘French fries’:

   The age old cultural feud between Belgium and France over culinary claims to the universally-loved “frite” has sprouted a new battlefront on the streets of Brussels.
   […]
   To the more cynical observer, the project could appear akin to a nationalist ploy to bolster the claims of the Belgians over the French in their longstanding culinary war over who has rightful ownership of the “frite”.

   Historical proof behind the perennial question of who invented frites has been almost impossible to come by.

   According to one hypothesis, frites were invented in the 17th century by the people of Namur, in southern Belgium, when the town’s river froze and fish were replaced with potato slices.

   Another folk tale claims they first appeared on the Pont Neuf in Paris during the French Revolution.

   French and Belgians also disagree over how to eat them.

   In France, “frites” are generally served with a piece of meat and eaten with a knife and fork, whereas Belgians tend to eat them in cones and with their fingers.

   Nevertheless, frites — or chips, as the British call them — carry such cultural cache for the Belgians and the French that their competing claims for having invented the delicacy have even led to academic investigation.

   “Potato fries belong to the realm of street food for the poor, which is why it’s so difficult to establish a birth certificate,” French historian Madeleine Ferriéres told Le Point magazine back in 2013.

   […]

   While “French fries” has emerged as the name most commonly used around the world, the Belgians blame American soldiers stationed in French-speaking Wallonia during World War I for having dubbed their national dish with the “misnomer”.

   […]

   I started wondering if there is a Native American predecessor to the dish — potatoes are from the Americas and were eaten for thousands of years before the Europeans invaded — which turned into a related question, did pre-invasion peoples fry any of their food ? No idea on either point.

5. Raucous Indignation says

   May 14, 2018 at 5:16 pm

   Mmmmmm!

6. Ice Swimmer says

   May 14, 2018 at 7:40 pm

   This gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling. Boiled new potatoes with dill and butter. In a bit more than a month.

7. rq says

   May 15, 2018 at 1:36 am

   You are far too kind. (Co?)Incidentally, new potato season is nearly upon us, and the new dill has sprouted. Life, as we know it, has returned, and the circle of life remains unbroken.

8. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

   May 15, 2018 at 9:11 pm

   I’m actually not a big fan of dill, and yet I like fresh cilantro, which a lot of people seem to hate. Ah, well. Enjoy your potatoes, rq!