Mazza d'Evill

What foods were you brought up on through your childhood? And do you still eat it today?
My mom used to cook a lot of Italian food. And not just pasta and pizza (the things Italy is famous for), but also the less known stuff. I was also raised with tons of fresh food. My parents have a large vegetable garden, which means they rarely ever buy vegetables at the grocery store. We just ate what was available that season. My mom is a pretty good cook who loves to cook quite extensively, especially on weekends.


Is there any cuisine that you have yet to try but would like to give it a go?
I have never had sushi yet, even though I love tuna and salmon, and sashimi is one of my favorite things. I just love fish, in general. So I'd like to try that.
Well.. I don't know. I think I've tasted a lot of different cuisines in my life. I like spicy food (not necessarily 'hot', but with the use of many different spices), India has one of my favorite cuisines. Mexico also (real Mexican, not just TexMex ). I don't know.. there probably still are a number of cuisines I haven't tried yet but would love to, but I can't really think of any. Perhaps I just need to 'walk into them' by coincidence some time

What foods do you think make the world go round and you want to master cooking it, perhaps?
Mmm... I just LOVE the variety of different tastes throughout the world. That's what makes the world go round
What I would love to master a bit more would be the 'persian' / middle eastern cuisine, with lots of vegetables and spices (Ottolenghi is one of my favorite cooks) and stuff. And also the Indian cuisine. Making a good curry isn't even that hard, but I would love to get to know the variety in different Indian dishes a bit better.

Which foods do you dislike?
Dishes: "hutspot" (= Dutch dish consisting of mashed potatoes, onions and carrots )

Specific products:
Mushrooms (except truffle )
Most sea food except for fish
Organ meat (except pâté)

Do you eat a fast good restaurants or do you prefer homemade?
Depends. I like going to restaurants for different reasons: to eat stuff I wouldn't make myself (a bit "haute cuisine" stuff for example, though I prefer to eat "simpler" stuff), or when they have a dish that I really like and they make it better than I do, or - like with Indian food or tapas - it's too much different small dishes.
Or or or...
But no, I don't like fast food restaurants, I wouldn't even like to call them "restaurants" (assuming "good" should be "food" in the question )

I don't agree with Future Husband of Kelly on the concept of restaurants (unless your only talking about fast food, because then I'd totally see your point Brrrr..). In a good restaurant, your dish is certainly prepared with love, often even more so than at home (especially when yoi're not that great of a cook or don't really like to cook). And in the restaurants I like most, the atmosphere is usually very good, but then again, I'm really a 'being among (strange) people' person, so... I like to trust that the people cooking for me are doing it out of their enthousiasm for good food, and know how to prepare food in a way everyone can enjoy it. I love the concept of restaurants.
But we're all different people in the end I can understand if you not comfortable with strangers cooking your food. And I do agree on that when talking about fast food "restaurants" where people "cook" for you on minimum wage, without much joy.

sunnykerr

At the risk of sounding insane, what's wrong with hutspot?

I've never had it, mind you. Never heard of it till just now. But, I'm looking at the ingredients you've listed and I'm thinking "Mashed potatoes? Awesome! Carrots? Love it. Onions? Perfection...."

Of course, I see that you like spicy things and maybe that's all there is to it. I'm really not judging. I'm just curious.

Foods with a high water content are probably even better for hydration than water, since your body has to break them down and so the water doesn't "just" flush itself out.

But fermented drinks, while obviously not bad, must be handled with awareness. For instance, people like me, who have a tendency towards acidosis, need to handle them with extreme care.

It's like anything, I suppose. Juice has a lot of sugar, coffee and tea have their own downsides, ditto alcohol. People with dairy issues need to stay away from milk, etc.

Ooooh, nice. Love those.

And now I'm also thinking about chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

I'm not usually a big fan of ice cream, but that one is a guilty pleasure, for sure.

Future husband of Kelly.

Acidosis is a very rare condition and it is not neccessarily feeling acid and getting heart burn etc like many think it is. Acidosis is actually caused when the kidneys and respiratory systems are broken down and the bones are being stripped in order to save one's life, but the acidosis term that is commonly used is actually not correct. I could post over 100 pages of scientific and medical refs to prove everything l say, but i'll save that for my book.

I may be covering a section on acidosis in my book or next book, but in the mean time people may want to listen to this video covering the alkaline/acid food nonsense being promoted in the diet world along with the alkaline water disinfo that has conned society..

The Alkaline Myth & Hype- The Acid-Alkaline Truth Exposed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O6GhVCvVgE


I am not saying you are incorrect, but l am saying the acidosis is often misdiagnosed by doctors etc because they are poorly educated in these areas, and most show evidence that they don't read the medical literature. Again, acidosis is a rare condition and can be life threatening. Note: the body must maintain a Ph balance within a certain narrow level to survive, and if one goes into acidosis one can die withion a very short time.

sunnykerr

Indeed, no one should go about self-diagnosing. Hence my referring to my own experience, with a medically identified tendency towards acidosis.

Plain acidosis isn't as rare as you seem to think it is, though. It means that the blood pH leans towards the acidic side of things. Left to fester and develop, it will then, eventually, in due course, develop into the types of collapses you describe (which I've been told doctors refer to as acedemia, aka chronic acidosis leading to systemic collapse). But it's not just once you're there that a doctor will look at your blood tests and go, "OK, fine, now I'm willing to call it acidosis."

When you write about it in your next book, you may want to look into what the actual medical literature out there has to say about the links between severe asthma and acidosis, too. That's how I came to learn about it.

I don't have a medical degree. Which is why I'm not sitting here pretending to be an expert on the subject. But it has touched my life, so I'm gonna share my experience of it.

Future husband of Kelly.

Metabolic acidosis is when the kidneys don't remove enough acid from the body and is a common finding in severe asthma according to an old 1990 paper. The situation behind it all is quite complex and would take a lot of investigation into the individual to try and solve the problem.

And imo, if you have under performing kidneys and severe asthma it is a double whammy for acidosis to occur because it could involve both respiratory acidosis and metabolic acidosis, but l need to look into that much more. Acidosis is a really complex and big subject,and no-one is expert in this area because the research is still only in it's early stages.

We still can't even measure acid foods correctly yet and are still largely stuck in the dark ages due to Wachman's old 1968 acid/alkaline theory. You'd be amazed at how many scientists and doctors are still stuck in the old times and still aren't ableto see the shortcomings of the theory, and the modern education doesn't seem any more up to date on the subject either. And it is the same old story with the Ph D's...there are good Ph D students but there are still many bad Ph D students who are poorly researched and seemingly lazy.....when you spend much time reading the research to get to learn what papers they read and what they haven't,and before long you start to see massive short comings in wikipedia info for medical info.

sunnykerr

The last 25 years (going from the date of that "old" paper you found) have at least revealed that there is a difference between metabolic acidosis and plain old acidosis.

I had severe asthma as a child, which created the conditions for the acidosis. It was never metabolic, ie it never became acedemia. But it was diagnosed.

My asthma's been under control since I was a teenager, and the tendency to develop acidosis was mostly controlled before that; but that followed a lot of changes in habits, particularly in terms of food and beverages.

Which brings us back to the topic of this thread: food. Not medical conditions neither you nor I are qualified to discuss.

Since this is a thread for foodies, what would be your favourite food indulgence, then? What's your ideal feast?

Mazza d'Evill

I don't mind! I just think it's tasteless. Potatoes: sort of sweet. Carrots: sweet. Onions: sweet-ish. It's just one big pile of sweet stuff without much taste and texture Yuck. I know most people in The Netherlands tend to disagree with this opinion and say that if you just put lots of black pepper on it and serve it with bacon/lard and gravy it's 'delicious', but yeah, no, not my thing There are other "Dutch" dishes (we don't really have our own cuisine, just a couple of dishes that are a bit old fashioned but still loved by a lot of people) I do like, like "Boerenkool" (translation: "farmer's cabbage"): mashed potatoes (yes, all "Dutch" dishes have mashed potatoes ) with sliced kale/borecole, usually served with a touch of white vinegar, gravy and "rookworst" ("smoked sausage").

One of my favorite dishes in summer that's really easy to make is a couscous salad (can be made with a lot of other things next to couscous though: quinoa, bulgur, rice... whatever you prefer). JUst prepare the couscous with some stock and finish it off with some olive oil and lemon or lime juice. And then add pieces of tomato, onion (gives a lot of flavour, but I prefer not to add too much, because my stomach and intestines seem not to like raw onion too much ), cucumber and some capers, feta cheese (or "white salad cheese"), and and couple of jalapeño rings. And just finish it off with fine sliced dill. Yum.

i never learn

What foods were you brought up on through your childhood? And do you still eat it today?

mostly frozen. hell no! that processed crap will kill you.

Is there any cuisine that you have yet to try but would like to give it a go?

not really. i know what i like, which is mostly mediterranean and thai. a general rule of thumb for me is, if the smell makes me want to upchuck, i won't put it in my mouth.

What foods do you think make the world go round and you want to master cooking it, perhaps?

italian, mediterranean and chinese imo, but no, i'm already a decent cook. i make the best salmon ever. i feel like my rice needs work, but i cook for everyone.

Which foods do you dislike?

anything german.

Do you eat a fast good restaurants or do you prefer homemade?

homemade, but i've been going out a lot lately and i hate that. everything is so much more healthy and sanitary when you cook it at home.

sunnykerr

^ I like your rule of thumb regarding the smell of food.

Well, that sounded like my cup up of tea (if you remove the cheese and tomatoes), right until the jalapeño rings.

So I think that it is officially confirmed. I like bland foods. And I'll say you like food that's spicy, but compared to my palate, anything's spicy, so maybe that's not how you would put it.

Thanks for the explanation on the hutspot. Sounds delicious to me. Of course, I can't think of a single meal that wouldn't improved by included potatoes... except maybe sushi.

Mazza d'Evill

You can also remove the jalapeño rings. I happen to forget them often anyways

Oh well, taste is personal I know a lot of people who don't like the slightest taste of spices, except salt Dutch food is usually very bland, and has lots of potato in it. We have so many potatoes in this country

sunnykerr

I'm under no impression that my palate is super broad. After all, I've been known to find something too spicy because it had a lot of basil in it.



I think it does go back, to a certain extent anyway, on the what we eat growing up. I grew up in a house with no spices whatsoever. Just herbs. And pretty much every dish was accompanied by mashed potatoes or other root vegetables, as far as I can remember.

I mean, I know that's simplifying things a bit. Plenty of people, my brother included, have found ways to expand their tastebuds beyond what they were brought up eating. For whatever reason, that still hasn't happened with me.

I'll eat pretty much anything (so long as I'm not allergic or have dietary restrictions). It's not even that I don't like spicy food. It just overwhelms my tastebuds and I literally can't taste beyond the heat or around it, or however it is that other people do it.

I like Indian food, and what I've had of it (even though it's obviously nowhere near the really spicy stuff) has always rated as way spicy to me. So obviously, it's not the spice that I don't like.

Sunrise at Midnight

Tastebuds are weird things before chemo I ate semi spicy food with no problem...somewhere along the way they changed their mind. I can crave it, eat it but I don't like it like I used to but then again I we went though having to put lemon on everything or suck lemon drops before eating to balance the metallic taste I couldn't shake for awhile.

sunnykerr

I had something similar-ish happen to me when I was 11 and I had minor brain surgery.

Up until then, I had always hated melted cheese, the same way that I hated pretty much all cheese.

You know how you can't eat anything for 12 or 14 hours before surgery? Well, that surgery was delayed a little and, but the time I went in, I was starving. And, for whatever reason, by the time I came out, I was craving pizza.

And I've loved pizza ever since, even though the melted cheese aspect meant I couldn't stand it before.

Still can't deal with cheese for the most part, but pizza is fine. Go figure.

sunnykerr

I just had my first taste of this new recipe I tried and I had to come here to express my joy.

I don't even like food half the time. (I'm totally a "eat to live" sorta gal most days.)

And this salmon in a citrusy cream sauce? Pure deliciousness.

I'm so glad I've got four more portions waiting for me in the freezer.

BlackSapphire

I totally forgot I created this thread.

Kali, seen as as nobody are answering the questions anymore (which is perfectly fine because my question were no good ) is there any chance of tweaking the title?