#lunch is served

[summerwages]

ms daisy mae...

[psycohousecat]

Brother can you spare a fish🐠 .. 😋😂

[toyastales]

Beef and Onion Stir Fry

[lotus-pear]

i think you guys are onto smth..

i unironically got invested in this HELP

[anyroads]

British people: these avocados must go they're past their prime please won't someone eat them

The avocados:

[krishoney]

Back and sides for biting

[menlove]

refuse to believe paul is straight bc what cishet man has that sense of fashion. this was before celebrities were constantly dressed by other people he was constantly just putting himself in the most insanely campy outfits of all time and walking out of the house like that

[feistyfuktoys]

[drugsforaddicts]

Thank you Dean

[the-magnusinstitute]

did y'all get my shipment of 10 pounds of gummy eels?

No, but we eagerly await them!

[secondbeatsongs]

new year, new food crime

I hate it when recipe bloggers tell you the entire rundown of their day before giving the recipe, so just to start off, I'm going to put this here:

3 cups of liquid (water + shrimp water) 3 packets unflavored gelatin 1 tbsp vegetable base (or a bouillon of some kind; that'd probably be fine) 1 large handful of shrimps (approx 20) 3 eggs, hard-boiled and sliced 1 small bag mixed frozen vegetables, thawed a gelatin mold or bowl with a capacity of 4 cups

now, looking at this ingredients list you might be asking, "hey SBS, what the fuck did you cook this time?" and to that I say: buckle up.

so I've been watching Arne & Carlos' videos for a bit, firstly because I was curious if they were gay (they seem to be), and secondly because I like their knitting patterns

but their channel isn't just knitting! they also cook together, and it's fun and chaotic, and one of the things they cooked…intrigued me.

I don't know how this dish is spelled. cabaret? kabaret? there are only a few recipes for it online, and most of those are not in english. but essentially, it is a Norwegian aspic with shrimp, vegetables, and hard-boiled egg in it.

what is aspic, you might ask? well, it's…I mean…it's meat jello. that's what it is. you cook meat for a while (some recipes say to use pig's feet, snout, etc), and it makes a gelatinous broth, which solidifies when it cools.

delightful!

however, I am not willing to make aspic from scratch for this, so I substituted it with unflavored gelatin packets. hooray!

(apparently in Norway, you can buy packets of instant aspic! but since you can't do that here, I looked up what ingredients are in instant aspic, and after putting them through google translate, decided "huh, seems like gelatin powder with some kind of bouillon", so that's how I ended up here)

this recipe isn't so much cooking as it is…construction. like sure, you heat up the gelatin, but after that it's pretty much just putting stuff together.

and apparently you can make this with pre-cooked or canned shrimp, but I only had the raw frozen kind, so I put them in a saucepan with just enough water to cover them, heated them until they were fully cooked, and then saved the water from the pan to mix in with the gelatin.

so, shrimpy water + enough water to make 3 cups of liquid, and then I mixed in vegetable base until it tasted…fine. (it didn't taste good, it just tasted…okay.)

then I heated up the liquid in the microwave (in a big 4-cup measuring cup), mixed in the three gelatin packets, and there you go! that's all of the cooking done.

now, for the assembly.

I put some of the shrimp all the way at the bottom of the jello mold, trying to arrange it so that it would look nice. I sliced the hard-boiled eggs, and put the prettiest slices of egg around the edges, sprinkling in some vegetables and pouring gelatin as I went.

…and then I gave up on being artistic, and just kinda lumped everything else in, and covered it with the gelatin mixture.

(unfortunately I didn't think to take pictures of the assembly portion of this, because I was multitasking at the time and got distracted, but you'll just have to trust me that it was a tolerable experience, and didn't look very interesting)

after that I chucked it into the fridge (gently), and left it alone while I streamed with makerrcat for a bit, stayed up way too late, and then passed out in a dramatic fashion.

13-ish hours later, I rescued it from its frigid prison.

hmmm

stare into the murky depths with me for a moment. look at this…nightmarish placid soup. this motionless broth.

one of my egg slices definitely didn't get covered all the way. 

ah, well.

to unmold this monstrosity, I put it in a bowl of hot water for a minute or so, until it seemed like it could pull away from the edges. it really didn't take much, so if you (god forbid) try this yourself, keep an eye on it. gelatin melts fast.

then I put a plate over the jello mold, and flipped it over.

after a few tense seconds, it released from the mold with a slimy kthnk sound.

carefully. nervously. I lifted the mold.

and then I let out an involuntary "oh!" because…

…it's kind of…eerily beautiful?

like in a horrifying sort of eldritch way, it looks…lovely

vegetables and shrimp and eggs, suspended not just in space but in time, preserved and surrounded by a gelatinous cocoon…

I just like staring at it, okay! I just think it looks cool! so here's another picture of it from the side:

the egg slices…the little bits of yolk…enchanting

it definitely smells like food. but it's unclear what kind. vaguely shrimp-vegetable-egg, but muddled

let's cut into it

oh. oh god. it made kind of a…squelch? when I cut it?

hold on, you have to experience this for yourselves

god. deeply unsettling.

now, seeing what the inside is like is kind of interesting! there are places where the gelatin has sort of splintered apart from being cut, and there are gaps where pieces of vegetable have fallen out.

but...how does it taste?

...

fuck.

I really like it

this bizarre combination of textures is weirdly satisfying! the squish of the egg and the gelatin, the slight crunch of the vegetables and shrimp, it's just…good?

the gelatin itself just tastes vaguely of broth, but I don't mind it! I don't know if I would eat it by itself, but with the shrimp, egg, and veggies, it's perfectly okay!

the shrimp, egg, and vegetables of course just taste (respectively) like shrimp, egg, and vegetables, but that's...fine? I like all of these things, so this is pretty enjoyable!

so, some of the recipes I managed to find mention serving it with sort of a mayo-mustard mix, so obviously I have to try that

this...helps? like, it tastes really pleasant?

not that it was bad before, but it remains an enjoyable experience!

and a video that I saw (but could not understand) seemed to show it served on a piece of bread, again with the mayo-mustard.

this is also fine! I enjoy this too! I don't feel like it needs the bread, but it's all right!

this is bizarre.

I think most people would probably hate this. it's got the look of a 1960s party food (which is probably what it is), and "meat jello" isn't a texture that modern society regularly enjoys, but…I love it.

I actually love this.

I kind of understand now why people call dishes like this a "jello salad", because…I mean, I'm eating it, and my brain is saying, "yup. this is a salad" and I have no fucking idea why, but this right here? salad. for sure.

cold, wet salad.

damp, even.

so like...is this objectively good food? probably not.

but is it fun to eat? I think so. 

it's refreshing, somehow. it's light, but also more filling than I expected it to be. I have no idea how much would be considered a reasonable serving, but I intend to figure it out as I go along.

so I'm not saying "go make this!" because although this combination of textures plays well with my brain in particular, I don't think that would be the case for everybody.

but I will be eating the rest of this.

weirdly? weirdly, it's just good.

-

an edit, a few days later:

I have done it. I have consumed the entire thing. and I enjoyed every bite of it.

in fact, I plan on making it again! probably more than once!

food crime? no. food…

(pauses to look up what the opposite of "crime" is)

…food blessing. food virtue. food achievement! food…benevolence.

this is what cabaret is.

at least, that's what it is to me.

(create and consume at your own risk.)

[mitskijamie]

Do you think Roy makes Jamie dinner?

Yes because his meal plan is so specialized that it's way easier for both of them if Roy just takes care of it (and also because Roy likes babying him, but he would rather scoop his own eyes out with melon ballers than tell Jamie that). Daddy's special football baby needs his special football dinner

[iwozlegit]

|| 🍍• Husk looks like he orders beige food at every possible establishment.

If it’s not chicken nugget shaped, that cat filing complaints.

[mousegirlheart]

Rip I have those wings at my local woolies and my mum buys them for me sometimes (she works there)

oh god PLEASE

[maraguanabana]

I need someone to send me if there's already one or to make a comparision, paralel or whatever the fuck those things are called of the pictures of Charles after winning Monza and Max after serving cunt outside of the press room. the ones taken from a high shot. you know the ones. please and thank you.

also feel free to tell me if I'm giving delulu. thank you.

[belle--ofthebrawl]

Rain "dark academia" and ifrit "dark star quarterback" and everyone else as dark cheerleaders. We need to expand dark academia to be more inclusive, this campus can't be all nerds.