This was inspired by visiting the home of a relative of a friend of a friend and finding nothing in the kitchen except a cooker that had never been used, a filth-encrusted microwave, a fridge full of cheap lager and crap and mountains of rotting take-out cartons.
These people would run screaming from a fresh vegetable.
I need not add (but I will anyway) that their living room consisted of a large sofa, a recliner, a fucking great TV and nothing else. Not a single book in the entire house.
And yes, they were fat; yes, they were ignorant and yes, they were belligerently right-wing, racist and disgusting.
Don't worry … I kept "Dive" on a leash and was polite for my hugely embarrassed friend's sake; we were only in there for a few minutes to pick up the friend of a friend and I certainly won't be going back.
But that got me thinking (as well as showering as soon as I got home) about something that people like that might be able to eat that would not try to kill them; indeed it may even encourage the growth of a brain cell.
So …
Today's post:
People who don't bother to prepare and cook fresh food from scratch every day are fucking weird (and don't give me the "no time" argument; I work full time and commute seven hours a day and I can still do it; so can they).
I just don't understand 'em.
Total losers.
They are mindless, lazy and lethargic; they're usually grossly overweight; they have health problems when they're older; their kids are hyperactive and allergic to life and it's all their own stupid fault.
People who eat pre-prepared supermarket crap or (God forbid) put junk food into their mouths should be denied medical treatment by law.
If they feed that crap to their children they should be prosecuted for child abuse.
They are true morons.
But sadly they do exist.
So today we'll be avoiding the hob and the oven and using one piece of the kitchen that those people are all too familiar with: the fridge.
I refuse to be PC about them; obesity is - in the vast majority of cases - a self-inflicted injury caused by greed and ignorance, sheer laziness and the denial of reality.
When we're in Norwich for breakfast on Saturdays we see a lot of fat fuckers waddling around with their globular progeny in orbit around them (at least they can keep an eye on their kids … it's impossible for the little buggers to escape their parents' gravitational pull).
Phil invariably gets the prognosis spot on: "They've got a problem with their feet … They can't keep 'em away from the fucking fridge."
Being the generous and charitable person that I am, today's post is my small gift to the lardy and lazy; something quick and healthy that doesn't involve any effort other than hauling their fat arses off the sofa and into the kitchen for a few minutes and finding a different use for their fridge.
Right …Let's start with some tuna.
Triple-A grade tuna from my old schoolfriend David the fishmonger.
I'd actually intended making sashimi but he didn't have any sashimi-grade fatty tuna belly last week so I got this instead. Yummier and far more tender than the usual tuna steak you'd use on the grill and fabulously flavourful.
Just ask your fishmonger a few days in advance and they'll get it in for you.
So …This is all there is to it:
Mix up a mess consisting of pulses of some sort … I chose cannellini beans but you can use whatever's to hand; chickpeas, any other pulse or maybe bulghur wheat.
Whatever …
Rip up some basil and coriander leaves (that's cilantro for the Colonials) and toss it in there with some REALLY good quality olive oil (not the crap you get in supermarkets … why, oh why? etc. …), the juice from half a lemon and a few black peppercorns you've pounded the crap out of with a pestle and mortar.
Some people might add some balsamic vinegar or some toasted pine nuts or chunked cucumber but I'm keeping it simple as it's to help simple people.
Some people might add salt, but they're twats. If you crave that crap, add it to your own plate at the table.
Now slice up your yummy raw tuna into whatever sized pieces you feel you will enjoy putting into your mouth and add it to the mess in the bowl.Give the whole lot a good mix with your fingers, then cling-film it and chuck it in the fridge.
The next day, bright and early, take a nice walk into the village and exchange the usual pleasantries with your baker.
If you don't live in a quaint little village with a great local bakery then perhaps it's time you considered moving house.
Buy some still-warm fresh rolls from him.
When you get home, fetch the bowl out of the fridge and let it sit for a while so it's not too chilled for the flavour of the tuna to come through.
Then simply empty the bowl onto a plate, add a couple of rolls, pour out some soy as a dippy-thang for the tuna and eat something satisfyingly filling yet mildly healthy for a change.This has been a public service announcement on behalf of fat lazy fuckers.
37 comments:
Sorry but you sound like Jamie Oliver!!!and you know my opinion some fat people have great personalities!!!!tee hee...
Looks absolutely satisfying dude!
Because I’m a wimp, and have trouble downing raw fish... I would add more green stuff.
Also, I do agree with the salt thing. People should season their own meals after the whole cooking thing has been done. One personal exception: coffee. It’s so addictive and disgusting simultaneously; you NEED to put fifty sugars in. ;)
Ew, mum! I dahn't sarnd loike vat East End git! Thank you VERY much!
And fat people NEED lovely personalities; they rarely HAVE them; they are as bitter, twisted and nasty as I am.
Hey, D!
Well, looks like going for sushi is out when you hit London then.
We can always go for coffee … and you can have my sugar.
I gave up salt decades ago for my health. It took two weeks of cold turkey and then suddenly I could taste FOOD! For the first time ever!
The downside is that I have to be really polite about other people's cooking when all it tastes of is salt.
Hey ....just remember who you are....not this nasty b you keep making out you are... that should upset you !!!!!and I hope you remember I do not cook with salt!!!!
The Tuna looks great by the way....
I know you don't cook with salt; that's why I can eat like a pig over at yours.
Have you caught Ame-itis, by the way??????????!!!!!!!!
I'm with you with the WHAT??? YOU DON'T COOK? And no, microwave cooking isn't cooking! But sorry - I don't do beans that way. I'd eat string beans and Baguio beans, but I'm not big on pulses really. However, you already know I love cooking AND baking. I also agree that obesity, unless it's caused by some rare hormone or some malfunctioning pituitary gland, then there is no excuse. Inasmuch as there is no excuse for people who smell! (Sorry, I had to add that. Pet peeve.)
Why don't you just come out and say what you feel, Dive, stop skirting around?
This looks thoroughly delicious and I cook tuna sometimes, it's so yummy and often forgotten.
However, and it's quite a large one, you do seem a little elitist here Dive. You talk about buying the best tuna steak, superior quality oil, having a chat with your fishmonger "have a word with him a few days and he'll get it in for you" and your local baker blah blah, all very lovely if you have the CASH ! Fact is, Dive, a lot of people do not. Hence the trip to the supermarket where things generally are a lot cheaper (and yes you can buy tuna steak there). In an ideal world, perhaps a good percentage of those people might jolly along to their individual grocers too, buy the best and enjoy the best. Who knows? Yes some would remain as Wayne and Waynetta, it's true, even with a lottery win. I do think you must remember though that people, a surprising and increasing amount of them, are struggling with budgets and skim past the virgin oil to the oversized ghastly catering pack of sludge, and bypassing the steak for a savoury mince dinner. Ugh, yes. Not through choice, many of them.
That said and excepted with respect, some of the habits you describe are deplorable and I agree with you in general! :)
I'm also a tad worried about our forthcoming picnic in Norfolk, should it happen. I have put on weight since being ill, which I am fighting but goodness, are only thin people allowed in your 'orbit'? (love that phrase by the way). Eek.
And whilst I don't subscribe to the sludge oil or horrible cheap meat myself and prefer nothing or veg and salad if I can't buy the good stuff, I also realise that some are attempting to buy the evening meal for 3 or 4 children too, not just themselves. Feeding a large family is costly. I was lucky enough not to face this problem when my three were small, but it didn't mean that I didn't see others who did.
Joy: Being anosmic, people who smell don't bother me … at least I don't think they do … I have no idea whether a person (or anything else for that matter) smells.
Lynn: I was dirt poor for decades (and am still struggling as I work for a charity at a far lower wage than were I in the private sector) and I learned early on that a small amount of something good is vastly preferable to a large amount of supermarket crap.
I like to keep my small, local traders in custom; supermarkets really are a false economy.
Invariably, those people I know who complain they cannot afford to buy real food for their families spend far more than their food budget on cigarettes and booze, satellite TV and mobile phones.
There may be a few exceptions but I've never met one.
You are more than welcome in my "orbit", as well you know; as long as you can put up with my sniping at the lazy and ignorant. Hee hee.
Oh, and do go and chat with your fishmonger and your baker (and your butcher and grocer and everybody else you would like to shop from); you'll find that real food is a lot cheaper than you think and you'll also find that these shops act as little social meeting places that help hold a community together.
Yes, your fishmonger will get stuff for you in advance and you'll probably get a little extra thrown in for being a good, regular customer.
Supermarkets are the spawn of satan's arse.
Dive's view might be my fault Lynn!!! John and I struggled when the boys were small, and of course in those days we did not have supermarkets...and I still go for less but quality rather than cheap and cheerful!!!!
But like Dive I have to resort to supermarkets for the mundane things....
And whatever your size I know for sure you would always be welcome here...and do not forget Dive is not a small chap!!!!!!
Well you'd think he was stick thin, Alifan! he he.
I am of the quality rather than quantity brigade too, fear not (AND I cook without salt - though occasionally use rock salt I admit!). However, I do still think there are many out there struggling to keep a roof over their heads, let alone trying to buy the best foods possible. I think to compare anything, it has to be a total comparison, in terms of time available (yes I know Dive has none of this during the week! but lots of people work well into the evening AND have many little ones to care for too). So chatting with local shopkeepers for the sole good of the community may be gorgeous to do but perhaps not at the top of some people's necessities. he he. We could go on all night I am sure, but at least I am safe in the knowledge that I don't have to become Victoria Beckham-like in order to share a coffee with the ranty Dive. lol ! x
I suppose suffice it to say that walking a mile in their shoes and them in yours would most likely be an eye opener for each!
"Not a small chap!"
I'll blame that on your baking!
Lynn: WHY have these lard-arses got hordes of kids?
I get so angry when successive governments take money from people who don't or can't have kids and give subsidies to those who breed like rabbits (family values my arse, Cameron).
I'm of the opinion (present company excepted, of course) that if anyone has more than one kid they should pay a carbon tax on it and that it is we non-breeders who should get the tax rebates for our responsible behaviour.
Families should be limited to two kids apiece and any surplus kids should be burned for electricity.
Hee hee.
This is fun!
I'm from a long line of people who can't cook. If I attempt to cook anything more complicated than steamed vegetables the kitchen ends up looking as if a bomb has hit it and I end up in tears. If other people have to eat my food, they end up in tears. So I get by on salads and beans on toast ... best solution all round really.
However, I did boil a couple of (organic) eggs for breakfast. Will that do?
Beans on toast is a perfectly nutritionally balanced vegetarian meal in itself, Betty.
And organic eggies? yum!
so many rules, sugar! ;) xoxoxo
(i'd still you know if given the chance!)
(and yes, somewhere between your mad rant and lynn's reality there is a happy medium that we can't seem to find.)
i do have to say, in agreement with lynn, i am truly happy that i don't have to be "victoria beckham-like" thin before my next trip to london! xoxox
From my perspective of a semi-gourmet cook, single mom working 47-50 hours a week with a scant 5 hour commute each week, I have to say sometimes I just don’t' F*$kin feel like cooking. Having said that, I started cooking a batch of pasta sauce yesterday morning at 8:00am with homemade pork, veal and ground round meatballs and organic sausage (with a liberal dose of Locatelli cheese thrown in as well as all the fresh herbs). I then moved on to coarse ground oatmeal raisin cookies (4 dozen) and finally ending my evening at 7:30pm cleaning squid for my grandmothers calamari recipe (it’s my dad’s birthday today-it is his favorite). I finished cleaning up at 10:30pm.
On the cost note here in the States it is cheaper to buy crap than quality for sure, especially if you are feed three teenagers.
Grilled Chicken 6 pieces of skinless breast meat $12.00
Fresh veggies (green beans, sautéed with garlic, crushed red $4.00
Pepper and couple tbs of olive oil
Salad, Romaine, tomatoes, cucumbers, onion, peppers $8.00
Costing +/- $25.00/week
Package of Hamburger Helper $2.79
Package of ground round $4.50
$7.30
Good healthy eating grocery bill for 7 days $175.00 which does not include, breakfast cereal, fruits, milk, coffee, toilet paper, shampoo etc. My average grocery bill a week is $250.00.
Just perspective Dive, darling!
Savannah: my rants are perfectly sane and reasonable! What on earth is wrong with burning surplus children for electricity?
And while we're at it, anyone too fat to sit in a train seat without spilling over on to my side of the armrest would serve the community far better if they were rendered down into cooking fat and glue.
Lynn (and Prudence): I am not getting at single mums on a low income struggling to make ends meet, I am moaning about those fat lardy bastards with their cinema-sized Sky TV (costing more a month than I spend on food) and their fucking mobile phones (costing about the same) and their kitchen full of rotting junk food containers. They must be far better off than I am to be able to afford to live like that; let alone the fags and beer they appeared to be getting through. They also had at least four kids (that I could see); all obese and eating greasy crap with their fingers from a bucket in front of the telly, and the government gives them a shit load of my taxes every month as a reward.
I'd go round there with a chainsaw except the thing would get clogged on fat before it did any damage.
Wow! That looks great!! I would be nervous about eating tuna you can get in land-clocked central Ohio without at least searing it first.
I love the line "allergic to life."
I suppose you're right, Robyn; a tuna would get pretty iffy taking the bus to Ohio!
I just don't know where to go with a comment here as I have run a whole gamut of emotions reading first your post and now those comments!!! Oh, and maybe it's just the particular day giving us the punctuation excesses, because I just wrote my mom an email with a million of 'em myself!!!!??????!!!!! heehee
Oh good, I'm back to laughter.
You have this way of writing that occasionally makes steam shoot out of my ears!!! Then, you'll throw out a funny and I try to remember your niceness on the other side. HOLY CROW it kills me how you think right winged conservative people are always racist idiot devils!!!!! Deep breath. Deep breath.
Let me get this straight. If your a leftist you want to provide all types of healthcare and free food to lazy fat people who can't hold down jobs. BUT, if you are a FAR FAR leftist Marxist you want to be able to completely take personal choice away and dole out the exact food rations and make them adhere to an exercise plan by law, sterilize them after having 1.6 children per household etc. etc.?????
I just don't get why that makes me the bad guy just wanting to make my own good or bad life choices with smaller govt. control. HMMMPH
I definitely don't agree we should reward people for poor choices and I guess that makes me right wing but no one improves their own situation by being handed everything they need on a nice embossed plate either.
We need to show compassion to people and help them without enabling them to self destruction. It is what any good parent does. It is what God does. No wait, God is WAY MORE FORGIVING and compassionate than any of us.
Oh dear I'm getting ranty now-it's contagious!!! That's funny, I was just thinking to myself that I haven't left any hideously long and opinionated comments here lately and off I went. Well, it does feel kind of nice to cut loose now doesn't it? Ok, carry on. I see the therapeutic effect it has now.
All that said, our sermon at church yesterday was on gluttony (in a series of the deadly sins). You can be fat or rail thin and still be a glutton and visa versa- ya know? Overeating is a particular struggle for many that gets overlooked as being a result of sin.
I personally battle sloth (and pride because who doesn't). Sometimes I am too lazy to fix a proper meal and eat and that keeps my weight down. :}
Ah well. Everyone has their rough spots with temptation AND tolerance don't we? It stinks......to some anyway. Sorry Dive.
Your mom is a corker. I like her so much. :)
Ok Dive. It seems like I heard once that the parties are slightly reversed over there. We DO agree on our feelings about families like that one you visited but those are usually the ones wanting free healthcare for their bad eating habits and handouts for their lazy ways.
I am still trying to digest why people always have to be so partisan in thinking but you just caught me at a bad time politically so I am a bit touchy. To me, Socialism is very close to Communism which = Hitler level ugliness and I feel like our Nation is trying to head that direction through the Democrats. Oh dear, I've got to quit typing before I get into deep trouble with my friends around here.
Ok, I'm not mad just curious and trying to clarify things in my head so forgive me if I sound off.
Still can't do the tuna but the bean mixture looks delish. :)
Enjoyed the pictures of you and the Benauts over at M.B.s site! Fun times!
Goodness what fun, all these opinions popping out at Dive! he he.
Dear Prudence, thank you for illustrating so succinctly the plight of we single mums. It IS a struggle in the way your costs have shown. Daily. Of course it depends how you define 'struggle'. I was moaning (yes we sometimes do) the other day to a friend about how difficult it all is at the moment - lost work through illness, no car, borrowed laptop, consequently in the red (i know, don't mean to do the violins, just illustrating) but this is how it is. "Oh i know," she said (I do love her to bits, BUT...!) "We're finding it awful too. The new car we just bought ....(17 year old daughter) only just scraped into the budget and I think we may even have to sell one of the horses!". I kid you not. Struggling is all relative. I think I can safely say that I'm with Prudence on this, rather than my friend. LOL ! You can imagine how speechless I was Prudence.
Oh and my brother's wife told me recently they'd had to cut their spending money by a third on their 3 week hols to Cyprus. Heart bleeds.
I do agree people should not have lots of children irresponsibly. Sometimes, however, circumstances change a lot in life. When I had my gorgeous 3 boys life was pretty damned good. Why wouldn't I have them, therefore, giving them each wonderful educations, oodles of love and a good lifestyle. Unfortunately, now and then things go tits up. lol. I still do the love bit in copious amounts, needless to say! he he...
Holey Moley what is going on here? See what pain does? Tolerance and compassion go flying out the window. Trust me, I know.
I like salt on my food; I prefer fresh but if I've forgotten to plan dinner it's that the drugs (prescription) have robbed me of my mind and if I'm famished, I'll eat just about anything, except, I admit, raw tuna.
I can cook quite well but sometimes my legs just won't support me in the kitchen and as I mentioned, I haven't planned anything and that slothful and lazy husband of mine can't cook or is too tired from blogging all night (like me). So, I take some atlantic salmon with a nice lemon pepper topping out of the freezer, pop it into the microwave for 5 minutes and bingo, ready to eat with some fresh salad (lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, onions, pine nuts, sultanas, avocado) which is hardly cooking now is it?
Ever tried buying canned cat food at your local cat feeder? Ever seen a cat feed store? How about the paper bags that the litter goes in?
I do buy most of my clothes locally though.
I've been poor, I've been rich, now I'm on a SELF-FUNDED invalid pension so I'm cash poor again. I've eaten home made rice pudding all week when I've only had train fare to get to work. I've worked two jobs to get what I wanted. I've also flown first class around the world (not on this last trip) and I've given buckets to charity too (not as much as Bill Gates - I feel the heckles rising - see my dear, we all have touchy points and you really should be in a debating team!! Besides, I've had a glimpse of the real you. It's horses for courses (ouch, you just slapped me for using a cliche). I didn't have kids so does that mean I get a carbon tax rebate?
Dive my dear, I understand your rant and your socialism and in a perfect world, we'd all be perfect people but it ain't and we ain't. BTW did I mention that we smoke?
Also forgot to mention that MB cooked some delicious sea bass tonight with broccoli, potatoes, carrots and pumpkin with a nice bread roll and icecream and apricot pie for dessert - the apricot pie came from the freezer section of the supermarket where that lazy man did the grocery shopping yesterday because I was driving my nephew home from hospital. It's not always laziness and ignorance that are responsible but then I know that you know that because I know you and you are the sweetest bloke on earth.
LOL - you are so fabulously witty when you're ranty. xxx Mme
Weeeeeeee! LOVE IT! I am trying so hard to stay away from this computer and keep cleaning my house but you all just keep pulling me back in mafia style. "Every time I try to get out.......":D
I'm making a frozen lasagna for dinner-oops-not terribly time intensive OR fresh is it? I guess I could drum up a salad to go with.
Shan, I think you need to be careful with confusing socialism with communism and then connecting Hitler with either. Hitler was a fascist, which is much closer to the severe right end of the scale than any where on the left.
I have to say, also, that in this highly bitter and partisan age, especially during this campaign, people on the right are very quick to call someone left of center a socialist as if they were calling them a witch worthy of burning. 1—socialism and the Democratic party are not one and the same. 2—socialism is not evil despite what McCain would like everyone to believe in his increasingly rabid attacks.
Poor Dive. All he wanted to do was show us a lovely tuna dinner.
Um...I think I still have Taco Bell breath and tonight Bing worked late, so I made grilled cheese sandwiches for Liv and me for our dinner.
We had oreos for dessert, Dive.
There...I think I have confessed it all. Wait. No. I also had two bites of a very greasy doughnut at work this morning.
But, I swear that I am not fat...yet.
Wow Dive,
I missed a fun one! I've been cooking and painting all weekend. While my ingredients are not as exotic as yours, I did manage to make a delicious cacciatore, a chicken,corn and noodle soup, and a lovely stock with the "buy one, get one free" chickens I bought. I'm a wee bit busy, but I was thinking I'd have fresh food to feed everyone for several days this week. Okay, I made apple pie after work this evening from delicious Rome and Empire apples fresh from the orchard.
You should open up your own cooking show! I'm glad we Yanquis aren't the only lard-asses in the world! I detest the lazy blobs who are glued to their big screen TVs.
And Dive, forgive me, but I'm a bit chubby in a Hobbit kind of way. (I'm short and rather round in middle age) When I saw the first LOTR movie, I swear I recognized some of my relatives. I tell my students I have to shave my feet. (just kidding)
Oh thank you Robyn and I'm sorry I spit that out so fast without knowing more about those different parties. I must have confused Stalin for Hitler because I have always thought of communism as where Hitler started. I was really trying to figure out what Dive means when he says the left is still too far right for him.
And yes this political season is getting everybody over here on the defense. I am not trying to sound extreme with MY views either. But I have lots of concern for the effectiveness socialized medicine and programs centralized and funded by the gov't as a whole. I spend a lot of money on my insulin pump and tubing, syringes, and the various meds I take (along with the specialists I see), and I am able to get further technology if I choose to budget for that through my private insurance. It really scares me for all of us to be on the government's clock to put us on a waiting list and have them be responsible for keeping medical technology updated.
I'd like people to be able to get insurance easier but not by being handled by our gov. like a tag agency. That is all. I like you guys and I don't want to start a fight with my ignorance. Truce? Or did I make it worse...sigh. It's 4:30am and I am no morning person.
Shan, not to hijack Dive's comment box, but he's away today—I don't see a need to call truce because there wasn't a war.
Americans have a lot to learn about what some people are calling socialized medicine. We've been told a few lies about it as far as how those in other countries have to wait to everything—just ask Dive. Besides that, what is being proposed at the moment is not enforced "socialized medicine" but a government insurance that is made available for those who otherwise would do without. Those who have insurance already will keep it, but the millions who do without insurance will now be able to find coverage, the majority of them anyway.
Take a look at Obama's plan on his website—I think you might be surprised that he's not proposing something that should cause you any alarm.
"I get so angry when successive governments take money from people who don't or can't have kids and give subsidies to those who breed like rabbits "
I agree with you on this one, dive. The answer is liberalism it's a sickness and it's growing at an unacceptable rate here in the states. I'm sick of it!!!
I lov your rant by the way. :)
BTW this post is classic dive. I have read it at least 3 times and enjoy it more each time. Probably one of my all time favorites.
you knw it's a winner when I link it to my blog.
Rich: I am inordinately proud.
You're the man!
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