food – Dan Q

Ten Pointless Facts About Me

This has been doing the rounds; I last saw it on Kev’s blog. I like that the social blogosphere’s doing this kind of fun activity again, these days¹.

1. Do you floss your teeth?

Umm… sometimes? Not as often as I should. Don’t tell my dentist!

Usually at least once a month, never more than once a week. I really took to heart some advice that if you’re using a fluoridated mouthwash then you shouldn’t do it close to when you brush your teeth (or you counteract the benefits), so my routine is that… when I remember and can be bothered to floss… I’ll floss and mouthwash, but like in the middle of the day.

And since I moved my bedroom (and bathroom) one floor further up our house, it’s harder to find the motivation to do so! So I’m probably flossing less. The unanticipated knock-on effect of extending your house!

2. Tea, coffee, or water?

I love a coffee to start a workday, but I have to be careful how much I consume because caffeine hits me pretty hard, even after a concentrated effort over the last 10 years or so to gradually increase my tolerance. I can manage a couple of mugs in the morning and be fine, now, but three coffees… or any in the mid-afternoon onwards… and I’m at risk of throwing off my ability to sleep later².

I keep a bottle of water wherever I work to try to encourage myself to hydrate, because I’ve got medical evidence to show that I don’t drink enough water! It sometimes works.

3. Footwear preference?

Basic trainers for everyday use; comfortable boots for hiking; slippers for when I’m working. Nothing special.

I wear holes in footwear (and everything else I wear) faster than anybody I know, so nowadays I go for good-value comfort over any other considerations when buying shoes.

A French Bulldog looks-on guiltily at a hand holding the remains of a pair of slippers that have been thoroughly shredded. — One time it was the dog’s fault that my footwear fell apart, but usually they do so by themselves.

4. Favourite dessert?

Varies, but if we’re eating out, I’m probably going to be ordering the most-chocolatey dessert on the menu.

5. The first thing you do when you wake up?

The very first thing I do when I wake up is check how long it is before I need to get up, and make a decision about when I’m going to do so. I almost never need my alarm to wake me: I routinely wake up half an hour or so before my alarm would go off, most mornings. But exactly how early I wake directly impacts what I do next. If I’m well-rested and it’s early enough, I’ll plan on getting up and doing something productive: an early start to work, or some voluntary work for Three Rings, or some correspondence. If it’s close to the time I need to get up I’ll more-often just stay in bed and spend longer doing the actual answer I should give…

…because the “real” answer is probably: pick up my phone, and open up FreshRSS – almost always the first and last thing I do online in a day! I’ll skim the news and blogosphere and “set aside” for later anything I’d like to re-read or look at later on.

6. Age you’d like to stick at?

Honestly, I’m good where I am, thanks.

Sure, I was fitter and healthier in my 20s, and I had more free time in my early 30s… and there are certainly things I miss and get nostalgic about in any era of my life. But conversely: it took me a long, long time to “get my shit together” to the level I have now, and I wouldn’t want to have to go through all of the various bits of self-growth, therapy, etc. all over again!

So… sure, I’d be happy to transplant my intellect into 20-year-old me and take advantage of my higher energy level of the time for an extra decade or so³. But I wouldn’t go back even a decade if it meant that I had to go relearn and go through everything from that decade another time, no thanks!

7. How many hats do you own?

Four. Ish.

They are:

A bandana. Actually, I own maybe half a dozen bandanas, mostly in Pride rainbow colours. Bandanas are amazingly versatile: they fold small which suits my love of travelling light these last few years, they can function as headgear, dust mask, neckerchief, flannel, etc.⁴, and they do a pretty good job of keeping my head cool and protecting my growing bald spot from the fierce rays of the summer sun.
A “geek” hat. Okay, I’ve actually got three of these, too, in slightly different designs. When they first started appearing at Oxford Geek Nights, I just kept winning them! I’m not a huge fan of caps, so mostly the kids wear them… although I do put one on when I’m collecting takeaway food so I can get away with just putting e.g. “geek hat” in the “name” field, rather than my name⁵.
A warm hat that comes out only when the weather is incredibly cold, or when I’m skiing. As I was reminded while skiing on my recent trip to Finland, I should probably switch to wearing a helmet when I ski, but I’ve been skiing for three to four decades without one and I find the habit hard to break.⁶
A wooly hat that I was given by a previous employer at a meetup in Mexico last year. I wore it a couple of times last winter but it’s otherwise not seen much use.

8. Describe the last photo you took?

The last photo I took was of myself wearing a “geek” hat. You’ve seen it, it’s above!

But the one before that was this picture of an extremely large bottle of champagne, with a banana for scale, that was delivered to my house earlier today:

A six-litre bottle of champagne, wrapped in bubble wrap and surrounded by packing peanuts, in a wooden transport case, with a banana resting atop it. — A 6-litre champagne bottle is properly-termed a Methuselah, after Noah’s grandad I guess.

Ruth and JTA celebrate their anniversary every few years with the “next size up” of champagne bottle, and this is the one they’re up to. This year, merely asking me to help them drink it probably won’t be sufficient (that’d still be two litres each!) so we’re probably going to have to get some friends over.

I took the photo to send to Ruth to reassure her that the bottle had arrived safely, after the previous attempt went… less well. I added the banana “for scale” before sharing the photo with some other friends, too.

A wooden case containing a completely smashed 6-litre champagne bottle. — The previous delivery… didn’t go so well. 😱

9. Worst TV show?

PAW Patrol. No doubt.

You know all those 1980s kids TV shows that basically existed for no other purpose than as a marketing vehicle for a range of toys? I’m talking He-Man (and She-Ra), Transformers, G.I. Joe, Care Bears, M.A.S.K., Rainbow Brite, and My Little Pony. Well, those shows look good compared to PAW Patrol.

3D render of a boy and six dogs (each dressed as a representative of a different service) - the PAW Patrol. Ugh. — Six pups, each endowed with exactly one personality trait⁷ but a plethora of accessories and vehicles which expands every season so that no matter how many toys you’ve got, y0u’re always behind the curve.

I was delighted when our kids graduated from PAW Patrol to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic because it’s an enormously better show (the songs kick ass, too) and we could finally shake off the hollow, pointless, internally-inconsistent advertisement that is PAW Patrol.

10. As a child, what was your aspiration for adulthood?

This is the single most-boring thing about me, and I’ve doubtless talked about it before. At some point between the age of about six and eight years old, I decided that I wanted to grow up and become… a computer programmer.

And then I designed the entirety of the rest of my education around that goal. I learned a variety of languages and paradigms under my own steam while setting myself up for a GCSE in IT, and then A-Levels in Maths and Computing, and then a Degree in Computer Science, and by the time I’d done all of that I was already working in the industry: self-actualised by 21.

Like I said: boring!

Your turn!

You should give this pointless quiz a go too. Ping/Webmention me if you do (or comment below, I suppose); I’d love to read what you write.

Footnotes

¹ They’re internet memes, in the traditional sense, but sadly people usually use “meme” nowadays exclusively to describe image memes, and not other kinds of memetic Internet content. Just another example of our changing Internet language, which I’ve written about before. Sometimes they were silly quizzes (wanna know what Meat Loaf song I am?); sometimes they were about you and your friends. But images, they weren’t: that came later.

² Or else I’ll get a proper jittery heart-flutter going!

³ I wouldn’t necessarily even miss the always-on, in-your-pocket, high-speed Internet of today: the Internet was pretty great back then, too!

⁴ Obviously an intergalactic hitch-hiker should include a bandana, perhaps as well as an equally-versatile towel, in their toolkit.

⁵ It’s not about privacy, although that’s a fringe benefit I suppose: mostly it’s about getting my food quicker! If I walk into Dominos wearing a geek hat and they’ve got pizza on the counter with a label on it that says it’s for “geek hat”, they’ll just hand it over, no questions, and I’m in-and-out in seconds.

⁶ JTA observed that similar excuses were used by people who resisted the rollout of mandatory seatbelt usage in cars, so possibly I’m the “bad guy” here.

⁷ From left to right, the single personality traits for each of the pups are (a) doesn’t like water, (b) is female, (c) likes naps, (d) is allergic to cats, (e) is clumsy, and (f) is completely fucking pointless.

Vihreät Kuulat

Second “surprising Finnish confectionary” is Vihreät Kuulat Jaffa Cakes. I ran vihreät kuulat through a translation tool and apparently it means “green balls”, which doesn’t tell me much.

Knowing it was neither lime nor apple (which were also available in the supermarket I visited) I had to try them, but I couldn’t place the flavour. They were tasty, though. We finished eating them before I looked it up.

Turns out it’s pear flavour, which apparently I have a blind spot for (back in 2013 at an “eat mystery food in the dark” restaurant I failed to identify that I was eating poached pears for dessert).

Now I need to be on the lookout for actual green balls.

Finnish Haribo

Buying a bag of Haribo in Finland, I shouldn’t have been surprised (given the country’s love of salmiakki) that the black ones were liquorice flavoured.

And yet somehow, when I chucked a handful onto my mouth, I was.

(Not in a bad way. But definitely in a surprised way.)

Hot Boxes

I’d never put much thought into it before but a slow cooker is basically the opposite of an air frier.

They’re both relatively small (compared to an oven) hot boxes for cooking food. But an air frier uses the small space to contain as much energy as possible in thir vicinity of the food, while the slow cooker aims to maintain as low a temperature as possible until the food finally cooks itself out of boredom.

Anyway, this is going to be pulled pork in like 8-10 hours. 😋

Hexagonal Cheese Scones

Duration 1:33

Podcast Version

This post is also available as a podcast. Listen here, download for later, or subscribe wherever you consume podcasts.

The cheese scones from
My local supermarket
Are hexagonal.

It’s not for packing.
Their film-covered rectangle
Leaves corner gaps.

Are perhaps they made
In honeycomb baking tins?
Baked by bumblebee?

Or else it’s branding.
A visual identity.
Trying to sell more.

A six-sided scone
Does not taste better to me,
Nor warm up faster.
The butter doesn’t care
For the shape of your scone,
Mr. John Sainsbury.

Bagelicious

Maybe I’m just hungry, but this morning’s breakfast bagel with brie looks especially scrumptious, right?

Quesapizza-pizza

A quesapizza is a quesadilla, but made using pizza ingredients: not just cheese, but also a tomato sauce and maybe some toppings.

A quesapizza-pizza is a pizza… constructed using a quesapizza as its base. Quick to make and pretty delicious, it’s among my go-to working lunches.

The one you see above (and in the YouTube version of this video) is topped with a baked egg and chilli flakes. It might not be everybody’s idea of a great quesapizza-pizza, but I love mopping up the remainder of the egg yolk with the thick-stuffed cheese and tomato wraps. Mmm!

Order of the Beast

Went to Wagamama. Accidentally made the “Order of the Beast”.

(Plus a similar side, for those who read binary.)

Bagel Holes

I’ve eaten “doughnut holes”, but I’ve never seen anybody market “bagel holes”. Untapped opportunity? 🤔

Buldak

We’ve been enjoying the latest season of Jet Lag: The Game, which has seen Sam, Ben, and Adam playing “Snake” across South Korea’s rail network. It’s been interestingly different than their usual games, although the format’s not quite as polished as Hide & Seek or Tag Eur It, of course.

Framegrab from Jet Lag: The Game, showing Adam Chase, a young white man, sitting in a South Korean urban centre, blindfolded, holding chopsticks and preparing to eat from three bowls of instant noodles, captioned Buldak, Buldak Stew, and Carbonara. — The Taste Test Buldak roadblock required the Snaker player to do a blindfolded identification of three different noodle flavours.

In any case: after episode 4 and 5 introduced us to Samyang Foods‘ Buldak noodles, JTA sourced a supply of flavours online and had them shipped to us. Instant ramen’s a convenient and lazy go-to working lunch in our household, and the Jet Lag boys’ reviews compelled us to give them a go¹.

In a kitchen, a hand holds a purple foil packet of Samyang Buldak noodles, "Habenero Lime" flavour. — Buldak (불닭) literally means “fire chicken”, and I find myself wondering if the Korean word for domestic chickens (닭 – usually transliterated as “dak”, “dalg”, or “tak”) might be an onomatopoeic representation of *the noise a chicken makes*?²

So for lunch yesterday, while I waited for yet another development environment rebuild to complete, I decided to throw together some noodles. I went for a packet of the habanero lime flavour, which I padded out with some peas, Quorn³, and a soft-boiled egg.

It was spicy, for sure: a pleasant, hot, flavourful and aromatic kind of heat. Firey on the tongue, but quick to subside.

So now I’m keen to try some of the other flavours (some of which we’ve got). But perhaps not the one that was so spicy it got banned in Denmark last year.

Anyway: I guess the lesson here is that if you want me to try your product, you should get it used in a challenge on Jet Lag: The Game.

Footnotes

¹ I suppose it’s also possible that I was influenced by K-Pop Demon Hunters, which also features a surprising quantity of Korean instant noodles. Turns out there’s all kinds of noodle-centric pop culture .

² Does anybody know enough Korean to research the etymology of the word?

³ I checked the ingredients list and, as I expected, there’s no actual chicken in these chicken noodles, so my resulting lunch was completely vegetarian.

Philadelphia

Shower thought for the morning was: why is cream cheese spread ‘Philadelphia’ called that? Is it from Philadelphia? (My box isn’t, of course: it came from Ireland.)

Nope, it turns out that it was originally invented in New York in the 19th century and named for Philadelphia because Philadelphia, PA was at that point famous for its dairy industry. Just another bit of parasitic branding leveraging a borrowed association, like the Quaker Oats guy or the Rolls Razor. Now I’m wondering how many other examples I can find!

Kebab Menu Accessibility

Hanging with my team at our meetup in Istanbul, this lunchtime I needed to do some accessibility testing…

(with apologies to anybody who doesn’t know that in user interface design, a “kebab menu” is one of those menu icons with a vertical line of three dots: a vertical ellipsis)

Bean chilli breakfast pizza

Breakfast today will make use of leftovers to produce a bean chilli pizza. This’ll work, right?

Update: yeah. This works.😋

The Blind Piemaker

Ruth bought me a copy of The Adventure Challenge: Couples Edition, which is… well, it’s basically a book of 50 curious and unusual ideas for date activities. This week, for the first time, we gave it a go.

Open book showing a scratch-off panel, whose contents read: Find your favonte pie recipe and gather the ingredients. Blindfold your partner. Now, guide them through the process of making a pie. No instructive sentences are allowed, you can only guide them with your hands. (Don't say "pick this up" or 'drop that", find a different way to communicate - only through touch). You can only touch your blindfolded partner's hands or body - NOTHING ELSE (ingredients, utensils, dishes, etc). IMPORTANT: this challenge works best when you follow these instructions as strictly as possible. — Each activity is hidden behind a scratch-off panel, and you’re instructed not to scratch them off until you’re committed to following-through with whatever’s on the other side. Only the title and a few hints around it provide a clue as to what you’ll actually be *doing* on your date.

As a result, we spent this date night… baking a pie!

The book is written by Americans, but that wasn’t going to stop us from making a savoury pie. Of course, “bake a pie” isn’t much of a challenge by itself, which is why the book stipulates that:

One partner makes the pie, but is blindfolded. They can’t see what they’re doing.
The other partner guides them through doing so, but without giving verbal instructions (this is an exercise in touch, control, and nonverbal communication).

Dan, wearing a black t-shirt, smiles as he takes a selfie. Alongside him Ruth, wearing a purple jumper, adjusts a grey blindfold to cover her eyes. — I was surprised when Ruth offered to be the blindfoldee: I’d figured that with her greater experience of pie-making and my greater experience of doing-what-I’m-told, that’d be the smarter way around.

We used this recipe for “mini creamy mushroom pies”. We chose to interpret the brief as permitting pre-prep to be done in accordance with the ingredients list: e.g. because the ingredients list says “1 egg, beaten”, we were allowed to break and beat the egg first, before blindfolding up.

This was a smart choice (breaking an egg while blindfolded, even under close direction, would probably have been especially stress-inducing!).

Dan takes a selfie showing himself, smiling, and Ruth, wearing a blindfold and balling up pastry on a wooden worksurface. — I’d do it again but the other way around, honestly, just to experience both sides! `#JustSwitchThings`

I really enjoyed this experience. It forced us into doing something different on date night (we have developed a bit of a pattern, as folks are wont to do), stretched our comfort zones, and left us with tasty tasty pies to each afterwards. That’s a win-win-win, in my book.

Plus, communication is sexy, and so anything that makes you practice your coupley-communication-skills is fundamentally hot and therefore a great date night activity.

Plate containing four beautifully-browned but slightly lopsided pies, held in a woman's hands. — Our pies may have been wonky-looking, but they were also delicious.

So yeah: we’ll probably be trying some of the other ideas in the book, when the time comes.

Some of the categories are pretty curious, and I’m already wondering what other couples we know that’d be brave enough to join us for the “double date” chapter: four challenges for which you need a second dyad to hang out with? (I’m, like… 90% sure it’s not going to be swinging. So if we know you and you’d like to volunteer yourselves, go ahead!)

Step #1

I have A Plan for today. Step #2 involves a deep-dive into Algolia search indexing, ranking, and priority, to understand how one might optimise for a diverse and complex dataset.

So obviously step #1 involves a big ol’ coffee and a sugary breakfast. Here we go…