Strawberry cheese?
Friday, 13. April 2007, 20:13:16
I have eaten strawberry cheesecake. But today I met something new to me at breakfast...
I am at a meeting, again. One of the perils of travelling to meetings is that a lot of what I eat is airline food, or meeting food, and that leaves me to the vagaries of what is on offer.
I am not terribly fussy, in that I can eat more or less anything (although I don't like watermelon and I really didn't learn to like McDonalds). I don't like watermelon. I also find it hard to eat too much bread and potatoes. My natural instinct is to eat more or less healthy food, rounded out by a wine or beer and/or followed by a nice digestif just a little much to qualify as any kind of health nut.
I am also an adventurous eater. I have never swallowed a live mammal or part of one, (unless you count sucking on my bleeding thumb when I mash it with a hammer), nor eaten chocolate covered ants or worms, but I will try pretty mu anything other people eat. I have eaten jellyfish, and lots of raw things, and assorted insects, and various things without knowing what they are. So if I have a rough idea of what I expect something to be, I just eat it.
This morning's breakfast offering at the meeting was bagels, cream cheese, and sweet pastries. I am in the US, where somehow the meeting food seems to be heavily standardised, and revolves around sandwiches. So I took a bagel and some cream cheese, and didn't really think about it.
Until I opened the little plastic tub of cheese, and it was pink inside.
Pink! BRIGHT PINK. I looked again. It was strawberry flavoured cream cheese. The ingredients do include strawberry, which is nice to see. Just after sugar, and before "modified food starch, natural flavor, red 40".
One of the things I like about cooking is knowing roughly what I am eating. Soy sauce is made from fermented things, yoghourt and cheese are made of milk that has gone off, and good apple crumble has an unhealthy amount of butter. But I know how much, and the rest of what I am eating doesn't contain a whole lot of extras I don't think about - I can see how much lard, sugar, and broccoli is going in.
I'm not sure about pink sweet cream cheese. Even when it is mostly made of cheese. This stuff really isn't something I am in a hurry to try again....
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"Banned in Denmark, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria and Norway."
My favourite is E120: "Ewwwww, I'd never eat insects!!!", "Oh really?". Or E441, especially explaining how it is made, just too bad you can't convey the distinctive smell . . . "two-month-old corpse in a heatwave"?
You can mimic the smell at home though: dissolve gelatin sheets in a little water, leave alone for a week or two (preferably outside), take a whiff from a distance. Or use it to annoy someone, of course.
By Niddhogg, # 13. April 2007, 20:44:00
So is E120 cochineal?
By chaals, # 13. April 2007, 20:58:41
By Niddhogg, # 13. April 2007, 21:10:08
I flew back to the US and A 2 days ago and brought back from France a Camembert de Normandie au lait cru (probably banned from the stores in the US ;). I had some tonight, before I read your entry. Yum-my. Stop by Boston, there's still some. I guarantee it's strawberry-free.
By koalie, # 19. April 2007, 01:58:34
I left the US and A 2 days ago, and I am not going to be back there for a while. I suspect the cheese won't last
I had McDonalds for lunch on the weekend (I was riding, and it was the only option). They have learned to put tomatoes into burgers, which is a step forwards. If only they learned about bacon, egg, beetroot, and grilling the bread instead of microwaving it or whatever they do, it could be pretty good. But it still doesn't ring my bells. Oh, and the drinks aren't much chop. Luckily water is pretty common.
To each their own, right?
By chaals, # 19. April 2007, 03:44:44