Dinner Adventures

This again, tupperware salad - used for ease of mixing, then eaten out of out of laziness... Twice cooked tuna (see earlier post) salad with NO DRESSING because Rahman likes to feel dehydrated at all times. Imagine how much you would want a glass of water, imagine how appetising this would look:

Ahh, cold water lapping on the beach!

But hold on, what’s this?

Is that Special K? It’s Special K! Hurrah! Rahman has slayed his thirst with all that lovely milk! But, hold on, what is that i can’t really see - is there even any milk in that bowl? Perhaps a tiny amount, but not enough for this to help surely.

What is going on? Does Rahman believe that too much liquid could drastically upset the bodies fabled 70% water amount, causing a dramatic and disastrous collapse?

Hmm - what can we do to help him?

Steak chips and beans with a peppercorn sauce.Mmmmm!

Seriously though - what is it with Joe and green beans? Are they the only vegetable he likes? Do they give him super powers? Does he take his superhuman strength from them like Popeye does from Spinach?

I think not. I just think he’s very boring with his vegetable selections. Why no tomato & spring onion? Why not broccoli - that’s always great for pretending you’re a giant and you are eating great mouthful’s of forest!

Must do better on veg front Joe.

As for Rahman today - no inspiration to cook anything it would seem from the lack of photo - do you thinking dance man!

Jacket Potato, veg and something else. No seriously, i have no idea what that is - i’m going to go with chicken breast wrapped in bacon, but it could be monkey brain for all i can tell. Eitherway, doesn’t look good from this angle…

There are no words.

Ok, so this is a twice cooked tuna salad, (tinned tuna is cooked prior to canning, and then cooked again in the tin - weird right?) with no dressing from Rahman - this must be the driest thing it’s possible to eat - no wonder he’s having hydrating coconut water with it! At least add avocado and some balsamic vinegar Rahman! Sheesh.

BOOM. If this sandwich doesn’t smash you in the face and make you beg for more (sandwich) then nothing will - it’s got avocado in it! Yay! Also, it’s got bacon in it! Take that! I would eat that right now, and it’s not even close to dinner time..! Lovely stuff!

Ooh, yes please!

Salmon, and Veg. Looks, well, like it’s either covered in oil, or water - not sure which would be worse... Also -why is there no pepper on the salmon? Pepper improves pretty much everything...! I don’t actually recall who made this, but I’m going to guess Joe as he’s got a good close up going on - a trademark of his photos! 

final thing to note on this - 2 x salmon fillets & vegetables, other than the potential oil issue, this is a very healthy, and low carb dinner - like an omega oil party in your mouth!

Nice table setup! Good flowers - fragrant and colourful! Also, I like the oil and S&P pots - rustic! But, and it is a big but, why (oh why oh why) would you have the wine glass and the coaster, but not put the wine glass on the coaster?

This seems like a failing of such rudimentary intelligence that it’s difficult to imagine that the food wasn’t a ready meal heated in the microwave, or a boil in the bag job. I’d go with boil in the bag but I would expect the person cooking this to hurt themselves with the hot water!

Again, no idea who made this one, I’d have to go with Rahman, but the coaster has much more of a Joe feel, with it’s complimentary biscuit slogan. 

Ok, lets not ponder this too much and move on:

WTF is that?

Booyah! JP back with a classic JP!

Needs beans.

Haven’t we been here before? Salmon again? Grean beans again? Joe - is that you? But check out the Dauphinoise potatoes! Creamy and wonderous!

Well here we go, a post combining dinners like a good chef combines ingredients - randomly! Let’s catch up on all the fun - ready?

First up is a close of of Joe’s Chicken, and then:

His ‘taters, not to mention:

The overall shot of the dinner - looks pretty decent, and in a rare moment, i find it difficult to mention anything like lets this meal down. Aside from the pathetic green beans that look as though they are raw and cold, and would contrast horribly with the rest of the food of course.

Still not bad - could maybe do with some kind of gravy, but those potatoes look very, very good!

Right then, a delightful start, what is next i hear you ask? Well:

This, is the biggest triumph we’ve had here at dinner adventures. This, is CHEESE ON TOAST, but not any cheese on toast, this is the cheese on toast that Rahman built!

This was only half the amount he had for dinner, and would it surprise you to hear how much cheese went into this heart-attack on a plate triumph of modern engineering? An entire pack of cheese! Not the small packs either, an entire large pack of cheese! Like:

How is he even still with us? I bet he wanted to vomit immediately afterwards...

Fantastic work Rahman, that deserves a:

So how’s this dead town been while I was away?

My humble apologies, people of the interworld. I’ve been away, attending to a life event, which has meant I’ve very much been remiss in making posts. Despite my inability to get married and write condescending posts about other peoples food creations, I have eaten a lot of food recently, so feel i have enhanced my abilities to review dinner creations!

Rahman says: "You may also notice I've purposely dressed like a ninja to eat the meal."

Now that's the stuff! Ninja Noodles are everyone's favourites..! It's clear to see a few things here:

1. That's a big bowl of noodles. I'm hungry, and when i'm hungry i need Ninja size foods. In this case, this would do me fine! Great work Rahman!

2. He's dressed like a Ninja, sitting like a Ninja probably would when in his safe zone, and eating yet still keeping his eye on the person operating the camera just in case they decided to make a move. Rahman could then quickly through the bowl in the face of the attacker, fork them good and disappear into the night without a sound.

3. Just who is taking this photo - is it the fisherman/hobo, back from the dead to attempt his revenge? Or is it the Cat, sick of pizza and eyeing the noodles as though they're mouse tails and wing of bird..?

The answers to last posts question, quite simply, was no.

Joe ate a burger last night in the Duchess of Cambridge pub in Chiswick, and didn't take a photo. Not only that, despite looking like an excellent pub, there is not one photo on the website of the food they serve. So, I had to take to a well known search engine to try and discover one by myself, and success! This is what i found:

Thats right, a Duchess of Cambridge* Burger. 

*It's not even the real DoC, it;s a lookalike - you don't think she's going to snaffle down a burger in public do you? That would risk the chance of getting a photo like:

Oh no, not our DoC. 

Anyway, the burger was excellent, but our rating of Joe has gone down - i'm not sure how much lower it can get, but the only way is up from here...

Rahman's moving to New York cos he's got problems with his sleep.

No, not really, he's just back from the Big Apple, and I can assure you, he didn't eat any apples whilst there - instead he chose a FAT grill - note the initial resemblance in meals with Joe (BBQ Chicken), whilst at the same time knocking Joe out the park (note the baseball reference) with the delivery - and check the beans and bacon in the background! 

Gerkins as well, that's pickles to the New Yorkers attracted by this post - this dish has everything you could ever want, apart from a massive plate of chips (fries). He's even got a beer. Joe, you've got a lot to learn from this single meal. The question is, can you be bothered?

Fusion cooking ladies and gentlemen! Who wouldn't want to taste the mix of Indian and American food with "green bits" (trademark applied for) added for colour? 

Me! It's a horrible idea, badly executed! Seriously though - look at it - slop with a Naan and unrecognisable green bits. Would not eat.

I have to be honest, I think Joe my die of malnutrition soon - however i realise having posted that one sentence on here to you many, many millions of daily readers, that some of you will reach out to Joe directly with healthy ideas and recipes for him to use. No doubt you'll be seeing them on this very blog at some point in the future - I'll make sure Joe name checks you if he uses your idea. The excitement!

I must say i'm rather looking forward to our first post coming in with healthy alternatives - like Quinoa - as one of the ingredients. To be fair, that's mainly as it will afford me the opportunity to tell you exactly how to pronounce it. It's pronounced:

......

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*tumbleweed*

......

......

I sincerely, sincerely hope Joe was drunk when he had this. 20 cocktail sausages and a mug of unspecified liquid. I'm guessing it was straight gin as i can't imagine what else could have caused him to eat these monstrosities. 

They're not even mini scotch eggs, which would still have been disgusting as a meal, but at least they have a more complex flavour and not quite a much grease to the touch.

At a time when Rahman is in the US, and is likely to come back with pictures of bbq ribs and fries and hotdogs, Joe misses an opportunity and decides to have the least nutritious meal in human history! I thought we'd hit rock bottom last week but a new low has been reached! The question now, is can we ever get anything worse as a meal than this?

But wait a minute, what's that flying into my inbox - is that a real meal?

GORDON'S ALIVE!! It is! Someone has cooked for Joe and i love them for it! Someone saw he was about to die of malnutrition and SAVED HIS LIFE! 

Obviously cooked by someone else who owns, or perhaps rented, a nice rustic tablecloth and excellent taste in food, this meal will have given Joe a new lease of life, Salmon with it's essential fats, protein and flavoury goodness - potatoes for carby energy and asparagus for vitamins and stinky pee. 

Whoever this angel of divine mercy was, they have certainly saved my sanity...

One question remains however - what was in the mug? Was Joe using it as a tomato ketchup container, like some kind of sick serial killer posing as an investigative journalist on a story about the mysterious disappearance of 5 seemingly unrelated people, that by the end of the tale are related in as twisted a fashion as there has ever been, looking for a fresh thrill?

I can't believe i almost didn't mention - the CHRISTMAS CRACKER! What on earth is it doing there? I've been assured that it was there this week, it's not an old photo, so perhaps we've found someone who celebrates Christmas all the time? That reminds me of that song, and just maybe it's Joe's favourite - "I Wish It Could Be A Wombling Merry Christmas Everyday"!

Beef Stroganoff & Plain Naan

Hey Joe, why you coming round town with that microwave meal in your hand?

Looks good, quick to reheat and eat - a VAST improvement on most of the week (yet I count 1 non processed food meal for Joe this week - if his mum is still reading (apologies for my earlier post) - you should call your son and ask him what he had for dinner - daily at this rate).

I'm not a fan of microwaved meals - they have far too much salt for taste and as a preservative, it's not real food, it takes far too many resources to make compared to a healthy meal made from fresh ingredients, and cooking is a real life skill that can help out in many emergency situations. 

An example:

Imagine a big pile up on a motorway in the winter, in which a Tesco lorry and a Famous Army & Navy stores lorry had crashed into each other in a big snowstorm that stops emergency services getting out. Whilst others pitch the tents, our hero sets up 4 camp stoves (from the FA&N lorry) and picks the best meat and veg (from the Tesco lorry) and cooks up a sumptuous life sustaining meal for the 20 survivors. Later that evening spirits are so high a few bottles of champagne are opened and the survivors get merry, maybe even a couple of them get to know each other better and make lives together out of a tragedy. In the morning, 2 more are found dead after falling asleep in the snow - dead drunk you might say. But it wasn't our hero that gave them the drink.

So my thinking on the matter is clear - learn to cook, you might just save some lives (and kill some others who might have died in the night anyway without the food), you'll be healthier, and remember this - you can impress people more with cooking than you can with skills on Wii bowling. 

Guys, if you're not going to take this seriously, then why bother?

Rahman - a picture of the Fisherman catching his fish? Well, DID HE CATCH THE MAcKEREL IN THE SEA IN BRAZIL?

Joe - HALF A CUCPCAKE?

I have to be honest, it's days like this when my eyes gaze towards my navel, and i contemplate my place in this world. It can't only be me that senses the hopelessness of this life? The depths of despair forever deepen, the reason for living forever weakens and....

...hang on a second - is one of those guys on the SUP board wearing jeans? Seriously? He doesn't have any shorts? What's up with that?

So, Rahman had the same as yesterday so didn't take a phoe - boring, but healthy-ish. Joe had half a cupcake because he got to Amazingstoke late and to see Dara O'Brien . That kind of dinner couldn't give Joe enough energy for the night up so i hope he didn't heckle Dara as I'm sure the experienced showman would have really mocked the weak.

Well, where to begin. Firstly, an interesting choice of sandwich - Mackerel, a frankly amazing fish that always gets my vote, and cucumber, the king of vegetables that look like a phallus. I think the taste combined would be excellent, and something i would very much like to try. 

The close up photo is good, a real step forward from the bangers and mash monstrosity, the mackerel looks tasty and the cucumber moist - all in all, something i'd like to eat! Tasty, filling and full of omega oils and good fats, so it's healthy too. Great work Rahman!

Notes:

Two Phallus shaped ingredients in 3 days? What is Rahman trying to tell us here?

Where on earth did Rahman find a real life fisherman/hobo? I'm assuming he must have pulled him off the streets as he looks like he's lived a rough life - perhaps it's the shadows in the picture, but his face tells the story of a man who had it all - a nice young family and beautiful wife, who were all shockingly killed in a car accident. This drove him to drink and a life on the ocean waves fishing like on that TV program the Deadliest Catch. After losing his good leg in a terrible storm that killed all his shipmates, he decided to live on the streets away from danger, only to witness the assassination of young doctor, who with his dying breath gave him proof of the falsified results of a new drug about to be released onto the market that would kill hundreds of children unless it could be stopped. Only he knows the truth and he knows no one will believe him, and just maybe, all these children dying would make him feel better about his own loss. Inevitably though, these dark truths would haunt him for the rest of his days.

Aha! A plate of jailhouse slop! Joe is keeping it real by bunging some plastic in a microwave and making the water molecules vibrate quickly which causes friction, and that friction generates - you guessed it, heat! See, this blog not only showcases the best in real life dinners, but also educates its readers, so we can all laugh AND learn! 

Or at least learn.

Joe did comment on this in the end, he said "it wasn't bad actually". High praise indeed. 

Now, whilst every once in a while we all have meals like this, it's distressing that this comes the night after a McDonalds - i think we can all see where this leads, to a slow inexorable death at the hands of 2 family packs of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, like a modern day Elvis who can't sing* and doesn't like cheeseburgers**. A sad day when it happens, and at this rate, I would assume by March this year i'll be posting a picture of an empty plate shrouded in black in memoriam.

*unproven at this point, perhaps Joe does opera in his spare time?

**Joe does like cheeseburgers i assume, i mean this because allegedly Elvis died eating a cheeseburger***

McDonalds and Pizza, Pizza and McDonalds...

Ho hum, another Monday night, another lake of effort from our two competitors - can you guess who went with what?

Haute Cuisine: Joe - McDonalds - note the chicken theme, and (NINE) Chicken McNuggets - i bet he went for BBQ sauce - what's your bet?

Naturally I'm ashamed: Rahman - Pepperoni Pizza with unidentified meat and a dipping sauce. He shared it with his cat as you can see. 

Well, which would you go for? For me, McDonalds probably wins, but after either, lets face it, we'd be left wondering what the point of our lives was, and whether we'd actually be better off working for a charity. Then, after all the upheaval of taking on a worse paying job and having to move from our luxury apartments to small studio flats unconvincingly in an "up and coming area close to London", we'd realise that charities just pay people to harass others close to Christmas and guilt them into giving money to a good cause, most of which pays for office space overheads and salaries, and very little gets to the people who really need it - U2 and Bob Geldof. 

I guess the good thing, is that I didn't eat them, so don't have buyers remorse - so i'm alright Jack. I hope the guys recover from their respective funks in time for tomorrows, all singing, all dancing day of DINNERADVENTURES! Remember to tell your friends about this blog - and i mean tell them - out loud, don't share it on social networks, not off a blog about fast freaking food - wait until they cook something decent!

A few things leap out at me here. but lets get the information out the way:

Bangers are sausages

Mash is potato

Now i've answered all your questions (which you managed to send to me prior to me posting this - pushy!) lets get to the meat of the matter.

That's a terrible photo. Black borders at the top and the bottom are bad, that's not in question dear reader. No, the main issue here is that i can't see what it is on the fork - Rahman, what were you thinking?

Not only that, but it's very difficult to see the food in the background and not see three dismembered phalli. I'm beginning to think Rahman's not bad a photography, and rather, he's brilliant at it, and his making an artistic statement on the struggle between man's competing needs for nourishment and that constant battle between the needs of the stomach, and the lust of the loin. This incidentally leads me to note no one's made anything with pork loin yet - I very much look forward to that day!