Monday 7th September, 2015

WE DID IT! WE COMPLETED EVERY DAY OF OUR 365 DAY FOOD CHALLENGE FOOD BLOG BLOGOSPHERE PROJECT!  

It was 80% moaning, 90% eating, 5% creativity, 70% not writing the blog posts on time, 60% Rosie trying to convince Nicola to pack it all in and quit, 95% Rosie saying she’s going to write a post and then not doing it, 90% pig-headed stubbornness from Nicola, 95% bankruptcy, 2% smiles, 29% poetry.

Boy, that’s a lot of percents!

WE HAD HIGHS! My high was the pumpkin pie, and rhyming (Nicola) My high was a tie between gingerbread West Side Story and cream-filled doughnut

WE HAD LOWS! My low was getting the backdoor sliders from Rosie’s over-peppered non-seafood bisque (Nicola) My low was getting a migraine from the pumpkin pie (Rosie)

Stephen Colbert says ‘you have to learn to love the bomb’. And we don’t need to tell you faithful followers that we made some bomb-de-bomb-de-bombs.

The homemade candy-floss catastrophe

The crème caramel phlegm-y car crash

The waste of tastebuds rice cakes

Our waffail

Cordon bleurgh

Onion ring ya mother to take you home, cuz this food is disgusting

And pulled penis (which actually tasted awesome)

In sadder news; we lost Kerry and Drew Cashew somewhere in our move last month. They are likely in a misplaced pencil case having a threesome with a biro. We miss them terribly, but want to thank them for their music and kisses.

We do not miss Chalky Talkies. Remember them?

We would like to thank all of our guest bloggers:

Sophie Dutton

Megan Borgert-Spaniol

James Bicheno

Sara Starkman

Rachel Bray

Emma Banigan

Georgia Irwin

Lydia Korol-Bluring

Jon Rende

Cecilia Ryan

James Roberts

Our mum, Big Nibbler, for helping us out over Christmas, giving us ideas and words of encouragement. being the master of recipes, and the Julia Child of cooking. She supported us through this ridiculous, many may say totally useless endeavour, and gargantuan waste of time, and told us to keep at it even when we hated it more than we could possibly express.

Thank you to Terry for putting up with all the FaceTime calls, and for giving just as much advice and support.

Thanks to anyone who took interest in the blog, on tumblr, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, who asked us how it was going, or how many days we had left, or what food day it was today. You’re cool and we like you.

And finally, thank you to our jeans for being patient. We will fit back into you one day.

It’s goodnight from me. And it’s goodnight from her. And it’s goodnight from me. 

Monday 7th September, 2015 

This is our final day, and we could not be happier that it is national salami and beer lovers’ day!

We love salami. Ever since we were wee ones (say it fast and laugh) when our Auntie Rosa would smuggle whole German salamis through customs for us, and cut us big inch-thick medallions of meat to gnaw on, we have loved salami. We eat salami of all shapes and sizes. Just call it a salami and we’re into it. 

Heralding from Italy, and not to be confused with salumi (cold cuts made from pork) or Salome (bible woman who cut off people’s head and danced all sexy-like), salami is made from fermented and air-dried meat, which is hung to encourage the ferming. It was popular with peasants because it could be stored at room temperature for up to forty days and could also be made from horse or donkey, but we’re fairly confident that ours was not…

Salami basically means ‘salty sausage’. And do you want to know who’s good at saying the words ‘salty sausage’? Sean Connery.

FUN SALAMI STORY FOR YA! This one time, an old lady force-fed Nicola cold tapioca from a tin container, and Nicola immediately vomited it, and a lunch box’s worth of salami sandwich straight into her sink.

Do you know what else is cool? BEER!

We selected two celebratory hoppers to mark the end of this wonderful journey that we’ve been on…

Rosie selected a German pilsner to go with her German sausage. STEAM WHISTLE!

Nicola chose a NAUGHTY NEIGHBOUR because she found the name and can moderately amusing. It is an American pilsner.

And to go with our Salome’s and hop juice, we chose to re-make our favourite, most successful Nibblers bake. Our cool bread thing from World Food Day. We accidentally made it with gluten-free flour, so she was a little wee, but just as tastee.

Sunday 6th September, 2015 

Honey is made by bees. Bees have been around for 30 million years. We have a new-found fascination and respect for these little furry buzz balls, having researched their jobs and positions in the world for today’s post. 

What we are trying to say is it has taken us 364 days to finally learn something useful and important from doing this blog. Cool.

Bees are the only insects that make a product that can be consumed by a human person. This is one reason why we need to keep them alive. It is very important. Kill other bugs (especially spiders), or like don’t kill them unless necessary. But save the bees. 

Look at that little furry body. Isn’t it bloody adorable? 

FUN FACT 1: Bees have two sets of wings, and they have little teeth to hold them together when they are not flying. When they ARE flying, their wings beat 200 times a second. Go bees. 

MORE FUN FACTS ABOUT BEES! 

There are three types of bee - 

THE QUEEN BEE - her job is to lay eggs and do absolutely nothing else. This is the Michelle Duggar of the insect world.

THE DRONE BEE - all drone bees are male. Their daily routine/life consists of congregating with other drone bees and finding a queen to fuck. They do not do anything else. Bloody lazy dick-thinking male bees. Also, these bees do not have stingers. Keep that in mind. 

THE WORKER BEE - all worker bees are female. HERE WE GO. Their responsibility is to keep the entire hive running, inside and out. They are known as house bees, because they are responsible for cleaning the hive, feeding the babies, looking after the Queen, repairing the hive, and fanning it to keep it cool. Outside, they gather the nectar and pollen. LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE LADY WORKER BEES, KEEPING SOCIETY RUNNING FOR EVER AND EVER. Also, only the lady worker bees have stingers, and they only use them if they are in trouble, because by doing so they will die. LADY WORKER BEES ARE THE BEST. 

There is a little lady worker bee, doing her bit to keep the world a-turning. 

MORE BEE FACTS!

Bees have a straw-like tongue for sucking up liquids. They have TWO STOMACHS - one for food, and t’other for carrying nectar back to the hive. They also carry pollen on their hind legs in little compartments called pollen baskets. ADORABLE. 

To make honey, bees process the nectar that they carried in their stomachs, then regurgitate it into the honeycomb in the hive. They fan it with their wings to remove any excess moisture, and then it is honey.

Basically honey is sticky bee sick.

Bees are super clever and talented, and so to tell the other bees in the hive (50-80,000 of them) where the closest source of nectar is, they do a waggle dance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ijI-g4jHg

Now for the real honey stuff. Honey can never go off because it has a natural preservative in it, which means that bacteria cannot grow in it. It will keep forever-evah. 

To make one pound of honey, it takes 556 worker bees to collect nectar from 2million flowers. The flower from whence the nectar was taken determines the taste of the honey. Yet, in its lifetime, a worker bee will only make 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey. There is approximately one pound of honey in these loukoumades, what we bought from Greek Town today. 

Loukoumades are like doughnut holes that are completely soaked in honey and sprinkled with cinnamon. They also look a little like bald, oozing, wingless bees. Kinda. 

Look how saturated and sticky it is. Thank you bees for your hard work. 

Now for the important bit. Bees are disappearing off our planet and it is really sad, but also we will be screwed as humans. Colony Collapse Disorder is when worker bees mysteriously disappear from the hive. It is now a worldwide problem with keepers losing anywhere from 30-90% of their hives a year with no explanation. It can be blamed on pesticides and genetically modified crops that poison the bees, malnutrition, environmental change-related stress, radiation from mobile phones and human technologies, and diseases. A combination of these things work together to increase the stress on the bees and decrease its immune system. This matters because bees pollinate a huge number of crops, fruits and vegetables, and without them there is less plant growth and food supplies and if they disappear completely, it is predicted that the human race would cease to exist in four years. 

THE BEES ARE STRESSED OUT AND WE NEED TO HELP THEM. This is also a metaphor for general women, but this is not a feminist post, this is about the lady bees. 

DON’T KILL BEES. STOP USING PESTICIDES. LET THEM HUMP YOUR GARDEN BUSHES AND SHRUBBERY. 

WE NEED BEES!

This one is trying to pick you out a postcard from his holiday in Greece, where he helped make their loukoumades.

FINAL FUN BEE FACT!

Saturday 5th September, 2015 

You would think after 363 days of eating we would be past caring about our little figures. But two days before completing this gargantuan life drain of ridiculousness, we decided to take care of our bodies and substitute a bread-y pizza bass for an aubergine (eggplant) one...

Then we absolutely drenched each one of them in mozzarella cheese. And not just any mozzarella cheese, oh no, we used KRAFT CHEESE. DUH DUH DUUHHH. 

And of course we ate each one of the twelve mini pizzas there because the apocalypse is coming and no pizza should be left to fend for itself.  

Fun fact from last night: having seen the large aubergine sat atop the fridge last night, Nicola had a dream where somebody bought her a tiny little hippo that was the exact colour and size and shape of said aubergine. 

The apocalypse is coming. 

Friday 4th September, 2015 

We’ve been sat here for twenty minutes trying to think of something to say about macadamia nuts without the aid of Wikipedia. Every day of this blog we have eventually turned to Google of Wikipedia to help us out with facts and figures and funbits. But not today. Oh no.

First Rosie turned to her phone and posed the question to Siri. 

It quickly turned into a lengthy battle when he refused to give her a straight answer for ten minutes, before finally understanding the question and answering it...by directing her to Wikipedia.

Next we asked our trusty buddy Ais.

We got side-tracked and danced to the Macarena for a further five minutes. 

Our phones and friends failing us, we next yelled out into the Twittersphere for help...no one answered, even when we used #nuts. Jerks.

Finally we turned to the grand question-meister himself, Jeeves, to dust off his home-page for us.  But before we had even typed out the question ‘what should we say about macadamia nuts?’ he made us feel horrible about ourselves and lives. 

In the end we came up with our own original story of the macadamia nut. It is as true as anything you will read on Wikipedia.

In the aggressive south-eastern territories of the San Andreas Fault, where the macadamias are borthed, an amphibian will pluck it from its nut nest, take it into shallow waters and sit on it for however long he or she deems necessary. Once he has deemed it necessary, he has to teach it the ancient ways of the MacaMaca tribes from whence it came, and once this intense inaugural mouth parade, accompanied by a moth parade, has concluded, the amphibian’s mother, in this story we’ll call her Janice, crowns the nut with a coconut overcoat, which has written on it all the faults of San Andreas. Only when you hear the giggles and chuckles of San Andreas can the nut then be deemed a macademic. 

Then the macadamia will, by instinct, find other macadamias. He may undergo periods of bullying, love, sexual confusion, body image problems and vocal experimentation in his quest to find himself. Once he has found himself, he is shipped to one of many other countries into a giant bin, live in a plastic commune with other macadamias from around the world, before being scooped up, and transported again. 

He will realize that his previous sexual confusion wasn’t in vain, when he accidentally falls into a bow of green weird stuff, we’ll call it pesto, and feels at home.

Thursday 3rd September, 2015

It is a story well-told that Welsh people love to eat toasted cheese, in fact, they find it irresistible. Have you not heard that story before? Because Nicola spent three years at university in Wales and can attest that this is true. 

In the book A C Merie Talys, some amusing young fellow reported first-hand that God was irritated by all the Welsh people in heaven, with all their ‘krakynge and babelynge trobelyd all the others’, and so asked his heaven bouncer St Peter to sort them out. In a gangster movie, St Peter would have put a bullet through their heads and thrown them out the back entrance. But in real make-believe God life, Petey went out to the Welshies and yelled ‘Cause bobe, yt is as moche to say as rostyd chese!’ (we think this translates as ‘oh! Boyos! There’s cheese on toast out here!) and all the Welsh people ran out and Peter locked the gate on them. And that is why there are no Welsh people in heaven. 

True story. 

The word ‘rarebit’ is never used outside of the context of Welsh rarebit, because it is not a real word. It exists because silly pudding heads couldn’t say the word ‘rabbit’. BUT HOLD IT RIGHT THERE! ‘Where is the rabbit in Welsh rabbit?’ we hear you cry. Well, just like a toad in the hole contains no amphibians, so does Welsh rarebit contain not a single rabbit. So this whole concoction is a bloody farce just like St Peter throwing the Welsh out of heaven. 

At grass roots it is simply fancy cheese on toast and we couldn’t be happier. You melt the cheese with butter, stout, mustard, Worcester Sauce and an egg if you’re feeling racy and pour it over your toast. 

Here are some fun Welsh words to incorporate into your every day language and impress your friends. And for a truly authentic experience, why not travel to the valleys of Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch where 76% of the dwellers are fluent in the Welshes. Altogether now.

MICROWAVE: popty ping

RABBIT: cwningen

TOAST: tost

LAUGH: chwerthin

WHEELBARROW: wilber

MERRY-GO-ROUND: whirligig

AMBULANCE: ambiwlans

TAXI: tacsi

BUTTERFLY: pili pala

STUPID: dwp

BUTT: casgen

SMELL: arogl

ALED JONES: llnob 

LIKE A FART IN A JAM POT: fel rhech mewn pot jam

Wednesday 2nd September, 2015

Welcome to Cluckingham Palace. 

Please see below our favourite chicken gifs. Or chifs if we may.

This was Rosie when she tried to take up the piano again.

Now back to the real purpose of this blog (WHICH IS ALMOST OVER WE ONLY HAVE 5 DAYS LEFT WHAAAAAAT) the food part. Sure, we like chicken. Chicken on the bone. Chicken on the breast. Chicken on another thing.

But chicken on the nugget is our favourite of all. And who does the best chicken-tasting nug-nugs?

THIS GUY!

So today was a simple choice...

...and we couldn’t have been happier about it.

Tuesday 1st September, 2015

A Gyro is a Greek food comprised of meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie served with salad and Greeky sauces and cheeses in a pita or a sandwich wrap. 

Rosie bought a chicken Gyro from a well known Toronto Mid-Eastern fast food place today. It will remain unnamed for due reasons. This is a transcribed conversation that Rosie had with the Gyro man. 

ROSIE enters. There is no one there. GYRO MAN appears.

GYRO MAN Oh hello hello. Sorry we have not much left I’m packing up early.

ROSIE Oh no problem. GYRO MAN Someone stole my phone. It a Dufferin Mall. I find it. Now I’m going to find it so I have to shut early. 

ROSIE Oh okay, I’ll just take whatever you’ve got going then.

GYRO MAN Ok. You pretty lady. You have a husband? Boyfriend? Where you from?

ROSIE I’m from--

GYRO MAN Ah I take picture of you, you have boyfriend?

ROSIE Yes, I have a boyfriend. (This is a lie. I lied for my safety.)

GYRO MAN I can do you a chicken shawarma.

ROSIE Great thank you.

GYRO MAN Ah it’s hot. See my iPhone got stolen. $2000 I paid for it last week.

ROSIE Oh no.

GYRO MAN And now, what do I do?

ROSIE Sorry to hear that.

GYRO MAN So where are you from?

ROSIE England.

GYRO MAN Ah I have friends in England.

ROSIE Cool! Do you know whereabouts?

GYRO MAN No I don’t remember.

Chicken shawarma is being wrapped up at this point in case you were concerned about the timeline.

GYRO MAN So uh you do a cocaine?

ROSIE Sorry?

GYRO MAN A-cocaine. Cocaine

ROSIE Oh.

GYRO MAN You do a cocaine?

ROSIE No I don’t I’m afraid.

GYRO MAN Me neither. My father did it. Bad stuff. 

ROSIE Yeh. No not me. 

GYRO MAN You have a lucky husband.

ROSIE Yeh, try telling him that.

ROSIE pays for shawarma then runs for her life.

To confirm, a shawarma, according to google, is the same as a gyro. Also, if Rosie had remembered to take a picture of her chicken gyro she would have attached it here. But she didn’t because she was too busy worrying that there was either cocaine in her gyro or she was being followed by gyro man.

If she did take a picture it would have looked not too dissimilar to this...

Monday 31st August, 2015  

Lots of animals eat outside, so we thought we’d join them. The following gifs are representative of us and our own personal eating habits.  

Nicola trying to prize any food out of Rosie’s hands, for herself.

Nicola in Bulk Barn.

When Rosie manages to sneak the last bag of crisps out of the cupboard without Nicola noticing.

Sunday 30th August, 2015 

Well what can we say about peaches that hasn’t been said before? Not really anything. 

HOWEVER we can tell you about how we love the musical of ‘James and the Giant Peach’ with music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. If we were to write a musical, we wish it was this one. It’s adorable, and you should listen to the soundtrack over and over again, but particularly this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KOwp9kgJtA

Do it while eating a peach and drinking a tea, like we did, maybe?

Saturday 29th August, 2015 

Chop suey is traditionally a Chinese dish consisting of some kind of meat, eggs, vegetables, bound in a starch-thickened sauce and served with rice. Then the Americans took it, ruined it, made it their own thing, and it’s now a kind of Chino-American chow mien hash-up served with noodles. Those bastards. 

We like to ruin things too, by using packet sauce mixes and frozen vegetables. 

Friday 28th August, 2015 

We like making two things into one, just like the Spice Girls, so obviously we jumped at the chance to make little breakfast banana cream pots.

WOWEEWAWOWWW! 

Other things we like to combine:

Thursday 27th August, 2015 

This is the fifteenthienth burger day that we have had to celebrate so we approached a few buddies of ours (four) around the world-ish to send us their burger pics: LA, London, Toronto, New York. 

Don’t get us wrong, we love-a a meat patty and selma in between a couple hunks of bread, but it got us to thinking about all the other foods that will go uncelebrated across our 365 day food blog. The ones that don’t have a publicist to get them in front of the right people and at the right parties. The foods that don’t have a big Twitter following. The foods that never made a viral video and so have gone otherwise unnoticed. Today, we celebrate YOU! 

If we were to do this blog again (AND WE WILL NOT) these are some consumables that we would like celebrated.

Marmite

Steak pie (or any savoury pie, including pasties and sausage rolls)

Pesto

Rhyvita’s (Rosie’s pick)

Stew 

Microwave meals

Chicken kievs

Couscous

Ham (we love ham)

Tea (there was iced tea and sweet tea but no regular tea)

Sausage and mash

Potato Smilies

Turkey Twizzlers

Baked Potato (HOW WAS THERE NO BAKED POTATO DAY?)

Roast Dinner (we had one, but it was not an official roast dinner day)

Gin and Tonic

Fish fingers

Poutine

Haribo

Chocolate-covered almonds (just kidding there were a shit-ton of these too and we don’t know why)

Wednesday 26th August, 2015 

Pop Pop Pop Pop Popsicle Pop-Popsicle Pop-Popsicle

Today is the 26th of August. It has been unbearably hot and humid for many many days here in Toronto, and none of them called for us to eat an iced lolly, or popsicle, or ice pop, which is what these jolly things are called in the Greater Britains. 

On this day, the 26th August, however, it was FUCKING FREEZING. When Nicola went to purchase her 75cent cherry popsicle from the corner shop, the lady who sold it laughed at her. A lot. Because no one should be eating a cherry popsicle in weather like this. 

Frigidness aside, eating cherry popsicles reminded us of days spent at our Nan’s house, who always had a freezer stocked with Flintstone’s ice pops (popsicles) for us grandkiddies. There was always a fight over who got the cola flavoured ones, nobody liked orange, and green was the one that got us all turnt and impossible to pack into the back of the car once the day was over. 

Tuesday 25th August, 2015 

Nibblers aren’t usually one for whiskey, unless it is to clear up a sticky throat cold with a squeeze of lemon and hot water, but this sweet and sour old thing was pretty good. 

Now, conwhiskours (that’s whiskey connoisseurs) might be thinking, ‘but Nicola, Rosie, that does not look like a whiskey sour to me.’ And you would be right. 

Monday 24th August, 2015 

What are we having for school dinners? What are we having today? What are we having for school dinners? What are we having on Monday?

Waffles. 

And we’ll let Cilla and Artie and the Singing Kettle fill you in from 5.10 on what’s on the menu for the rest of the week.

Sunday 23rd August, 2015 

This is a child’s lunchbox. 

The child had a spongecake.

It looks like they also had a sandwich, and left the crust.

Hmm. Maybe it was peanut butter and jelly.

The child is not aware that we took a picture of his/her lunchbox.