Profile

girlalive

Originally from Duluth, MN. Lived in Seattle for a long time. Now in Scotland. Unemployed and too poor to buy food, so I look at pictures of it on the internet.

  • Website
  • Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
  • Favorite foods: peanut butter cups, cheesecake, curry,

Soda: Have You Tried Irn-Bru from Scotland?

I live in Scotland, so yes I have tried it. I like it, though I prefer diet. I don't think it tastes like orange at all really. It isn't supposed to. It is a little more like a bubblegum and tonic (since it contains quinine).

We Try Every Flavor of Tillamook Ice Cream

It's posts like this that make me so sad that I moved to a country with no chocolate peanut butter ice cream.

A Pizza My Mind: My Weirdest Pizza Topping Ever

My dad's favorite sandwich of all time is swiss cheese and Jif, so I would be entirely willing to try a peanut butter pizza. But not very often. Dad stopped eating the saturated fat sandwiches after his first heart attack.

Look Who's Talkin': Comments, Quips, and Tips We Have Known and Loved

I have a love/hate relationship with the weekly Look Who's Talkin'. The comments are hilarious and fantastic, but then I hate myself because I'm never that clever or witty, and I'm supposed to be a professional writer.

Poll: Do You Shake Garlic on Your Slice?

I've never even heard of such a thing.

Grocery Clerk - What Would You Do?

missmochi is right that not all service dogs are large. There is a deaf woman in my village who has a tiny little yorkie as a hearing assistance dog.

Your Guide to a Full English Breakfast (Fry-Up)

I live in Scotland, and my husband always wants his fry-up with a big slab of fried haggis. I'm American, so I usually give him mine. Or trade him for a potato scone, my personal favorite.

American Classics: 7 Best No-Bake Desserts

I agree about Kenji's lime cracker pie. I tried that one a while ago and it was amazing.

British Bites: Mushy Peas

I'm sorry, but if you don't use marrowfat peas, the texture is completely different, and it is just pureed peas, not mushy peas. If you want to cut corners, use dried split peas, but frozen or fresh peas are a completely different thing. It's like you're trying to make polenta from a can of niblet corn.

Ask a Bartender: What's Your Favorite Drink On A Hot Summer Day?

Are Bulmer's and Magner's really the same brand? I've seen both sold here in the UK.

Staff Picks: What Do You Eat When Nobody's Looking?

Olives. Lots and lots of olives. And I'm poor, so we're not talking about good quality olives. We're talking about the cheapest ones I can find. Black or green. I'm not picky.

We Taste Every Kind of Spam

I once won an essay contest for a free Spam cookbook, and you had to write about how much you love Spam. I will not re-create the essay here, but I will mention one salient fact: that I spent my Honeymoon at the Spam museum.

I love Spam in most forms, but I prefer it cooked rather than straight from the can. I've made some pretty good sweet and sour spam before, using my mom's sweet and sour recipe which involves canned pineapple.

Sweet Hacks: 10-Minute No-Bake Lime Cracker Pie

Just made a half recipe of this (since it's just me and my husband). It turned out great. I may have a new go-to recipe for potlucks.

Staff Picks: Our Last Bites on Earth

Mine would be the Mixed King Kebab from Royal Balti in Penicuik, Scotland. It's kebab meat with tandoori chicken and lamb on top of naan bread, all covered in chili sauce and salad.

Either that or a bunch of raw cookie dough. I mean, if it's my final meal, who cares about salmonella?

Seattle - where should I go dining solo?

I agree with Pike's Place Market. There are tons of great places there to eat alone. My personal favorite was prioshkys and mini donuts. The International District is also a good bet. I lived on Capitol Hill (though I haven't been there for a long time). I think it's worth visiting during the day. I was never much into nightlife and bars, but I loved living there.

Power outage while using slow-cooker: would you eat this?

To be honest, I would probably eat it because I am too poor/cheap to throw food away, and the hours of cooking it has had since the short outage would probably make it okay. I also live in a country with free health care, so the cost of the food outweighs the cost of salmonella. Your situation may vary.

What's Not OK To Eat For Breakfast?

I've done salty, spicy, fatty, sweet and most other flavor profiles for breakfast. But for some reason, I can't do fish for breakfast.

I'm a bit weird about fish. I can't stand fish soup either. It just seems wrong somehow to drown the fish after it is dead.

Poll: Green Peppers on Pizza, Way or No Way?

No. Never. I've gotten to where I can tolerate red peppers, but green ones still make me gag.

Snapshots from Prague: 10 Must-Eat Foods

You're making me want to go back to Prague. The food there was amazing.

In Praise of Slivovitz, Eastern European Plum Brandy

I've got a small bottle around here somewhere from a trip to Prague last year. I might have to crack it open and give it a try.

The Vegan Experience, Day 0

I used to be a vegetarian, mostly for reasons of health and poverty (I couldn't afford meat). I had to give it up when I developed a soy allergy. Because of that vegan would never even be an option for me. Good luck.

The Worst Thing I Ever Found in My Food

When I was a kid my grandma had bit bags of candy freely available at all times. I once bit into a peanut butter cup and it bit back. It was full of tiny little worms. But I was a dedicated lover of chocolate, so after that, I always broke the chocolate open for inspection before biting into it.

Fast Food: KFC Big Value Box

Potato wedges and a biscuit? I hate KFC in the UK. Sad fries and maybe a little cup of pale British baked beans is the best we get. This post has given me sadface.

What food smell do you hate?

@Snozzberry I totally thought I was the only one who hated cold cooked turkey! Even commercial sliced turkey deli meat makes me gag, but not nearly as much as thanksgiving leftovers. There's a stench, and it's just in turkey. Chicken and other poultry doesn't stink like turkey does.

Soda: Will Dudes Really Like Dr Pepper Ten?

Their sexist ad campaign to me says, "If you're female we don't want your money." As a female, I'm perfectly happy to comply and not buy any Dr. Pepper. After all, it is me, not my husband, who does the grocery shopping.

Can you teach all the other sites how to do slideshows?

Since most of the feedback here is about problems with the site, I thought I'd take a minute to buck the trend and say that Serious Eats is one of the only sites on the internet where I will actually click on a slideshow and not end up annoyed. The two things that make Serious Eats slideshows better than any of the rest of them:
1. They open in a new tab, so when you finish, you can just close that tab. I love that. Most slideshows, you have to either hit the back button a hundred times or probe your browser history to get back to where you started.
2. No irritating ads taking up an entire slide in the middle of the show.

Thanks for making slideshows that don't suck.

Pine nut substitute?

My husband loves pesto, and I kind of hate it. I'm pretty sure the part I hate is the pine nuts. I was thinking of trying to find a substitute for the pine nuts, and giving pesto another try. What would be good? I was thinking maybe shelled pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds? I've heard of walnuts being used, but I hate those too.

I can finally cook, but now husband can't eat.

I go through long periods where I can't be bothered to cook anything in my crappy tiny British kitchen. I lost my job a while ago, and now that the depression has lifted a little I was finally in the mood to do some cooking. I bought a bunch of fresh veggies and meat and had a whole menu of meals planned for the next week or so. And the day after the groceries were delivered, my husband developed an ear infection, so he's constantly nauseated and doesn't want to eat anything that isn't bland and boring. (Keep in mind also that my husband is British, so at the best of times it's a struggle to get him to eat anything with flavor.)

Can anyone offer me some sympathy, empathy, advice, or recipes to combat nausea?

Your best "save" when a meal went wrong.

A few days ago I put a pork shoulder in the oven to slow roast to make pulled pork sandwiches. It cooked at low heat for 6 hours and when we went to have dinner, the pork just wasn't "pulling". It was tough and just not right at all.

When I was younger I would have cried and panicked. I'm starting to get a bit more experienced now, so I cut the pork into big chunks and threw it into the pressure cooker with some bbq sauce and cider vinegar. After about 15 minutes at pressure, it was almost as tender as I had hoped it would be in the first place. It wasn't perfect, but it was certainly tasty and dinner was only about half an hour later than I had hoped.

We have all had cooking fails. What was your best last-minute save for a meal that was going wrong?

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