1) Are you allergic to peanuts? If not, go right ahead. If what I`ve read in comic books is true, it is from the Sun itself and will give you superpowers.

2) Regarding the smell/revulsion thing: is there a specific word for that? There needs to be. I suppose it`s probably some sort of biological protection against ingesting a lethal dose of something. Smell and taste are the sketchiest of the senses, aren`t they?

3) Don`t taunt the tracker. It`s becoming sentient. You don`t want it carrying a grudge, do you?

The closest thing I could find with regard to a specific technical term for the smell/revulsion thing is \\\"olfactory repellency\\\". I haven\\\'t been able to find anything that puts that into a single word, though.

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\\\"Life is too short for grief. Or regret. Or bullshit.\\\" -- Edward Abbey, Vox Clamantis in Deserto

olfactory repellency?

BAND NAME!! *fwap*

It is already there. I often back out of a thread I am reading, only to find that the Tracker has changed out the threads I have already done for a new set. Usually from 2003. It just wants to help.

As for the smell/taste thing, I do not think that it works in humans anymore. How else can you explain Texican cooking? The flavor (and I use that word facetiously) of habaneros is not supposed to taste good, it is supposed to keep animals from ever trying to eat one again. Leave it to humans to actually *like* it and come back for more.

Reality is the leading cause of stress in the world today.

Forget outwitting us: the first organism to develop a complete tolerance for human stupidity will conquer the earth. I can`t really talk though since I eat whole peppers from time to time despite knowing that it never ends well.

Maybe things just smell better in France. Ze air, she is so pure!

I used to eat serrano peppers in front of my Mexican friend while he cooked dinner, just to freak him out. He wouldn\\\'t touch them; too spicy.

I\\\'ve also used Mike\\\'s Ultimate Insanity Sauce in cooking. This stuff is so hot, inhaling the water vapor of food you\\\'re cooking it in (I\\\'d put it in with taco meat) has caused my eyes to water and my nostrils to burn.

And I\\\'ve never had any digestive problems (serious ones) from any of this, though there have been times when, the day after eating my Insanely Spicy Tacos, I could feel an intense warming sensation in the small blood vessels of my fingers.

i\\\'ve never met a real mexican who ate the super-spicy food that texans seem to think is mexican food. on the other hand, the native americans seem to love that shit. in the restaurant at the local indian casino, there\\\'s seven assorted bottles of sauces on the tables: one ketchup, one mustard, one steak sauce, and four hot sauce--two varieties of tabasco and two others that are a lot hotter.

i went to war for my country and all i got was this lousy stump.

Sounds like we have the same casino down the road. I tend to call it Texican cooking, but somebody probably already copyrighted the name.

Reality is the leading cause of stress in the world today.

I\\\'ll be darned.

Well, as long as we can all agree that Tabasco isn\\\'t really hot sauce, it\\\'s all good.

Maybe I\\\'m just crazy, but I prefer *not* to taste the vinegar in my condiments.

For some of us, vinegar is a condiment.

--I am powerless over my addiction to parenthesis.--

If you are terribly serious about learning to bake bread, I recommend Bread Alone. That guy does not joke around about bread. Also, he is very generous with the details.

Why yes, I am posting from China. Where, um, they don\'t really eat bread.

just not slices of loaves. You get bread already made up into a tasty sandwich (or sammich for paul) with no crust!

What kind of Chinese food have you been eating? The only time I ever had a sandwich in China, it involved ketchup, peanut butter, and sweetened condensed milk. There was definitely nothing tasty about it.

I guess they do have steamed buns and stuff like that, which are sort of like bread. Anyway, so much tasty food and so little time. Dinner is calling!

What is wrong with the tracker?

Peking duck is sandwhichy, crisp duck skin, a little green onion, a dab of plum sauce, and a peice of bread... Mmmmmmm

And steamed buns are totally analogous to sammiches. Both carry tasty stuff inside of bread.

Talk about food in front of the starving guy? Sure, why not?
Oh, wait, this is a food thread. Oh yeah.

Today I may try my hand at banana pudding. The recipe seems odd, though, because it calls for a large amount of sour cream. That sounds very wrong to me. (*shrug*) But the bananas are already brown and I have all the other ingredients and it seems less labor-intensive than banana bread, so let the potentially nauseating experiment commence!

Again with the teasing.

What is wrong with the tracker?

It was disgusting, and now I have what seems like a gallon of it.

The End.

Next time, try mixing a few into pancake batter... it[apostrophy]s somewhat easy to make, and probably tastes better.

Yeah, that`s just overkill.

In an annoying twist, I found out that banana bread isn`t that difficult to make, and is ten times more delicious than banana pudding anyway. Banana pudding is my brother`s favorite, but hell, he likes peanut butter and syrup sandwiches so his taste buds are clearly defective.

Banana Bread

4 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon salt
2 insanely overripe bananas
3 tablespoons baking powder
1 cup beyond-the-expiration-date milk (aka ``cooking milk``)
1 stick softened margarine
2 eggs

Mix everything together in a large bowl, taking special care to mash the bananas into the mixture evenly and completely. (I didn`t do this well enough for the pudding, which probably goes a long way in explaining why it turned out wrong. Bleh.) Pour the goop into a greased bread pan and put it in the oven. 350 degrees, 45 minutes.

That`s it. What, you think I`d make something complicated?

It went quite nicely. The bread tasted like bananas yet lacked that horrible overripe-fermented-fruit alcohol aftertaste. It was more cakey than bready, really, but as Mitch Hedburg reminded us banana bread isn`t exactly considered sandwich material anyhow. I ate two whole loaves over the weekend, and if I hadn`t run out of bananas I might`ve tried it again, but with nuts.

I`ll look for that bread book next time I swing by the library. The next experiment is to find out how long I can keep baking with this spoiled milk before I become seriously ill.

Fairfield is next to Travis AFB which is the major employer. Lots of Biotech companies in nearby Vacaville. Housing is realtively cheap for the Bay Area. Traffic to Berkeley, not so bad, to the City - real bad. Fairfield is the typical \\\'bedroom\\\' community in Calif. -- But it does get hot (into the 80\\\'s) a lot.
It\\\'s Amino world without Chemists

into the 80s! how will a man from missouri EVER survive it??



*grin* i\\\\\\\'m actually just happy for him that someone finally answered.

...singing Too Darn Hot?
Love that show: Shakespeare and gangsters, what could be better? (In my mind, anyways.)

- My mind is in the gutter, but it keeps out the bad weather.

Good luck! :) Will you be going out for an interview? I am quite useless in this thread, as I have little knowledge of CA... but I thought I would write something anyway. Hope everything goes well.

Fairfield... yeah... You are out in the cuts, buddy. Good luck with that. During non-rush hours, you can probably make the trip to B-Town in under 45 minutes. You have to cross the Carquinez (sp?) Bridge, but other than that, not a big deal.

It can get bloody hot that far inland. Just warning you. BTW, in the Bay Area, is anything over 90.

I like to prepare them in a similar fashion...heat `til squishy and eat.

I heard somewhere that smells were really evocative and are good for rekindling old memories, but it`s not working for me. Even worse, I can`t remember what carmelized onions even smell like!

Does anybody else have that thing where something smells good until you accidentally overdose on it and then it suddenly becomes revolting? I have lots of things like that: syrup, buttered popcorn, certain types of perfume....

Totally true. I spent a good 10 minutes one morning on the balcony of my old apartment in China just smelling the good old Maoming smell. We used to complain that it was the petrochemical plant making the place smell like a giant toilet, but right after a good rain it smells just like old times. Smelled? Smelt? See, you can tell I`m jetlagged because I`m obsessing about weird grammar.

Also, I`ve decided the tracker is not broken. It`s just not tracking what we think it`s tracking. I would prefer a tracker that shows the most recent posts to any topic, but maybe it`s showing the most recently (or frequently?) read topics. Considering Eve`s background at Berkeley, you just never know.

I was thinking along those lines earlier... and wondering if I could con someone else into looking into it...

Does anybody else have that thing where something smells good until you accidentally overdose on it and then it suddenly becomes revolting?

Yeah, tequila.


*********
\\\"Life is too short for grief. Or regret. Or bullshit.\\\" -- Edward Abbey, Vox Clamantis in Deserto

i\\\\\\\\ find\\\\\\\\ them\\\\\\\\ sooth\\\\ing

So.....it goes under the bay???