The Bluestocking Women’s Pub - Where Everybody Knows Your Username

[MarieDeGournay]

Welcome to the Bluestocking Arms, the home of good company, excellent drinks and delicious cakes which magically have no irksome contents like gluten or sugar or calories or the kind of alcohol that causes problems - but you wouldn't know

Food and drink are served by a keen staff of gerbils, and other animals such as capybaras, quokkas, etc., also fulfil vital roles, while looking cute AF.

New Bluestockingers always welcome.

It's a culture based around comfort food, which might be the Scottish influence.

Thoir dhuinn an-diugh ar n-aran beag donn agus càise

The spice bag hasn't quite made it north, but if you know the right places to go, you can score some chips with melted cheese and thousand island dressing.

I'm glad I didn't read about that before my healthy, well-balanced, low-carb dinner (rashers, sausage, black pudding, white pudding ,egg, tomato, mushrooms. And two tangerines).

And a little red wine.

I might have been tempted.

I’ve just googled spice bag. Fusion food, yes?

Sounds like @Boiledbeetle's spiritual home, culinarily speaking!

I have heard tell of trendy venues in Belfast that do a caesar salad, but I think that just means they put a single lettuce leaf under the chicken and bacon.

why did they steal our laugh emoticon

😆 😆 😆

But... but... but...WHY? Why would you want to eat that?? Why?

because it would be delicious?

And potatoes are vegetables, so you'd get some vitamin C

I wish to add I'm not totally against having strange things on my chips. I did enjoy my brief time living in Hull many years ago. They have something called "chip spice". I have no idea of its origins or ingredients, but god those chips tasted good with that on when you were inebriated!

Sometimes you get weird things added to potato dishes. In Utah, they put corn flakes on potatoes: Mormon Funeral Potatoes: The Carb-Heavy Meal For The End of The World : The Salt : NPR

I don't have any evidence that my Mormon extended family were responsible for this, but I have my suspicions.

O M G

While we're on the subject of bizarre things to eat, I just got notice of this drink which I feel is right up @DeanElderberry 's street. It may be just what's needed to offset a meal of deep-fried sparp.

Nettle tea (with dried leaves) is okay, and nettle soup in the Spring is food of the gods, but nettle ale? Not sure. Actually I suspect barley is a trigger for my asthma the same as wheat - I've avoided beer in recent years.

phew

Love that it mentions 'dirty soda' - what, like dipping a sausage in it? The page got a bit peculiar at that point & took me off somewhere strange, so I don't know what dirty soda actually is.

I've seen how-to-cook videos online of Americans producing bizarre bakes seemingly made with jars & jars of readymade sauces (various sauces go into the same pan) & multiple huge blocks of cheese in one dish. The quantity was as stunning as anything else about the recipe.

I'm not sure about this, but I have a theory about cookery going off on tangents in tight-knit communities.

I've heard that in Jewish American cookery, you often find family recipes having some completely random ingredient that was picked up two or three generations ago. "We always put cranberry sauce in our carrot stew because that's how grandma made it."

I think Mormon cookery has some of the same tradition. Lime jello with cream cheese must seem really odd to anyone who grew up outside Utah or Idaho, but it's completely commonplace to Mormons.

This does not explain why some chippies in Northern Ireland will serve you chips with melted cheese and thousand island, but I suppose it started somewhere, and I've never found it anywhere else.

Atomic Shrimp (Youtube) made some nettle beer recently so dp tells me. I'm kind of curious but not enough to actually try making some depsite having a few sachets of beer yeast lying around.
Agree with nettle soup being the food of the gods. I usually throw some alexanders in too.

I've put grated cheese and thousand island dressing into salads a time or two, doing it with chips is just genius. I'm not sure when I last saw t-i-d - it's probably in every supermarket but just one of those things I used to use when I worked in Dublin long ago and not since.

The last two-ish pages of "Recipes from a Fevered Imagination" are disgusting.

Thanks for helping with diet, chums!

If my memory was better I might remember the book title, or the author, or anything about it, but in A book I once read, the narrator said that when she cooked ham, she always cut off a bit and cooked it separately. Because her mother always did.
She asked her mother why, her mother said 'Because that's what your grandmother always did'.
They asked Nonna, who said that that's the way it was done at home in the old country.
It so happened that her great grandmother was still alive, so when she was visiting her family in Italy she asked her about the tradition of cutting off a smaller piece of ham to cook separately. The answer to the long family tradition:
'Because I never had a pot big enough to cook a whole one'

Nobody ever believes me about this, but I once worked with a young woman who would get a bag of pickled onion Monster Munch, and then add pickled onions to it, because it wasn't pickled oniony enough.

She didn't even have the excuse of being pregnant. It takes all sorts!

You'd think Boily would approve some of us having appetites for things other than Tunnocks. Or are Beetles like cats, alleged to be not grateful by nature?

I've been pulling Alexanders up alongside the nettles because both of them were obscuring the view of the snowdrops in the winter. I know I have loads of nettles elsewhere in the garden for soup,not sure about the Alexanders, must check.

I love the smell of Alexanders flowers.

That sounds faintly pervy.

You need to add "not a euphemism" when you say something like this.

Our Alexanders are done for the year. Are the seeds edible?

Didn't know what you guys were talking about, so I googled &... yeah, I don't think I'll risk it.

Alexanders is very invasive and the Environment Agency chaps around here cut it on the flood defences every year, while moaning about not being allowed to dredge the borrow dykes.

So if you want to eat it all, I'm sure they'd be delighted.

One of our Family Specials was curried mince and chips. We discovered it in a café somewhere when I was a kid (we moved a lot). Honestly, mince and onions cooked up with garlic and a few spoons of hot Madras, and homemade chips - food of the gods.