Friday, May 26, 2006

Mexico - the Worlds Most Unimaginative Chefs?



Mexico is a country famous for its signature dish...


Refried Beans
How did this arise? Lets look back in time .....
Mr and Mrs Mexican are happily living away in Mexico. Each day they go down to the fields, collect some beans, bring them back to the house and then eat them. Each day, its beans for breakfast, beans for lunch, beans for dinner. Sometimes its beans for supper too. On special occasions, fiestas and public holidays, its beans.
Eventually, after several hundreds (or maybe thousands?) of years, Mr Mexican said to Mrs Mrs Mexican "Hey, these beans are a bit dull. Lets liven it up a bit by cooking them".
"OK" says Mrs Mexican "How do you want to cook them? What interesting technique will you use to make these beans more interesting than they already are?"
"Erm, fry them?" says Mr Mexican.
Many more centuries (millennia?) later, Mrs Mexican says to Mr Mexican, "There fried beans are still fabulous, but to be honest a diet of fried beans is starting to seem a little bit samey. Any chance we can try something else - maybe as a treat, for Cinquo de Maio or something?"
So, Mr Mexican puts on his Mexican Thinking Hat and retires to the kitchen. Later that night he triumphantly returns.
"See darling - look what I have made!" he flamboyantly exclaims in a way only a flamboyant (but married with children in case you are thinking that...) Mexican man can do. "I have invented a whole new dish for you my darling - Refried beans !"
Lets face it - beans, fairly unimaginative. Fried beans - Not much better. Frying the little f--kers again - now, that was positively moving backwards on the imaginative scale at a rate of knots...
At least we know that some time, maybe around 2096 0r 2098, Mexico will be due another culinary earthquake. And then lets all just pray that the world is ready for the sensation that will truly be:
"triple-fried beans!"

Victor Kiam

Victor Kiam, who so famously said "I liked it so much I bought the company" was ostensibly talking about Remington shavers.

But shavers can't be that exciting, surely?

My theory revolves around te fact that Remington also do ear and nose hair removal technology

Maybe he bought the company because one day (just after middle age crept up on him unexpectedly) he found the need to own some nose-hair clippers. However after he walked into the shop, a "teenage boy & condoms incident" happened to him, and faced with the shame of being seen asking for the latest hairy-ear-trimmers, he decided that buying the whole company was maybe the less embarassing option ?






Saturday, May 13, 2006

For those "Must Have" Items...

The Windsor Sheraton & Towers Hotel in Bangalore offers a service to provide you with those little necessities that you may just have forgotten, or run out of on your travels.

They promise to be able to deliver all the following items to your room:


Now, most of these look pretty sensible. I have myself forgotten a razor, and a missing button creates a need for a sewing kit that otherwise would be unlikley to make it through airport security.

Plasters, Savlon & Dettol - I can envisage an urgent need for these items.

But.... an "entangling comb"?

Erm, no...

What bizzarre situation or contrived sequence of improbably events could possibly result in you suddenly - in the middle of the night perhaps - feeling a desparate need to have tangled and knotted hair?

I can't imagine of such an occurrence.

But - if you can, I certainly know a hotel where you should stay when visiting Bangalore


Wednesday, May 10, 2006

A View of the Tarmac


This appealing proposition was on offer in Brussels Airport.

Other competing restaurants offered views of brick walls, a patch of bare earth and a slab of unpainted concrete to entice the diner. In each case there was no apparent correlation with the ethnicity of the food on offer...

On visiting the establishment, I now believe the word they may actually have been looking for was "runway"

Friday, May 05, 2006

Italian Barbers

Fancy getting your hair cut in Milan?

Try Lucio's, with their attractive offer of...

"One Cut, One Style"
(My Italian is patchy to say the least, but I'm pretty sure thats what it says...)