HOW WAS YOUR DAY

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Mongrel
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby Mongrel » Fri Jan 18, 2019 10:29 pm

Everybody talking about McDolan's for a week straight actually made me feel like I wanted it, which does happen once every six months or so.

I'm sure I will come to regret my choice of dinner later, as pretty much always happens when I go to McDonalds, but it was decent enough going down.
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François
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby François » Sat Jan 19, 2019 5:17 am

A while back I realized there are exactly zero cheap burger joints within sensible walking distance of where I live, and "where I live" is the most densely populated area of a 55k people town. No McDs, no BKs, no A&Ws, no Harvey's, no nothin'. There was a Valentine very close by a few years ago and they'd make a burger if you asked, but that's a hot dog franchise mainly, it's closed now, and besides I bet there's something in my garbage can right this moment that I'd rather eat than anything you'd get at a Valentine.

We've got like four restaurants in every block here, but the closest to fast food I can get without taking the bus is a pair of indie Lebanese gyro shops. I mean, I'm not complaining, gyros are rad and their salads are the best, but still, I'd like to have a burger I don't have to make myself one of these days.

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Mongrel
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby Mongrel » Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:32 pm

You probably have a Timmy's I bet, but their food is just plain GODAWFUL now. I bet something out of the Valentine's dumpster would beat Timmy's food.
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François
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby François » Sun Jan 20, 2019 1:03 am

The nearest is half an hour away; there are six in my town but it's like they've all been carefully placed so none of them are close enough to me to ever be worth the walk. There's no way I'm going on a 1 hour round trip for whatever it is they've got.

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beatbandito
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby beatbandito » Wed Jan 30, 2019 3:51 pm

Every time I go into the pizza place near my job:

>walk up to counter, order, wait at register
>guy throws it in the oven and walks away
>more people come in
>I walk away from the counter so they can be served
>my stuff is ready and the guy puts it on a plate
"actually, it's to go"
"oh, it seemed like you were getting comfortable so I thought you were staying"
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Büge
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby Büge » Wed Jan 30, 2019 3:56 pm

Acid reflux again...
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Mongrel
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby Mongrel » Thu Jan 31, 2019 9:01 pm

Trying to sell one of my two older mopeds which have been in storage at my folks' house for years now. Got a guy this week who's messaged me, offered a decent price, and will hopefully be at my folks' place on Saturday morning to pick it up.

Man, after something like eight months (really niche bike, so I knew it would take a while to sell) of 50% garbage offers and stupid asks, and 50% buyers who are lukewarm lowballers or ones who make a good offer and then never reply after I say yes, it is SO FUCKING NICE to have a dude who is straight up no-nonsense. Yes I want this. Here's my offer. Cash. Yes that's good. Date, time, personal info, bing bang boom. Short, simple, to the point, and rock solid.

Even if he comes Saturday and the sale falls through for some reason, I'm not going to hold it against him, because I can tell at least in this guy's case it'd be for some legit reason instead of last-minute bullshit.
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Mongrel
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby Mongrel » Sat Feb 02, 2019 1:25 am

Amazing evening.

We went out to buy chocolate bars before going to dinner. Showed up so late that we thought the place might be closed, but instead got to go invited to on an impromptu (but official), tour and tasting of THE FUCKIN' CHOCOLATE FACTORY (which even included a dinner of mole tamales).

Also got ahold of some albino chocolate, which only three companies in the world are selling commercially to the public. It's not that byproduct "white chocolate" junk, it's a lighter, richer, and much mellower cultivar of regular cocoa. There's no bitterness or astringency, even in crazy high concentrations.

Apparently it used to be very popular throughout mesoamerica, but production basically died off because the long preindustrial shipping times usually resulted in moths and other pests destroying shipments in transit (this is a problem even today, with modern shipping - it's very vulnerable to pests unless the entire shipment is checked very carefully prior to export), so most farmers stopped growing it since they couldn't sell it for export.

This stuff is incredible. If regular decent dark chocolate was 50 cent canola margarine, albino would be farm fresh sweet butter. Dear lord, if this stuff spreads to where you can get ahold of some, DO SO.

Also very educational, since most of the couple of people who there were were bespoke fair trade chocolatiers. Learned all sorts of cool stuff!
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mharr
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby mharr » Sun Feb 03, 2019 11:03 am

This is so bleeding edge that Google still thinks albino chocolate is a fish eating a cucumber.

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Mongrel
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby Mongrel » Sun Feb 03, 2019 2:20 pm

These are the guys and this is the stuff:

https://chocosoltraders.com/products/jaguar-pure

("Jaguar" has no scientific meaning here. It's just their branding for bars made of the stuff)
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Mongrel
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby Mongrel » Sun Feb 03, 2019 2:27 pm

One of the coolest things about fancy bespoke chocolate is that unlike wine or liquor, it's pretty accessible to anyone - you're not playing the silly game of tasting flavours you're not sure are really there.

Sure, you do need to have some experience of darker chocolate to develop a taste (I can thank Starr for mine), so if all you've ever eaten are the Colt 45s or the Pabst Blue Ribbons of the chocolate world, like Reece's cups or Mars bars, you might not appreciate the really amazing stuff. But that's not really much of a barrier.

It's not like developing a taste for chocolate is like developing a taste for whisky. It's chocolate! Almost everyone understands chocolate!
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Grath
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby Grath » Mon Feb 04, 2019 3:58 pm

Mongrel wrote:Also got ahold of some albino chocolate, which only three companies in the world are selling commercially to the public. It's not that byproduct "white chocolate" junk, it's a lighter, richer, and much mellower cultivar of regular cocoa. There's no bitterness or astringency, even in crazy high concentrations.

Instead of a cocoa byproduct, it's an entirely different species of Theobroma that isn't cocoa.

Mongrel wrote:("Jaguar" has no scientific meaning here. It's just their branding for bars made of the stuff)

Theobroma bicolor (the species of tree that this is made from) is also called "Jaguar Tree" so it's definitely not just a random branding.

That said, I ordered some of the "Jaguar Swirl" that's marbled with dark chocolate since they were out of the "Jaguar Pure".

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Mongrel
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby Mongrel » Mon Feb 04, 2019 6:31 pm

Knowledge!

Also, enjoy the swirl. You'll still get a good amount of the Jaguar in it and the distinct flavours of their conventional dark and jaguar combine well. It helps that it's an actual marbling between the two types rather than the two being blended.

Though I did have a bit of a bar of 100% (not 99%, true 100%) cocoa made with a blend of albino, made by a chocolatier in Montreal (Monarch chocolates, really nice guy) who was there because he's been looking for ten years for someone who could provide him with more than 5kg of albino cocoa at a time. I think his bars were about 70% conventional high-quality dark and 30% albino, but they tasted as smooth as a 70%~ cocoa bar. A 70% cocoa bar made with a similar 30% proportion albino apparently (so he said - he didn't have any to try) is as rich as milk chocolate.

I've had 100% cocoa before once or twice, and like most people I was not a fan; Even Starr really tops out at about 90% usually. But this was quite good. I'd never imagined that 100% pure unadulterated cocoa with nothing added could taste like that.
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Silversong
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby Silversong » Tue Feb 05, 2019 5:56 pm

Doin' it, ordering that swirl bar. And cacao shell tea?! Hells yes.

We have a few local chocolatiers so hopefully they catch on soon.

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mharr
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby mharr » Tue Feb 05, 2019 7:15 pm

Going to have to bribe a Canadian to forward some things back to the Old World, it seems.

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Mongrel
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby Mongrel » Tue Feb 05, 2019 8:10 pm

mharr wrote:Going to have to bribe a Canadian to forward some things back to the Old World, it seems.

Such things can be done, yes.
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Silversong
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby Silversong » Sat Feb 09, 2019 10:18 pm

I balked at paying $26 for shipping, so I got a couple friends to join in my chocolate order. Then a happy surprise when I was reminded that American dollars buy way more Canadian chocolate than it first appears! Also Pure bars are back in stock now.

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Mongrel
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby Mongrel » Sun Feb 10, 2019 7:48 am

GET THE PURE.

Oh and I looked at the second swirl bar we got and it was like Grath's, with less albino, as a swirl pattern along the bottom (though you could still taste it). I suspect consistency may be an issue in these early stages - the first bar was nearly half albino.
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Thad
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby Thad » Mon Feb 18, 2019 11:14 am

The wonderful thing about working above a TV station is that you never know what you're going to see when you come in. Oh, hello, alligator!

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nosimpleway
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Re: HOW WAS YOUR DAY

Postby nosimpleway » Sat Mar 02, 2019 2:55 pm

A while back someone posted about corvids with human hands on Mastodon and it turned into a whole thing.

Fast-forward a couple weeks and I'm trying to spend more time creating again and diving back into vector art for the first time in about 15 years.

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