Cavey wrote:
Well to be fair, FWIW, I can barely post anything at all, ever, without someone leaping in with some shite or other, but that's fair enough I'm a big boy etc. - I just give it right back, in spades. As for Hearthly, he and I have known each other for 15-odd years and have had some right old jousts; I seriously, seriously doubt he's remotely bothered by this micro-storm in a thimble but if he is, I'm sure he'll let me know himself.
The issue, for me at least, is that people are leaping in making wide, sweeping statements about what is, and is not shit, with all sorts of "well, I've got my Asda crisps" type posts in what's supposed to be a food and cooking thread. For me, the analogy is me repeatedly going into the PC thread saying "all custom PCs are total shit, my 5-year old laptop is all you need", or perhaps "all console games are utter shit" in the PS4 thread, or "I don't do any exercise at all and am fucking loving it" in the middle aged spread thread. No-one is saying I CAN'T do this/I don't have freedom of speech, but equally, I'm sure it would be considered unhelpful at best and annoying spamming at worst, no doubt attracting criticism of some sort or other.
As for the money card, the irony for me is that, as I've said, Kashmiri chillies and other similarly directly sourced spices cost mere pence - much cheaper, in fact, than shop-bought, if bought in reasonable quantities. I wouldn't mind if I'd come on here and said "eat caviar or you're a pleb" or somesuch, but I very much haven't; Waldorf salad is far from expensive to make either - far, far less per portion than a McMuffin breakfast meal from Maccies.
Bad diet and obesity (so often going hand in hand) kills millions of people years before their time every year, and causes untold, largely avoidable misery. I make no apology whatsoever for "looking down on" rice chips fried onion and curry as some supposed crab linguine or similar busting meal, or "all celery in all forms is utter shit" type comments, and nor do I make any apology for coming down hard on what I consider to be inverted snobbery and/or peer pressure type comments, like somehow I'm a "snob" or "posh" because hey, I like to prepare and eat good food. I wish far more people did it, because they'd likely live a lot longer, happier lives.
I'm reminded of when I was a 16 year old sheet metal worker apprentice, sat in smoke-filled factory cabins during break time, being surrounded by 30 adult men - all well senior to me - every single one of them Sun newspaper in one hand, B&H gold in the other, being "expected" to be "one of them" and buy my own Sun and fags. I decided even at that tender age, and despite having the most precarious existence possible, suffering real hunger and poverty that I very much fucking doubt very few here knows the first thing about (but could be wrong), I wasn't going to read that rag; I wasn't going to do stuff that I thought was shit, just because it made others comfortable for me to do so, to conform with the herd. I do things because *I* want to do them, whether others like it, or not, because it's *my* life and how I wish to lead it.
I'll let others be the judge as to whether I'm a nice guy or not. IRL, dare I say, people seem to think so - but this is a strange virtual place that, IMO, brings out the very worst in people, me included perhaps.
To be fair I don't think this thread was ever going to be the place for your public health crusade. Unless you think that delicious but fatty, sugary foods cooked with care at home are somehow going to be much better for you than the same amount of fat and sugar from McDonalds or somewhere. Eating too much of that stuff will fuck you up no matter where it comes from.