RS & Parcelforce

[geoff]

Turned them into CFLs did they ?

[geoff]

In message , Arfa Daily writes

But that's what I'm getting asked to do on occasions

No, they have never done that in my experience

good example I remember well a couple of years ago

they sent me a toroidal transformer in a jiffy bag and some other light items in a cardboard box separately

[Arfa Daily]

All of which actually shows that you know absolutely nothing about the production of food, and seasoning it properly ...

The salt cannot be added afterward, because then, what you taste is salt. Seasoning, as I said, is not about tasting salt in the food. It is absolute nonsense to suggest that professional and trained cooks are addicted to salt. It's just that they have a trained palate, which you obviously don't, and understand the importance of the use of correct levels of salt, to properly bring out the flavours of the other ingredients. Bland tasting food is not necessarily because inferior product is being used to make it. We use only top quality produce, but with some items, no matter how 'strong' the primary flavours of the ingredients are, without proper seasoning, the finished product can still taste 'flat' or 'uninteresting' or sometimes, plain bland.

Arfa

[Arfa Daily]

That is utterly wrong.

The problem with removing a lot salt from a diet is

'Correct' seasoning is not "a lot of salt". Too much salt is just as bad for the taste of the food, as not having any in there at all. You cannot suggest that putting no salt in a dish during its preparation, is preparing that dish to taste as it is "meant to taste". When a dish is composed of a number of ingredients, you do not taste them all individually. They combine to form new flavours, and some of those new flavours benefit, to an educated palate at least, from a degree of seasoning. If you cannot taste this, then you are one of those people who will never make a decent cook.

As I mentioned previously try (all) food completely

Anyone with a half way decent palate, will dislike over-salted food anyway. Try to understand, that seasoning is not just about "adding salt"

Arfa

It's very much like smokers who can never

[Arfa Daily]

We took over another cafe about 18 months back, and the previous owner had cartloads of Knorr 'professional' soups in stock. They were packed in boxes of 10, I recall, and each was in a strong plastic pouch about the size of one of those 'Orange C' packs that Libby's used to make. I would guess perhaps a half litre in each. We make all our own soups from scratch, so decided that these ones would not continue to be used, so I took them home. There was about 4 or 5 different flavors, including a Mediterranean Tomato, and a vegetable, and I have to say that they were very good. But for the fact that we like to control exactly what goes in our soups, we could have continued to serve them. If you received it in a restaurant, you wouldn't be disappointed, and would probably think that the chef had made it himself. As to Baxter's tinned soups, the only one I like now is their plain tomato, as it tastes more tomato-y and less sweet than any of the others, including the supermarket own brands.

Arfa

[Bob Eager]

I hav ecompletely given up on disk drives from CPC, for that reason. Amazon aren't bad for them.

[chris French]

In message , Arfa Daily writes

Or maybe they have trained their palates to expect food to taste as it does when seasoned? They are used to it and therefor it tastes wrong without it? I'm not saying they are addicted to it, just used to a certain way of food tasting.

Certainly ISTM that limiting the salt you add to your food, seems to change how much you taste the salt added to food.

I've not for many years added salt to food when cooking it as a rule (though sometimes there will be some in it from say using soy Sauce, or whatever) and I'd object to the accusation that my food is bland :-) - other people seem to be very happy with it.

But I think that this a different argument from that about the amount of salt in a lot or prepared and processed foods in supermarkets. where it does seem that higher levels of salt and sugar are used to try to give the foods a 'taste', that really is just relying on these high levels. People get used to this and then expect things to taste like that.

I'm not a great eater of such things, but I find now that prepared soups say are often very salty - almost to the point of being uneatable for me

- esp tinned ones, but also sometimes the chilled ones. Similarly for other chilled prepared foods or things like pies or pasties

[PeterC]

F=Fragmented.

[tony sayer]

In article , geoff scribeth thus

We had some lead acid batteries and some desktop inserts they things you put cables through..

All in the same box.

Net result was all cable inserts smashed. One battery missing went out through the hole in the side of the box;!...

[stuart noble]

Whatever happened to moderation? These days things either taste of nothing at all, or they are swamped in inappropriate herbs and spices.

[Arfa Daily]

Yes, and being a small company, I can understand that you cannot accommodate them, and if you've never used Royal Mail for your shipments, then that is your company policy, and that's fine.

All of the component companies have always done nonsense like that, but I think that is more down to the morons employed in dispatch, rather than company policy. RS, and Farnell for that matter, used to send out small items by Royal Mail, in a Jiffy bag, by default, and for the most part, the bits arrived in the post, at a predictable time, the next morning when you needed them, and undamaged. The shipping policies that both of these companies have now, for the most part preclude this ever happening any more, and it is unhelpful to all concerned, including them, because if I can find an alternative supplier for my orders each time, who will ship them Royal Mail, then they will get the order, irrespective of whether they are a few pennies dearer, or charge for shipping.

Arfa

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember geoff saying something like:

Ironically, even if you did just 'pop down the PO' with it, they'd likely get it later than simply waiting for your normal pickup/delivery. I assume you have a deal with one of the delivery companies.

Customers, eh?

[The Natural Philosopher]

That the problem with pre-prepared food.

Flavour is the first thing you lose when you keep stuff hanging around - vegetable stuff that is.

Vegetables straight out of the garden have real flavour. It last a day or to at most.

[Dave Liquorice]

Agreed, lates one Cauldron Foods Lincolnshire or Cumberland sausages. Now rubbery and rather too herby in flavour.

The packaging states: "We'd love to know what you think... or visit our website

I can't find anywhere on the saite that allows you to let them "know what you think".

[Arfa Daily]

Are you seriously suggesting that every world class and renowned Michelin starred chef is wrong ?

Your concept is utterly wrong. You do not taste the salt added to food during its preparation - unless its use has been heavy handed. The salt is put in, in *small* and correct quantities to 'bring out' the flavours of other ingredients, as they combine in the cooking process, to produce new flavours. It acts as a sort of flavour catalyst, if you like. Used wrongly, it becomes a taste in its own right, so if that is the only way that you have ever experienced its presence, then you have never either eaten correctly prepared food, or used it correctly in your own cooking. It's not easy to get it right, which is why there are professional chefs with naturally good palates. That is their gift, and why they are professional chefs.

But why not add salt ?

It is indeed a different argument, and I don't dispute that manufacturers will add excess salt to crap ingredients to obtain a strong savoury taste that I'm sure that people get used to, but that is misuse of salt as an 'ingredient', rather than correct use of salt as an enhancement to the flavour blending process - called 'seasoning'

I used to buy a chicken slice from a local family baker. Then, all of a sudden, they got onto this health crack about salt, and completely stopped using it in their fillings. The taste quality of their slice went from superb to rubbish overnight. With the small amount of salt that had previously been added to the mix, the flavour of the chicken and potatoes and onions used to burst out as both individual items and a combined flavour. After the salt was removed, the filling became a bland chicken-coloured gloop, typical of what you find in supermarket pasties. This sad demise of what was previously a top quality 'home baked' product was not because you could no longer taste salt that had been added to crap ingredients, but that the flavour combinations created from the quality ingredients being used, were no longer being enhanced by the correct addition of seasoning to the mix, prior to cooking. No amount of salt added afterward, would have restored that same flavour quality, emphasising that it is *not* about the taste of the salt itself, Chris.

Arfa

[The Natural Philosopher]

Soy sauce has lots of added salt.

Agreeed.

I agree.

A correctly sorted body will excrete salt damned fast.

I think the worse danger is that you then lose chloride ions too fast. So I use sea salt that mas a lot of chlorine in it as well. The other way to pick up chlorides IIRC is to eat fruit and veg.

There's a lot of rubbish talked about salt.

And food in general. Balance is all. If your body is short of something, you get hunger and cravings: if you don't put the right food in, you get unbalanced chemistry and THAT is the problem.

My niece has had to get all vegetable oils out of her diet,.. Ruins her skin apparently.

[Tim Watts]

Dave Liquorice wibbled on Sunday 11 July 2010 12:15

Another "first" is

've recommended them here before as good Mapei suppliers, but since earlier this year, they "improved" their website, meaning:

a) The main thing has been done in Flash (FFS, I thought people had got over that nonsense - and don't they realise that Google can't find *anything* anymore?)

b) Their Online shop that used to work perfectly well is broken and non functional, despite me emailing them about it on 17th April.

What possesses people to take down a website in order to develop a new one in place? Where do they get their cretinous web developers who can't develop offline and then to top it off, can't finish the job?

Utter utter cretinism.

Since then, they've lost my business to Tile Giant who can get all things Mapei and I can go and collect...

[<me9]

If they need to use salt then yes. I've never needed to add salt to cover up bland food. Salt tastes foul to me.

You get used to excessive salt. Try without for a month or so and you will wonder why you ever added it.

And why I rarely eat out.

Me too. Not for over 40 years.

It tastes foul

It is difficult to get processed food that isn't salty, but it is possible with reading the small print on labels. If salt isn't mentioned it's probably too high.

Like the renowned monosod. glucamate(SP?) flavor enhacer. Just makes you want to consume more, water in the case of salt.

I've found /some/ of the Aldi ones ok.

[Dave Liquorice]

Thought it was the sodium. Get low on sodium (or potassium) and the nervous sytem starts to misbehave. But you need chlrodes as well...

[Rob]

My word. That's one of the worst sites I've seen in a long time.

Rob