I do so agree with what Madsen Pirie, who is now guest blogging at the Singleton Diet, says about mustard:
Second breakfast consisted of a croissant with the rest of the honey-roasted ham, this time with Florida mustard and fresh orange juice. After it came black coffee. As you might gather, I like mustards, pretty well all of them, wholegrain, English, Dijon, French, Florida, and so on. I even regard sausages as just an excuse for mustard.
I have a jar of Tesco wholegrain mustard on the go right now, and very tasty it is too. I also often eat meat just to eat mustard, but I never really spelled this out for myself before, so I am grateful to Madsen Pirie for doing this for me.
The Singleton Diet, as already reported here, started out as occasional Samizdatista Alex Singleton blogging about what he was eating. The idea was for him to get slimmer. But after a while, Alex got fed up with blogging every day or even every few days about his dietary intake, and the Singleton Diet faded. (Whether Alex is now any slimmer, I am not sure, but I rather think he is.)
But now, the Singleton Diet has sprung to life again, with Madsen Pirie as a guest writer. I think this is a really good idea. Who wants to blog about everything they eat for ever? Almost nobody, and if anyone did, who would want to read that for ever? But a succession of different eaters is another matter entirely.
As regular Samizdata readers will know, if you have a pro-freedom attitude towards the world you will always have lots to complain about. But the economic rules and institutions that we favour have also poured forth a Niagara of good news, and in no area of life is this more true than in the matter of food. Thanks to the farmers and especially to the food retailers, we – especially we who live in London, as Alex Singleton, Madsen Pirie, and I all do – now have a world of exciting and exotic food products to choose between and to enjoy. What better way could there be for a man like Madsen Pirie, one of the most notable of London’s freedom mongers of recent decades, to demonstrate that he is capable of enjoying life and not just of proposing improvements for and regretting the derangements of it caused by others, than for him to do a spot of food blogging? It should be a lot of fun.
Odd. I live in Florida and love mustard, but I’ve never heard of “Florida mustard”. What is it?
I was born and raised in Florida (lived their 30 years or more) and I second the question, what the %^&%$ is “Florida mustards”??????
Florida mustard is the stuff I brought back from Florida. They use it on hot dogs, amongst other things.
I live in Florida and love mustard, but I’ve never heard of “Florida mustard”.
That’s because it’s French. See:
Florida mustard
(Don’t they have Google in your part of the internet?) 🙂
My personal favourite is horseradish mustard (sometimes called Tewkesbury mustard) and use it with just about everything. I must eat about 4 lb of it per year.
Tewkesbury mustard… food of the Gods
So let me get this straight. Florida mustard is from France and made with champagne. And french fries are from the USA and Italian spaghetti is from China. OK. So how do they ship Mars bars in from outer space?
Brian, don’t forget sauce Bernaise. Admittedly, it is quite expensive but it enlivens a steak.
I think the improvement in the range and quality of foods sold in the West has risen massively in the last few years, in part due to the supermarkets, a fact that the flat-earthers moaning about the evils of big branded firms will never acknowlege. You can buy an incredible range of stuff from all over the world pretty much when you want. That simply wasn’t the case as recently as 30 years ago.
And one should not ignore the positive aspect of immigration in all this.
Actually French Fries were first made in Belgium.
(and Indian ink is made in China, but then what isn’t made in China at present?).
Mustard has to be freshly made up from powder to be any good. You need to eat it straight away and preferably on Toulouse Sausages not those yucky UK ones!
What I do miss from my time living in Florida is the Seminole Horseradish that I used to get from the local supermarket.
Maybe I should mix some with the honey from the plastic bear container for my chicken tenders.
I actually like the sweet german mustard, which tastes completely differently to any ‘anglo-saxon’ or french mustard I have had. It’s wonderful with frankfurters and rye bread, the junk food of my childhood.
The migration of food is remarkable, just think of Asian cuisine without the humble chilli from South America, European cuisine & spirits without the potato from South America, the world without chocolate from South America, Italy without pasta, Australia without wine, Britain without tea, the world without coffee (not worth contemplating), Scotland without chips & curry sauce, etc. etc.
Brendan,
In the US, salsa has outsold ketchup for about a decade now. (Me, I can’t eat eggs — scrambled or over easy — without a hefty dose of salsa on them.)
Creeping up the ladder, though, is the Vietnamese hot sauce Sriracha. Go into any company lunch room, on the west coast at least, and there will be a bottle of the stuff in the refrigerator.
Sriracha
David,
Have you ever had Bajan hot sauce, it’s a pleasant blend of Vinegar, Habanero Pepper, Mustard, Onion, Garlic, Salt, Turmeric and Paprika.
Bajan
Brendan
Brendan,
Oh god please dont remind people about Scottish culinary atrocities such as chips and curry sauce and the inevitable deep-fried mars bar (once saw a deep-fried ice cream mars bar attempted .. suffice to say it wasnt a success).
But even in the frozen north the great internationalisation of food has been nothing but a welcome boon. My diet as an adult bears no relation to that of my youth (this is a GOOD thing). Just about to launch into a Chicken Jalfrezi (made myself) so bon appetit !
Sriracha is awesome stuff. You could, seriously, kill a man with a bottle of it.
– Josh
You can buy an incredible range of stuff from all over the world pretty much when you want. That simply wasn’t the case as recently as 30 years ago.
Undoubtedly so, but one needn’t go back as far as 30 years. Try watching an episode of Delia from only 10 or 12 years ago. You’ll see her explaining what oregano and ciabatta are. An enormous number of things we take for granted today were introduced to us only in the last decade. All thanks be to Delia and the supermarkets.
As far as mustards go, I have to agree with Adriana. The sweet/spicy German stuff is the ultimate – especially the one I make myself. Skip the sausages. All you need is a spoon.
I’m still with Tewkesbury Mustard as the leader. If you have a relish that merits a mention in Shakespeare’s Henry IV because of his love for it, then who I am to disagree?
You know, those guys coming out of concentration camps were really skinny fellows (works best in Dr. Strangelove accent). None of the usual excuses: Gladular problem, big bones. The were thin because they didn’t eat enough to avoid serious weight loss. So forget all those fad diets, go straight to a hunger strike if you really want to reduce body weight and cut the flab. Got the seal of approval from a Scotsman I ran into in downtown Tokyo. Needed a signatory for a passport application, and you know, you just can’t get a Justice of the Peace or a left-handed priest for love or money. His view was a 12-year old single malt contained all the nutrition required for good health. Of course he’d pretty nearly finished the bottle at that point.