500 messages to download......

[poltr1]

Geez. I miss one day that I choose to not get online, and I have nearly 500 messages waiting for me! Okay, so most of them are spam, despite filtering on my part. How these messages got past my "friends gate" I haven't a clue. But the spam filter isn't snagging them because they're mostly HTML messages where the body is an A tag with an IMG tag inside it -- there is no text to filter on! And most of them are less than 10 Kb in size. Shame I can't use regular expressions as filtering criteria.

So in the meantime I'll make a quick entry.

The first week of work has gone well. I met the Thursday deadline for the first part f the project. The deadline for the second half is Wednesday, and that came from the company president. So I'll be working tomorrow for a few hours to ensure that this deadline gets met.

Oh yeah. I tried Donato's 'no-crust' pizza and Quorn. What's Quorn? Read on.

One of the local pizza chains -- Donato's Pizza, which is based in Columbus -- is experimenting with a "no-dough" pizza. How do they do it? They use a specially coated Chinet plate, large enough to hold a 7" pizza. Then they add the usual pizza toppings onto the plate. Then they put it in the oven and bake it, just like a regular pizza. It's not too bad, although it has to be eaten with either a fork or a spoon.

Quorn is what I'd call a synthetic food. I also call it a "cultured fungus" because it's grown in large vats using some type of mushroom-based starter, kind of like yogurt or sourdough. (The story is on Quorn's web site; linked above.) The scientific term for it is "mycoprotein".

unclechristo mentioned having some a few weeks back, and I'd already heard about it. Although I should say that most of the stuff I heard about it before that point was negative, and coming from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). But then, in their narrow point of view, EVERYTHING is hazardous to your health! So I bought a box of Quorn nuggets, heated a few of them in the microwave....and liked them. Although Quorn tastes a little bit like chicken -- cliched but true -- it doesn't have the stringy, sinewy texture of chicken.

I'd definitely have some more, but I doubt my wife would want any. Also, because it's fungus-based, I won't recommend it to anyone with a known mushroom allergy. Perhaps someday, quorn would be grown in remote places and be used to feed starving people in other places of the world. Or it might be grown in a section of a space station, and feed the inhabitants of the station. Quite a change of pace from the soy-based meat substitutes (TVP) that is so common in dried foods and MREs.


Okay, the messages are downloaded. Time to go offline and read them.....after Dweezil and Lisa.

Comments

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

I tend to buy and use Quorn quite often. The grounds are a reasonable meat-ish thing for sauces and the like, and I like using the little faux-chicken chunks in an alfredo sauce with broccoli.

[figmo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for warning me off the stuff.

Re: Quorn

[poltr1]

You're welcome. I had you in mind when I wrote the warning line, but didn't feel it was appropriate to single you out by name.