The 10,000 Post thread V3

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

2671

What can you tell us about Kobe beef? I know very little but I hear it is very high quality. I've only heard of folks dining on Kobe burgers to be honest, which never made much sense to me. If the beef is so great then why mash it up into hamburger?

 

 

Kobe beef, the way the cattle are raised and the meat is prepared, would be illegal in the US for reasons that are unclear to me.  Kobe is the name of a port city near Osaka in an area where there just aren't wide open plains for raising cattle (really, there's nowhere in Japan like Montana or the Dakotas or wherever we raise cattle back home), but you have to go to special restaurants, and like all beef, it's expensive (regular, medium-quality steaks at a chain steakhouse are staggeringly expensive, Kobe beef is well over ￥10,000 for a small hunk of it).  I think that paying the farmers' property taxes accounts for a large part of Kobe beef's price.  They are NEVER made into burgers, so far as I know.  I haven't actually had any, but I'm not a huge food snob, so while I am interested in trying it, it's not on my bucket list.  At the same level as Kobe beef, there are also Matsuzaka beef and Omi/Yonezawa beef.  I suspect that if you've had high-quality steaks in America they would compare favorably.  I live in a rather rural, touristy area, so there are no wagyuu places nearby.  The local specialty is himono, dried fish.  It's good, but many of the tourist trap places dry the fish on racks RIGHT out on the main road.  Grosses me out.  I mean, do people buy them and then ignore then peculiar hints of oil/car exhaust/gasoline in the taste?  Or are the thousands of cars zooming by a few feet away just not a factor?  Himono is tasty, but I won't get it from the tourist traps.  I'm more interested in manju anyways.  Mmm... manju...

 

PROTIP: if someone back in the States is advertising that they're serving you wagyuu, 99.9% of the time they're not giving you the real stuff.  For a long time, the USDA did not authorize Kobe beef slaughterhouses so it was not legal to import it.  Kobe beef is not a registered trademark, so any idiot with a marketing degree can slap it on some Grade A ground chuck and hawk it to Mrs Pretentious for a fake-delicious burger.  You can get the real stuff now in the States, because the law changed, but not in Europe.  Larry Olmstead breaks it down here and here.

[astronelson 339]

2672.

 

I am told Australian beef is among the world's best, and I can't say I've ever forked out anywhere even near $100 for a steak.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

2672.

I am told Australian beef is among the world's best, and I can't say I've ever forked out anywhere even near $100 for a steak.

Partly because we grass feed our cattle here, and there's plenty of it so there isn't the issue of price.

[Duke87 1,070]

(2674)

I can't speak about beef since I don't eat it, but I will say I'm not particularly fond of grass-fed milk. It has a rather unpleasant earthy taste to it. US cows are typically corn-fed, which as far as I'm concerned is superior in terms of the taste it produces.

[timmie 988]

2675

 

I really don't have an opinion about beef, and I'm really sorry for that

 

I'm doing night work today, I've got to write a paper of 2500 words about poor relief, caritative institutions and food, deadline January 24.

[Larks2242 251]

2676.

 

Ironic we are talking about beef since I bought some Australian beef Jerky from Tenderfield last night.

[astronelson 339]

2677.

Was it good?

[Duke87 1,070]

(2678)

 

So, you have Australian beef jerky. If you really don't like it, you may also have beef with an Australian jerk.

[Muck308 55]

2679

 

Thanks for the info, Spidey.

 

I haven't had any fancy beef or steak but I did dine on some gibnut while in Belize.

[Larks2242 251]

2680.

 

(2678)

 

 you may also have beef with an Australian jerk.

 

Or just get jerk chicken.

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

2681

 

Are we being funny now?  Should I be funny, too?

[Duke87 1,070]

(2682)

 

The best way to talk to a hot dog is to be frank.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

2683: Does making puns make you a wiener or a loser?

[Mr Saturn64 742]

2684

 

Not to change topic so quickly, but I have to have my voice heard on this.

 

So I had to go out in the hoity toity ritzy Lower Merion suburb of Philadelphia. Now, as you may know, us here in the Great Mid Atlantic were hit by a load of snow.  OK. So the second I cross the borders to go inside Lower Merion, there's ice and snow and whatnot on the road, and its a complete mess.  What irks me is that middle class neighbors Ardmore, Narberth, and Havertown are perfectly paved, so the middle class has the money and effort to go out and pave, but the richest township in all of Pennsylvania doesn't do anything about the ice and snow on the road.   Why? I have no idea.

[Duke87 1,070]

(2685)

 

It's not just a question of money. New York and New Jersey will, on the state level, salt the hell out of their roads before and during a storm, with the goal of keeping the pavement completely free of snow and ice as much as possible. Connecticut, meanwhile, is very stingy about using salt and instead uses lots of sand, which helps somewhat with traction but doesn't do anything to melt ice. As far as I can tell, Connecticut doesn't like using salt simply out of concern for the environmental effects of having water that's loaded with salt running off into rivers and streams that are supposed to be freshwater.

 

That said, Lower Marion is not unique in being a wealthy town that is seemingly stingy about plowing their roads. In Connecticut where I grew up, Stamford was good about plowing but Greenwich and New Canaan on either side, which were wealthier towns, not so much.

I have two theories as to why:

1) If you are a town as opposed to a city, even if you are a wealthy town, you likely do not have as large of a road maintenance fleet at your disposal, in terms of equipment or in terms of employees, simply because whenever it doesn't snow (the vast majority of the time) all that stuff isn't necessary.

2) Some quiet wealthy towns may be hesitant to send snow plows out at night because residents may complain about the noise.

[Larks2242 251]

2686.

 

They also like to plow windows too.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

2687: Meanwhile, what is snow? Our problems revolve around trains not running because the tracks have actually melted or buckled.



 

[simlink 1,098]

2688

Yikes. Polar opposite of what's happening here.

[Larks2242 251]

2689.

 

2687: Meanwhile, what is snow? Our problems revolve around trains not running because the tracks have actually melted or buckled.



 

 

Now that is both tragic and hilariously awesome at the same time, Is this a personal photo or something uploaded for random cause I can say I've never seen this happen.

[Duke87 1,070]

(2690)

 

Yikes. Polar opposite of what's happening here.

 

Not polar opposite, just hemispherical opposite.

[Mr Saturn64 742]

2691

Oi yoi yoi. (Yes we say that in Philly)

It could very well be possible for a train in Australia to derail because of those melted tracks at the same time it was so icy a train almost fell into the Schyukill River. Something seem wrong about that?

[Muck308 55]

2692

 

My borough is one square mile and has its own road crew because it's fairly dense, so it's almost always clear. Often, as soon as you cross into the next town the roads become noticeably worse.

[RipRap 4,400]

2693

The world always changes . Here, we went from from Bone chilly -47 to a rather mild -10 in just 16 hours.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

2694: Not a personal photo, but I have seen similar happen in my area, along with train staff hosing down the tracks.

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

2695

 

Japanese trains expel water onto the tracks as they move.  I suspect that the reason for this may have something to do with the trains themselves than the tracks.  Summers do suck here, but not THAT bad.

[Duke87 1,070]

(2696)

 

Expel water at what rate? Are we talking about a drip? A trickle? A hose running?

[Ceafus 88 1,906]

2697

 

Its been forever since I have posted in these!

[Prophet42 1,503]

2698

 

I love summer heat.  My comfort zone is 80-95 °F.  Now granted, if it got hot enough to melt train tracks, I would probably be dripping water on me too.

 

Do the Japanese trains expel water before the train or after the train?  And to Duke87s question, at what rate?

[Duke87 1,070]

(2699)

 

Its been forever since I have posted in these!

 

Not since December 24, 2012 in fact - post 9267 in the previous thread.

[Ceafus 88 1,906]

2700

 

Well, its good to be back!