Mince Pies

This is a ridiculous thread. It beats even my cricket ramblings in terms of pointlessness. But I feel compelled to ask:Do Americans eat mince pies at Christmas? Do you guys even know what the frig I am talking about here?My Argie wife is bewildered by this whole "disgusting habit" and my Aussie and Saffer work colleagues are convinced that the only reason Brits eat them at Christmas is because we are all to permanently pissed during the festive season to actually taste them.But I love them.I am eating the last of my Christmas supply as I write. Gorgeous high quality Glennfiddich laced all butter pastry ones that are second only to home-made ones. Yum.Feel free to ignore my inane nonsense.

Nooooo. Not vegetarian (not traduitionally anyway) but not meat in the sense that the name (thee days) misleadingly suggests.Mince pie - Wikipedia

Hurrah! But I never doubted that you would be a man of discerning tastes. 20 year old single malt. So it claims. Double Yum with knobs on.But they have all gone now. Roll on next Christmas.

Off topic!!Hah - Only kiddin. Any old meat discussion will do. Or any other food related talk for that matter.Yes - Doner kebabs are indeed the staple of the drunken Brit. I have had more than my share over the years. Dubious quality but very tasty all the same.On the subject of strange meat - I have purposefully eaten dog (in Vietnam) as well as worms (in an omlette). I have eaten ants covered in chocolate (in Cambodia) but drew the line at roaches, locusts and grubs.I will eat practically anything except insects or custard.

I admire your enthusiasm. Indeedy.But only at Christmas

Ouch! That was a low blow.But funny all the same. I know you don't mean it really you secret cricket fan you.

Well having done ants and drawn the line there on the insect front I will give any further insectoid gastronomic experiences a miss. A couple of times each. Frogs legs - weird looking things but OK tasting. Snails - Once so garliccy that I may as well have been eating garlic coated in garlic. The second time I wasn't that keen on what I assume to have been the actual taste of the snails. I have never had alligator. Tax free or otherwise. Croc and roo in Aus. I have eaten grilled iguana (or some other simlar lizard) in Guyana. It ran past the bar I was in. Someone chased it, grabbed it and a couple of hours later we were eating it. Quite nice actually. You are sick. Good man. Boo hiss

We seem to have found the subject about which the resident atheists can exercise their inherent religious fervour. Sounds gross. Frankly. I spit on your paltry pie. I mince it up into litle bits and feed it to the dogs who turn their nose up at it because it isn't as good as my mince pie. Hah!There can be only one true pie. And it is mine! Is this where we each write our own 'one true recipe book', gather together a mass of followers who spend the next few hundred years fighting each other in the name of the almighty pie?

You aren't doing it right. The secret is in the vinegar.But with regard to fish and chips - Yeah overrated.

Tragic. Truly tragic. Page not found - Mince Pie Club.

Thit cho was OK actually. Hard to describe but I thought sort of beefish in a porky kind of way. My friend disagreed totally though. He said it tasted like that fake soy meat you get in some veggie restaurants. I have been to Vanuatu. Got absolutely stoned out of my head on kava. That definitely tasted like dirty dishwater but had quite an effect. Despite being off my nut I am reasonably certain that I didn't eat anyone.

In that part of the world I also went to Kiribati and Tuvalu. Before kids and domesticity became my lot in life. Both for work (I used to work for an international aid charity) and pleasure.I've been to a few countries in Africa, a few in central and South America, China, Russia, a few places in the Carribbean and a fair few in SE Asia. Would love to do both poles. Penguins and polar bears respectively. The closest I have been to either is Patagonia in the South of Argentina. Also to my shame I have never made it to anywhere in the whole Indian subcontinent. So India, Sri-Lanka, Nepal etc. would be where I would go if I could go anywhere tomorrow.Oh and Bhutan. I would love to go to Bhutan!!! Fraid not. UAE and Eritrea are the closest I have been to that part of the world. A desert trip sounds like fun though. Well in an ill considered display of macho nonsense I set out to show that the stupid foreigner could do anything the (highly amused) locals could do. The mouth numbness didn't seem so bad and the other effects seemed quite minor initially. So I went for it. Quite a few "cups" later it all went a bit odd. Like being very very stoned in a not very pleasant way. Dude there is only so much talk about mince pies even I can sustain. Foods of the world is more than on topic and if travel creeps in on the back of that then I am not gonna complain.

Unfortunately yes. As a kid I remember my gran making it. Not impressed with her nostalgic take on food. I have had haggis which includes tripe but it is all minced up and spiced and is actually quite nice. I've had some dish apparently made from parts of a pigs face in the Philippines. But not recognisably so. I haven't actually had a snout cooked and put in front of me for example.So what is the weirdest thing you have eaten?

Thai curries are my current passion. Lush.

Never had that (alas) but love coconut based curries. Was it like Thai curries at all? I am always stoopid enough to try. And I always fail pathetically causing myself great embarrassment in the process. All part of the fun. My most recent attempt last year was playing beach football with Brazilian kids (no more than 10 years old). They whooped my sorry English ass. I had to resort to picking them up and dumping them in the sand as the ball came towards me. It was the only way I could even get a touch of the ball. They found my ineptitude generally hilarious. It was a very fucking cool job. But I eventually had to leave to earn proper money. To go to the programme office in the country where the staff manage all the volunteers for that country and setup all the IT stuff, connections back to London, email blah blah blah. Then source a supplier to support it all and train them up on what I had done and how to keep it going. If you like IT geekery of that sort it was fantastic. If not then I guess it isn't that interesting as a job. But the travel would still be aweseome. And as a self confirmed geek I loved trying to get all this stuff to work in places where the infrastructure for it barely even existed at the time. I usually had a week or two to do the setup and training in the capital. Then a week to roam around exploring the country while they looked after the stuff I had setup themselves. And then a week back in the office to sort out any problems and do any extra training.I was also a physics teacher as a volunteer myself (living in in Guyana for about 18 months) before working for the charity in question as an actual employee. That was very cool too. I might well make it my next one. Whenever that is going to be. Not anytime soon alas. When I was there it was still pulling itself together economically after it's conflict with Ethiopia. I am glad to hear it is doing well now. Well off the top of my head (which means I may be making this shit up without meaning to) I know two interesting facts about Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas)1) It came to fame in 1999/2000 as the country where the Millenium first "started" as it is the first to officially welcome in each new year. For that reason it had it's one and only ever tourist spike.2) It officially has the largest area of any country but it is almost all water as it is made up of dispirate islands so has very little actual land mass.That last one in particular sounds dubious to me even as I write it. But I am too lazy to check so it stands until someone tells me I am talking out of my favourite orifice