We have moderators! To better protect this blog from terrible comments by terrible people, I’ve invited several longtime Mammotheers to be mods, and they have graciously accepted. You may know them as Kittehserf and emilygoddess, but from now on they will be known as, well, the same names but with “MOD” at the end, and they will help to enforce the comment policy and keep discussions running smoothly.
Those of you who aren’t mods, feel free to contact me or any of the other mods when you see a troubling comment or a commenter who deserves the boot. You can email whichever of us is on duty at [email protected] or you can put a request for a ban (or moderation, or for an over-the-line comment to be deleted) in the comments themselves.
To make it easier for all of us mods to find these requests in the comments, please accompany your request with the words “MOD REQUEST” in all caps. Put that in the subject line of any emails you send as well.
Hopefully with more mods on board and a tougher stance on trolls we’ll be able to keep the comments a safer place for everyone. (Except asshole trolls, but they don’t count.)
I’m also bringing back Troll Challenges for some annoying commenters who might not deserve a full ban, just to see if they’re willing to follow some basic rules. Feel free to suggest Troll Challenges to me and the other mods.
EDIT: Added the new mod email address.
But pallygirl, don’t you love babies enough to want to see them used as a punishment for female sluttiness?
No, fuck no. As maternal as a sledgehammer.
Only to humans, pallygirl, only to humans!
Every time those idiots go on about how wonderful and precious fetuses are and then use the “eat your broccoli, and btw you only have to eat it because you were a slut” approach to convincing women to carry them to term, I have a little chuckle to myself.
… I like broccoli.
😛
Oh true, I love my fur children. Or overlords. They’re Schroedinger’s kittehs, capable of being fur children and overlords simultaneously. Their wave function refuses to collapse to a permanent, defined state, even when they are at rest.
I like broccoli, with or without cheese sauce. I shall substitute brussels sprouts. 🙂
I think simply forbidding the two-dot ellipsis would be enough of a challenge to make trolls vanish forever.
Anyways, everyone knows pregnant women are smug:
Did someone say my name?
Three times, but no mirror was involved. Is that a minor detail?
I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate broccoli. It’s the worst. Fortunately I love spinach, arugula and chard so I get the necessary greens.
Computer screens are an acceptable substitute for mirrors.
I thought I hated broccoli as a kid, turns out I just hated the way British people usually cook it. The first time I had it lightly steamed I was all, what is this wondrous thing?
I like broccoli as part of Chinese food.
There’s something about broccoli that just completely disgusts me. The smell turns my stomach. I don’t know why. I’ve just always despised it. No one else ever seems to share my feelings though.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooo what have we done with this broccoli conjuring?
Broccoli is really nice. Cauliflower is just boring, but brussels sprouts are evil.
“use the opposite gender for what you’re trying to say every time”
If you mean for shit like “women can’t do math” => “men can’t do math”, then okay, but I read that as using the opposite gender for the person you’re addressing, and no, just no. I’d mention non-binary genders in more than just passing, except if it is the first one, then you can pretty much be sure they aren’t gonna be inclusive. Otoh! I love the idea of making them have to trash talk men every time they try to trash talk women.
I feel that way about brussel sprouts. Hated when people would cook them during the holidays when I was a kid because it smelled like someone was boiling used gym socks.
Chinese food saved my digestive system, no joke. I hate to think what kind of state my innards would be in now if I’d stuck to my teenage refusal to eat vegetables, especially barely cooked or green ones. Bless you, Mr C’s mom’s former lodger, for bringing me different cool things to try each day on your way home from work (sorry about the whole no on the mooncakes, though).
I’m ok with Brussels sprouts. It’s good on bruschetta. Just keep broccoli the hell away from me.
I really must try steaming broccoli the next time we have it. (Yes, I like it even though this is a boil-everything household.)
If we’re gonna talk veggies probably most people like – spuds! The great and wonderful potato!
I would suggest trying steamed broccoli as a salad ingredient, but I seem to remember you saying that you’d already hit Peak Salad a while back.
When I was a kid, we ate a lot of boiled potatoes (almost always cultivar ‘Van Gogh’) and green salad with pechai (“Chinese cabbage”). I learned to love them, while others in my family eventually got fed up with them.
The guinea pigs we had at the time were severely prejudiced against pechai. They would eagerly eat many other kinds of vegetables and weeds but when offered pechai they would sniff and balk.
In recent years ‘Van Gogh’ has been mostly replaced by other, inferior cultivars in Finnish potato market so I eat less potatoes and go out of my way to find good potatoes. I start even understanding why some people don’t like potatoes.
cassandra, pretty much, lol. Cold meals for dinner, bleh.
Arctic Ape – Cream Delight potatoes are my favourites. Boiled and smothered in butter, or roast in the oven, yum!
WWTH: I feel the same way about, well, pretty much anything in Brassica that isn’t mustard. I actually really like mustard, especially on sandwiches.
Stephanie Alexander, one of Australia’s great cooking gurus, dealt with that in her gi.gan.tic book 1100+pages – basically, how to cook everything, alphabetically organised.
Her advice for brussels sprouts in particular, but all brassicas generally, is not to steam them or microwave them. Her approach is to use a large stockpot full of boiling water and to throw the veg in to cook fast for only a short time. The idea is that the disproportionately large quantity of water dissolves more of those sulphide chemicals and leaves the sprouts/ kale/ cabbage/ broccoli/ cauliflower free of the odoriferous undesirables.
(She’s also adamantly opposed to the idea that a lot of cooks propose, that these vegetables and things like peas and beans should be rinsed in cold water to stop! the residual heat from overcooking them. She reckons that the result tastes more like cold water than any known vegetable.)
Personally I’m quite happy not to bother, but it’s a good idea for people cooking for others who find the smell/taste unpalatable.