Food bank follies

[mischugenah]

maybe they're made with a fruit/berry he doesn't like? I was always part of my family's annual jam-making-and-fruit-canning festival (I've had people who don't even LIKE jam rave about ours ) and I, too, never imagined that it was possible to make icky jam. Until a college friend convinced me to try her fig jam and mulberry jam. Considering I don't LIKE figs or mulberries, at all, those jams were pretty gross. In my opinion. *shrugs* her kids seem to like them.

[depechemodefan]

I can imagine how a person going to a food bank would react to a can of menudo.
"Oh, Gross!" but that stuff is sooo tasty. Maybe the SC didn't like preserves. Then again, you shouldn't give crap stuff to a food bank. Large how Marge Simpson, while praying to God to save them from the Nuclear Plant exploding, promised to give stuff to the food bank that people would actually eat.

[tollbaby]

Why do people always figure they can give the crap that nobody else would eat to the food bank? *sigh* I used a food bank for a few months when I was young, broke, and living in squalor. I then volunteered there for a few years to sort of give back. People would dump the WEIRDEST stuff - past date yogurt, punctured cans, BLOATED cans (you know, the botulism type), cans with no labels, smashed-up boxes of cereal, moldy cheese, etc.

I try to always buy a few extra cans of food with my groceries for the food bank bin, but I buy stuff I would EAT, not stuff I would throw away. That's just rude, imho.

[Naaman]

... while it's actually quite hard to make jelly become real jelly, rather than some kind of thick sugared juice, I can't see anyway to make any of those taste gross, short of burning them.

Well, IIRC jelly is easy if you're using jam sugar (added pectin) but needs patience as the goop must drip through the jelly bag at it's own pace, squeezing it to make it go faster ends up with a clouded jelly. Oh, and for the record I miss my Nans home made Piccalilli the most, it had a bite to it that'd take your head off

I was part of the process more than once - and I mean that I didn't only licked the pans and spoons - and even though we had a fair share of less than perfect batches, we never had any that were gross. Even those that had gotten a bit moldy on the top were still yummy once we got rid of the hints of mold.

Some bacteria are harmless, others aren't and may affect the taste when they start to bloom. Depends what the equipment is contaminated with

Seriously, while it's obviously feasible to make gross home made jam or jelly, I don't know how you could "achieve" it.

Off the top of my head, as well as the 'caramelising' the fruit and improper sterilisation, the only thing I can come up with is sugar. Either not enough (it looks an alarming amount in the recipes) or the idiot tried to use an artificial sweetener, that by itself would be nasty but some aren't stable at high temperatures - dog only knows what that would taste like

[Samaliel]

You know what ? I almost want to try that, just for the sake of science. But wasting a large amount of perfectly good fruits for the sake of science, while I could eat it, is a crime I cannot condone.

[Geek King]

Perhaps it is hard to make terrible jam or jelly, but the point I (and my grandmother) would make, is it is much harder to make really good jams and jellies.


PS--she also made home made pickles. Her butter pickles are still the stuff of legend.

[edible_hat]

PS--she also made home made pickles. Her butter pickles are still the stuff of legend.

My future grandmother-in-law does that. The first time my dad tasted it he thought it was the commercially produced one he'd bought the day before and said they've really improved the flavour.

[Naaman]

You know what ? I almost want to try that, just for the sake of science. But wasting a large amount of perfectly good fruits for the sake of science, while I could eat it, is a crime I cannot condone.

A simple test would be to make a caramel then add the sweetener and see what it tastes like, sugar's cheap

[Difdi]

Me: You could always eat them.
Caller: But they're gross.

This is actually a very common situation in online games like World of Warcraft. Player organizations (guilds) can have a share bin of sorts; People put items in that they think would be useful to other members of the organization. But for reasons I've never fully understood, people use it as a garbage can. It takes less effort to actually throw away junk in the game than it does to donate it, and yet, people still dump garbage.

A good rule of thumb before donating, would be to ask oneself "Ok, I can withdraw 1 item per day from this bin, is this something I would EVER use up my daily allowance on?" And if the answer is "no", "no way ever" or "HELL NO", don't dump the item in the bin. But apparently this would make too much sense.

So you don't play for a few days, come back and check the donation bin. Typically, it will be filled to overflowing with things that, if you asked the person who donated them to take them back and use them, the answer might easily be "But they're gross".

[edible_hat]

This is actually a very common situation in online games like World of Warcraft. Player organizations (guilds) can have a share bin of sorts; People put items in that they think would be useful to other members of the organization. But for reasons I've never fully understood, people use it as a garbage can. It takes less effort to actually throw away junk in the game than it does to donate it, and yet, people still dump garbage.

In the MUD I used to play, it was always low-level items useful to n00bs. Stuff like leather armor which high-level monsters can destroy in one attack, useless to the mithril-wearing player who donated it but good for new players.

Personally I took everything I didn't want to the in-game pawnshop, they'd buy anything.

[Difdi]

In the MUD I used to play, it was always low-level items useful to n00bs. Stuff like leather armor which high-level monsters can destroy in one attack, useless to the mithril-wearing player who donated it but good for new players.

That's not garbage though. It's low level but useful equipment. When I said people use gear sharing bins for garbage, I meant it literally.

Someone buys a package of 20 bandages, uses 19 of them, buys a new pack, and throws the almost empty pack in the share bin. Someone buys a package of food, eats all but the last piece, and throws that 1 piece in the share bin. Someone buys a banana, eats it, and throws the peel in the share bin. I said garbage for a reason.

Though one could easily argue that low level leather armor is garbage, if the guild recruits only maximum level "mithril-wearing" players.

[cinema guy]

Looking at the comic, is Rerant actually Lara Croft?

[Rapscallion]

According to her signature, like Faye from Questionable Content only without the sweet rack.

Rapscallion

[Heatherina]

Eleventy!!!11 The very first one got my blood boiling. I mean--how could they fathom that overweight people would lose their jobs and become unable to pay for food--must they subsist on relying on their bodies to survive on its fat? That has to be the stupidest I have ever heard. Common sense seems to be a rare commodity nowadays. Oh fat people shouldn't eat because they are fat. I feel slightly violent--- *goes to calm down*

[magician5]

I can imagine how a person going to a food bank would react to a can of menudo. "Oh, Gross!" but that stuff is sooo tasty..

I got you ... I'll tell you what wouldn't go over too well ... and this is, I promise, the absolute truth.

I'm at a huge Asian/Hispanic market, and I see on the endcap cans of canned iguana.

Suddenly I don't feel as hungry as I was a minute ago. I almost got over it, then I came across trays of frozen "beef penis." Looked like very long hearts of palm, you'd never know except for the label.