Zora in LA writes in defence of the indefensible (ie green peppers, the scourge of AMT297):
Green peppers aren’t totally worthless. In many cuisines, they’re used in cooking. Creole cooking is the main example. The bitter pepper adds a note of pleasant sharpness when contrasted with sweeter cooked vegetables. It’s also excellent on pizza, as it provides the same contrast.
And, working in a supermarket as I do, I can confirm that they are indeed cheaper.
But eating them raw? Only sickos do that.
Well, now I’m torn, Zora – I hate green peppers, but I love Creole food. Let me wrestle with my feelings while we contemplate this email from Simon in Germany:
Your recent conversation on Pizza Hut reminded me of something I once saw in a Pizza Hut in China. There they seem to have a “only one visit to the salad bar” policy. So this led to some ingenious solutions as to how to beat the system.
As you can see from the photo attached, the basic idea is to use the more solid and brick-like pieces of salad to build a wall around the lip of the bowl – luckily in China there is a large supply of cubed water melon – and then to fill in the middle using the less structurally sound greenery.
One I saw was about twice the height of that pictured, took 45 minutes to make, and a further another 45 minutes to carry back to the table as any jolt or shake would have brought down their towering shaft of salad.
P.S Surely if you owned a Pizza Hut in China you would have melon balls rather than cubes!
I’m impressed people manage to build such structures on the rim of a small salad bowl. Readers, do share your buffet-cheating tactics and triumphs in the comments.
Got any great tips for gaming a hotel breakfast buffet? Do share in the comments; but first, listen to Answer Me This! Episode 297 to learn from the master (ie Olly Mann):
In today’s buffet of audio delights, we’re serving:
Sea Monkey refills
second hand wedding dresses
green peppers vs red peppers
Bob Dylan vs grapefruit juice Steve Wright in the Afternoon vs heroin Harold Von Braunhut
the Pizza Hut salad bar
Oxford divorces
cryptobiosis
spying on your children
and
gobbing in the pot.
Plus: if you see Olly roving towards you armed with a Tupperware tub, he’s either going to take advantage of your buffet or imprison you with fatal consequence; Helen will be survived by a sackful of raw gingerbread; and Martin the Sound Man is a masochist for grapefruit juice.
In today’s Bit of Crap on the App, we tackle another Great British Bake Off question from Katherine from Sheffield. To find out how we go from that to the Sword of Gondor in just four short minutes, fire up the app on your iDevices, Android or Windows playthings. As a happy by-product of buying the app, you’re funding the show – likewise if you splash out on any of our albums or vintage episodes at answermethisstore.com. So you know that along with your purchase you’ll receive a free dose of our eternal gratitude.
And because we’re simply brimful of gratitude today, let’s throw a bucketful over Squarespace.com, for sponsoring this episode, for allowing people to build and host websites easily and beautifully, and for offering you 10% off their services for a whole year if you use the code Answer.
By the way, if you’re keen to start your own podcast, book a ticket for this Guardian Masterclass and on 20th September, Helen and a host of other podcasting mavens will teach you all you need to know, and then some.
We will return with AMT298 on 18th September, and we hope you do too. Cheerio!
Helen & Olly
••• AMT297 Child-Friendly Rating: 88%. Light on profane language. Unfortunate TMI about Olly and Martin’s bodily fluids. Question from a parent running surveillance ops on their teenager, which may instill trust issues in your own offspring. •••
Here’s an email from Claire from Brooklyn, NY. Don’t read it while eating, because it contains the term ‘rancid spunk’. Thanks Claire!
When my husband and I first moved into our current apartment it was a slight fixer upper and I spent an afternoon deep cleaning the kitchen (scrubbing all surfaces, soaping up the fridge, going through cabinets and drawers, etc).
In the process I discovered a used ‘French letter’ wrapped in some takeout napkins. Not to gross you out too much, but the stench was alarmingly horrific! You seem like nice people, so I hope you never have to find out what rancid human spunk smells like. I think being forced to actually realize that rancid spunk is a thing felt as much like a punch in the face as the actual, repellant particles hitting my nose did.
Anyway, we still wonder whether this lovely cadeau was courtesy of our building superintendent (an illicit encounter during the pre-move-in renovation?), or of the previous tenant having a last hurrah after all the trash cans had been loaded into the moving truck.
Who do you think is the likely culprit, and if this had been you, would you have tried to exploit the situation for a deal on rent or other perk? We didn’t say anything-we just speculated ad nauseam about such questions and over a year later, I still think about it sometimes!
By leaving it for more than a year, you’ve rather spunked the opportunity to use this as leverage for cheaper rent. But if you’re so hell-bent on identifying the culprit, Claire, send off that putrid prophylactic to a lab – there’s plenty DNA to be swabbed.
Readers, have you ever found an unpleasant surprise left behind in your new home? Let us know in the comments.
PS Claire, I do admire that you used such a coy expression as ‘French letter’ in the same breath as ‘rancid spunk’.
Here’s an appetite-suppressing question from Ciara from Dublin:
I’ve been trying to eat healthily for the past year to lose a bit of weight. Unfortunately that means bringing a lot of strange-looking and -smelling food into work, and getting a lot of weird stares and questions about my odd concoctions of quinoa and lentils.
Recently however, I have developed a food obsession that is rather obscene. I have become completely addicted to almond butter. That alone is ok, but the worst part of my addiction is that I like to eat it smeared on a banana. I lovingly call this “shit on a dick”.
This is fine when I freak my fiancée out at home eating my shit on a dick, banana smeared with almond butter. But I want to eat my banana-almond butter combo in work as well. I’ve taken to sneaking into the kitchen to eat it, but the worry that I’ll get caught is giving me an ulcer.
Answer me this:
Is there any way I can eat my shit on a dick in a socially acceptable manner?
You could start by giving it a name that DOES NOT INDUCE THE HEAVES.
Once you’ve done that, consider presentation. Which looks more pleasant: a whole banana smeared with a lumpy brown substance, or daintily-topped slices of banana that look like little beige canapes? Aesthetics may be the reason why a lot of people prefer to consume their banana and almond butter blended into a smoothie. But you’d just call that ‘diarrhoea’, Ciara, because you’re clearly not to be trusted.
Readers, have you suggestions for prettying up Ciara’s shitty dick snack? Share your classy ways in the comments.
Another listener has found herself in a sex pickle. Inger writes:
When my last relationship ended after two years, I decided to do some proper dating (following an acceptable period of “grief”, of course) and a few weeks into the dating life I found myself dating two men regularly at the same time. One of these men was around 25 years older than me and the other my own age, and as I am a honest person I told both men that I was dating the other.
After about 6 weeks I went to the older man’s house for dinner, and as I arrived he was still cooking (a fantastic three-course meal) so I wandered around in his house looking at pictures and trinkets he had in his shelves. I reached a shelf with photos of him and a little boy, I figured it was his son (whom I did not know about) and as I moved along the shelf the little boy grew older and to my horror I realized (about mid-shelf) that it was the other man I was dating.
I sat through the whole dinner knowing that I was dating his son as well and then came up with the fastest excuse to get me out of there. So, Helen and Olly, answer me this: what is the hell do I do now?
Firstly, Inger, check you’re not starring in a sitcom.
Secondly, find some other people to date and discard both of these men immediately. Unless you want your life to turn into an actual farce, you don’t want to keep seeing one of them in case the relationship becomes serious and you have to endure a hideous meeting-the-family scenario – and all the subsequent meetings with the family forever after. And really, would you be able to cavort sexually with either of them again without being beset by such thoughts as, “Hey, my other lover came out of those very nuts!” or, “That’s not as big as his dad’s”?
Don’t worry about them too much, they can comfort each other.
Readers, what would you do? Become celibate? Keep this set-up going? Sell your story to Chat magazine? Elaborate in the comments.
Today, one poor tired questioneer asks how to stop being kept awake by their mum’s sex noise. Any advice for them? Apart from cranking up Answer Me This! Episode 291 for forty-three minutes of respite?
We speak of:
hat world records
rodeo clowns
bank robbery
converting to Judaism
baht vs Bitcoin Craig David’s Toffee Crisps vs Busta Rhymes’ Courvoisier
Papal holidays
presidential golf Castel Gandolfo
Chequers
webuyanycar.com
the pronunciation of ‘niche’
shaking like a Polaroid picture
and
$.
Plus: Olly will SEE YOU IN HELL if you use Shazam during the pub quiz music round; Helen has a terrible confession to make about Pitbull; and Martin the Sound Man is panicking about what to talk about if he is ever invited on a lads’ holiday with the Pope. We smell an odd couple sitcom…
In today’s Bit of Crap on the App, we contemplate the wellbeing of the boys brought together as McBusted, and of Jason Orange’s tearducts. Hear it and not-weep on your iDevices, Android or Windows gadgets.
It only remains for us to thank Squarespace.com for supporting this episode. They’re also supporting your own website-building enterprises by offering you 10% off their services for a whole year if you use the code Answer. Gawd bless’em.
And gawd bless you, listeners! We shall return on Thursday 19th June with AMT292, barring terrifying and unforseeable acts of gawd.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT291 Child-Friendly Rating: 54%. A few F-bombs. A clip about the clap. Question about parent’s sex life, the very notion of which may traumatise your child. •••
Are we going to have to insert Jackass-style warnings into each episode of AMT, insisting that no one attempt to recreate of re-enact any stunt or activity performed on this show? Because we would NEVER have recommended anyone do what Richard in Finsbury Park did:
In AMT last week you talked about Snaffles Mousse, the 70s dish made from canned consommé, Philadelphia and curry powder.
I was morbidly fascinated by the suggested combination and had to make a batch. When it had set, my boyfriend and I had some on toast. It was without doubt the most disgusting thing I have ever eaten. On every level. I can still taste its foulness now.
Answer me this: what is the most revolting dish you have ever cooked up?
It was by accident, but I made paella with frozen elderflower cordial instead of chicken stock. In fact, because even that mouth-trauma did not teach me to label the contents of my freezer, it happened TWICE. Mark me, it is one of the very few circumstances in which elderflower cordial is NOT more palatable than chicken stock.
Readers, tell us in the comments about your own culinary horrorshows. Maybe then Richard in Finsbury Park will try them out, since he appears to have declared war upon his palate.
And as a fun game between courses, speculate upon the ingredients of this recipe, which I found in a cookbook yesterday:
After seven years of this show, IT HAS FINALLY HAPPENED.
THE question!
To whom is it being popped? To YOU? Find out immediately on Answer Me This! Episode 284:
[Wiping tears from eyes] Today we discuss:
Winter Olympics
Summer Olympics
Septuagenarian Olympics
Andrew Lloyd Webber vs classical music
Blenheim, Oxfordshire vs Blenheim, New Zealand
love vs drugs
Mo Farah vs Jamaican bobsleighers
car handles vs car wheels
men’s pants vs ladies’ pants
billowing shirts and billowing trousers
Darren Aronofsky’s Noah’s Ark film
Grand Theft Auto
Russell Crowe
balaclavas
Cinderella’s shoe
ice skating FlashForward ‘Kiss from a Rose’
and
Lion-ardo DiCaprio.
Plus: you’ll be relieved Olly isn’t allowed to fly planes, that Helen isn’t likely to bring out a live stage production of One Born Every Minute, and that Martin the Sound Man isn’t allowed to spice up the Winter Olympics biathlon.
This week there are twoBits of Crap on the App: the dazzling charisma of Torvill and Dean, and the suppressed opening of Disney’s Cinderella. Double-treat yourself via your iDevices, Android and Windows devices.
Treat us to your QUESTIONS, please: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and deliver emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Thanks to Squarespace.com for funding this episode; use the code answer2 to snag a 10% discount off their services for a whole year.
See you in a fortnight!
Helen & Olly
AMT284 Child-Friendly Rating: 45%. Some swears. Some speculation about Seal’s drug references. Discussions of driving may prove tremendously boring for the under-10s.
Listener Tam has written in with a home-grown alternative to accessories made from sharks’ teeth or ivory or whalebone. Take a look at the picture. Can you tell what the pale-coloured beads are made from? No? Read on to find out:
In an earlier podcast, you were discussing a mother saving her baby’s teeth and whether it was appropriate or not for her to share this with friends. Helen commented in a joking manner that, “What was the mother going to do? Make jewelry out of them?”
Of course she could. I had foot surgery several years ago for a condition called hammer toe. My toes were all bunched up and curled under my foot, making it painful at times to walk. So, to fix this issue, a surgeon cut all of the tendons under all off my toes, and then, on five toes, had to remove the middle toe knuckle; three on the left foot, two on the right. I was awake for the two surgeries and watched the entire process. It only took about a half an hour for each foot, they put me in a surgical boot and I walked right out.
However, I thought that it would be wonderful to have a unique souvenir to show for my trauma. So I kept the knuckles. Once I came home, my husband boiled them to get the meat off, and drilled them for me. My mum gave me some rather fitting beads to make a lovely necklace.
So you see, baby teeth are really no big deal. It’s all in perspective.
That’s right – in perspective of having to BOIL YOUR HUMAN FLESH off your OWN BONES. Did you get the idea from Jeffrey Dahmer’s Etsy store?
As well as the above picture of the finished necklace, Tam kindly included photos of the process prior to completion. Because I don’t want to make casual browsers puke till next Tuesday, you’ll have to click through if you wish to see Tam’s foot pre-surgery, her blood-soaked post-operative appendage, or her disembodied toe-knuckles.
Listeners, over the years you’ve treated us to pictures of your necrotic legs, infected piercings and Satanic effigies. Not wishing to seem ungrateful, but you ARE welcome to send us pictures of things that aren’t leaking pus and blood.
What would YOU like to be buried in, listeners? A solid gold sarcophagus? A Zorb ball? A burlap sack? Contemplate this issue whilst listening to Answer Me This! Episode 282:
In which we discuss:
coffins vs caskets
coriander* vs carbonara
statues vs sculptures**
Leonardo DiCaprio vs Norman Lamont
sweaty sportswear
Americano coffee
Lincoln Logs
film soundtracks
sexy parrots
jamoke Jesse Honey vs flags of the world
the price of Lego Ron Mueck
and
an update to the Mastermind chair?
Plus: Olly probably doesn’t want to be served up as a snack at his own wake; Helen will be a posthumous pedant, OF COURSE; and Martin the Sound Man, MPhys, DPhil, doesn’t have a specialist subject on Mastermind, unless you can spin a whole round out of turning One Direction into physics references. Which seems quite possible, actually.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App, Olly invents a new game, even better than Lego, even better than Lincoln Logs. What, what, what incredible passtime can this be? Find out on your iDevices, Android and Windows.
We invite you to aid questioneer Brian by naming this tune:
We also invite you to give Squarespace.com a whirl, and if you enjoy that whirl you give it, use the code answer1 to snag a 10% discount for a whole year.
We also also invite you to send us your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and deliver emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
We finally invite you to rejoin us in a fortnight for AMT283,
AMT282 Child-Friendly Rating: 76%. A couple of F-bombs, but other than that, fairly clear of saucy language. Elevated discussions of sculpture, coffins and Mastermind. Less elevated discussions of sweaty sports bras. Remember, parents: light and shade, light and shade.
The podcast is BACK for 2014. And changes are afoot; listen to Answer Me This! Episode 281 to discover what they are:
But as normal, we talk about such things as:
ice sculptures
coach travel
cat litter
cystitis
Piccadilly Circus vs Times Square
country pubs vs London bars In Bruges vs Helen in Bruges the Blue Posts Crawl
stamps
floppy disks
empty London
attractiveness gaps
and
blank videotapes.
Plus: how schoolboy Olly Mann was both a ‘budget Elvis’ and like Jesus; how Helen’s jar of gallstones is keeping a low profile; and how Martin the Sound Man didn’t have an affair with a dog. (That he’ll admit to on air.)
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices, Android and Windows), Olly’s beloved cat Coco gets her Flavor Flav gear on. Of course, Olly adores her whatever she wears.
We adore your QUESTIONS, so send them in: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Thanks to Squarespace.com for funding this episode of AMT, and if you want to see an example of a Squarespace site, visit our new answermethisstore.com, where you can buy our archive episodes/albums/Best Ofs with far more of your hard-earned money going to the AMT Corporation rather than a Big Corporation.
See you in a fortnight,
Helen & Olly
AMT281 Child-Friendly Rating: 44%. Second half is pretty clean, but what use is that coming in the wake of a discussion of cystitis, masturbation and cervical mucus? Swearing: there is some.
PS Here’s that Facebook pic of the collection of baby teeth:
On this day, dear listeners, we arrive at the final new AMT episode of 2013. We’ll be revisiting some of the Incredible Moments of the AMT year in our Best Of episodes on 12th and 19th December – which as always include some previously unpodcasted Incredible Moments – so please join us for those. Until then, here’s Answer Me This! Episode 280:
In which we learn about:
caterpillars Countryfile
Brian May
isolated stone columns
boring men’s fashion Tinder
Elijah Wood/Tobey Maguire vs Ryan Gosling/Ryan Reynolds
wearing white after Labor Day
public personal grooming Shutter Island spoiler alert
and
pulling at theme parks.
Plus: Olly wouldn’t have his honeymoon at Disney World even if he did get to jump queues and eat free food; if the Zoltar machine in Big had been replaced by a Zaltor machine, Tom Hanks would have received some pedantic grammatical advice from Helen instead; and Martin the Sound Man can’t deal with ultraviolent films like Home Alone.
As we may have noted a few times, the Answer Me This! Christmas album is out now; click HERE to get it. In return for supporting the show with your dosh, you get one hour of all-new AMTchat about the festive period. There’s a little sample of it as this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices, Android and Windows).
As well as money, to keep AMT going in 2014 we need your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you back here on 12th December for the first installment of the best of AMT2013,
Helen & Olly
AMT280 Child-Friendly Rating: 92%. Phonecall from an actual 6-year-old. Reasonably innocent hangover chat, and surprisingly clean discussion of hook-up apps. Two class B swears. Beware, there is a spoiler about the end of Big, which is not a film we want to ruin for your children; there’s also spoiler about Shutter Island, which is not a film your children should be watching yet so it doesn’t really matter.
Answer Me This! Podcast 