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Miscellaneous Monday - Destructo5000

Meg Holbrook

Imagine, if you will, an extraordinarily complex machine.

Tubes. Wires. Lights. Buzzers. Whirly bits. Pokey bits. Imagine a device as big as a room or as small as a book. Powered by pedals, or engines, or light.

You have spent your entire life researching and testing for this small moment when you push the big, red button. They said you could never do it, but you have!

This machine that you created has only ONE TASK, to wipe a single food item from the face of the planet.

This amazing feat of science will cease to function the instant you have chosen, and that despicable food item can never be recreated. What have you chosen to erase with the Destructo5000? Will you punish the world and remove Pizza? Or worse!?

Diehl_Transmatic_SIDE_view

Comments

miikhy

Good one @Meg Holbrook! Love it

At first I though "what food I hate and would love Earth to get rid of?", then I realized I was selfish. I therefore chose goat cheese cause I hate it, even the smell and I don't care about being selfish. I can remember so many situations where I sat alone at the office lunch room just to avoid my colleague's goat cheese pizza smell... Don't ask me why: I simply hate it very hard.

Thanks Destructo5000 for making my life better!

Jodi LeBlanc

Happy Monday! I love the way you story-tell through writing @Meg Holbrook. I must say, this is a fun question for a Monday I would ask Destructo5000 to remove cinnamon hearts from the world, I am highly addicted. So much that I have developed an artificial cinnamon allergy and my lips swell up bigger than Angelina Jolie's, it's quite painful. However time and time again I have more, hoping I will no longer be allergic. From what I have been told, not many others are highly addicted to these things so hopefully the World won't be too mad at me If they didn't exist I wouldn't need willpower around Valentine's Day!

Meg Holbrook

Oh, I love goat cheese. Nice and stinky. Creamy. Delicious! I'd like to offer that instead of abolishing it from the Earth, you slightly alter your design and instead zap all the cheese (and goats) to a private island where I will live out my days eating goat cheese and jam sandwiches.

I would, without a doubt, smash the big red button and delete mushrooms from existence. I can't stand their smell, texture, or taste.

My husband LOVES them, and every once in a while I feel really nice and cook them up for him. Gagging the whole time.

My distaste for them is so strong that I get shivers down my spine if I have to touch or wash them.

Meg Holbrook

You get to be Angelina Jo-di LeBlanc from here on out. Wow! Do you think it has something to do with the artificial coloring or is it something in the cinnamon flavor? That sounds awful to suddenly be allergic to your favorite candy.

We have a candy in the states called 'Boston Baked Beans' that are really just peanuts in a bright red candy shell. I will eat those things until it looks like I'm a rabid animal frothing pink at the mouth.

Jodi LeBlanc

Wow @miikhy, have you ever smelled blue cheese?! It's horrid, I once was at a conference mixer and they had tons of cheese and wine. If you walked out of the room and back in, you would swear you were walking in a hockey locker room. The room smelled like sweaty hockey gear x 1000! I also found it hard to network with people eating the cheese as I was so repulsed by the smell. Hmm, maybe I should change my request to Destructo5000 and have it remove Blue cheese

Jodi LeBlanc

Lol too funny @Meg Holbrook! Love the nickname I met someone who had a similar thing happen to her except it was with natural cinnamon. She worked as a baker for a pretzel shoppe for four years, every day there was cinnamon in the air when she was mixing the pretzels. On year four she had to quit as she was getting hives every day , it has not resulted that she can no longer even be in the room with cinnamon or she goes into anaphylactic shock, she needs to carry an epipen everywhere. She described the allergy to me as overexposure, having too much of a good thing or having it in your environment. Thankfully my allergy is not that severe, and it has helped me curb my cravings for cinnamon hearts. I get the same reaction to cinnamon toothpaste and cinnamon gum so it is something to do with the artificial cinnamon, as natural cinnamon is fine.

The Boston Baked Beans sound good, sounds a bit like M&M peanuts but only in red. Love M&Ms!

miikhy

@Jodi LeBlanc, totally agree... can't list them all and I feel like goat cheese is more popular so I'm fighting the most spread disease

@Meg Holbrook, we can maybe find an agreement. We will also drop you blue cheese and all those sweaty-hockey-gear-like stinky cheeses (with tons of toothpaste...).

Damn, just thinking about it (and it's lunch time here) made me feeling so bad...

Meg Holbrook

It's crazy to think about what they could possibly be putting in these flavorings to cause such a reaction in your case.

I feel so badly for your friend though, cinnamon really irritates not just the skin, but also your lungs. Some people use that or chili powder to deter animals from their gardens.

Monique van den Berg

I will use the Destructo5000 to remove The Evil, aka the most disgusting substance the world has ever invented, cottage cheese.

I can't even think about it without gagging. BEGONE, EVIL SUBSTANCE!

Meg Holbrook

Buncha cheese haters around here right now. VIVA LA DAIRY!!!!!

BiancaE

@Meg Holbrook is it possible to get rid of shrimp as a food but not eradicate them as living things in the ocean? Because if so that's what I chose!

Jodi LeBlanc

OMG @Monique vdB I absolutely love cottage cheese, but it has to be 1% and I need to put stevia on it and cinnamon - natural cinnamon not artificial lol It's like a little dessert, it doesn't look pretty but tastes so good.

Meg Holbrook

@BiancaE - We can do anything with our imaginations.

imagination_by_luckyhre-d3bkmus

Do you like other types of fish? My brother loves sushi but can't stand the smell and texture of shrimp. I'll never understand.

Jonny Adams

Popcorn! Especially, microwave popcorn!! Neither have any redeeming qualities in my opinion.

Professionally/theater popped corn requires a thousand calories in butter flavored oil to make it not taste like styrofoam or enough caramel/toffee/chocolate that you might as well just eat a bag of candy.

I have outlawed the stuff at home, but at least once a quarter someone decides to microwave a bag of popcorn (more like popcancer...ask Dr. Oz) at the office until it starts to burn.

BiancaE

Excellent! Let's do that then haha. I'm not a fan of fish but I forgive them if they're in my food. Shrimp creeps me out with their little eyes and legs.

Monique van den Berg

@Meg Holbrook that's the irony: I love dairy. I love cheese in general and love a good cappuccino in the morning, Its the curds though. GAG. Curds.

Monique van den Berg

@Jonny Adams I'm sorry, but if you get rid of my thousand-calorie movie popcorn, we can't be friends anymore. I have a small child and only go to the movies like once a year, let me have my popcorn! (With real butter only, though.)

Meg Holbrook

Here's my experience with popcorn

Pros:

- Relatively healthy snack (we air pop it at home)

- Makes my children quiet for a longer time than a typical snack WINNER

- Inexpensive

- butterrrrrrrrrrrrr

Cons:

- People don't know how to properly microwave (hence why my son knows how to use the air popper)

- Kernels in teeth are a thousand dollar dental visit waiting to happen

- Movie popcorn tricks you into buying a bucket the size of a car even though you won't finish it because "value"

Popcorn wins this round.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

Wow, all the cheese-hate here, I don't get it.

I've run into some cheese I will never eat again, but I've never found one that I can't imagine no-one liking. Cottage cheese is a good part of breakfast (can be a bit tart, but add a splash of olive oil and a twist of pepper), you haven't lived until you've had proper strong blue cheese on a burger, and goat cheese on a pizza, oh yes.

But if you you don't like a certain type, it's understandable. France has around 700 types and the UK over a thousand, and with that amount of choice, there's bound to be something you don't like.

I do completely understand the smell thing. There are cheese which have a strong and unappealing smell, and that is often a good indicator of the flavour of the cheese if you can get on to eating it. However, I do hold up "Stinking Bishop" as evidence to the contrary on that one. It has a mild, creamy, slightly floral, flavour when you eat it, but should probably be classed as a chemical weapon by the smell. First time I brought some home, the neighbours complained about it. The ones across the road as well as next door.

Anyway, my nomination for the machine is Pernod. Not the aniseed or alcohol (Absinthe gooooooood, and even Ouzo is ok if there's nothing else with a flavour on offer), but whatever is done to make Pernod needs to stop.

Monique van den Berg

even though you won't finish it

You obviously have never been to the movies with my husband. 😉 It goes like this:

Me: "I'm going to get popcorn, do you want any?"

Him: "No, I'll just have a tiny bit of yours."

Me: "Are you sure you don't want more than that?"

Him: "I'm sure. I really don't want any. I'll just have a tiny bit."

Me: :"Okay, well, I was going to get a small. Should I get a medium?"

Him: "..."

Me: "..."

Him: "Get a large."

Meg Holbrook

Oh man, Pernod is so tasty! I think the fact that it doesn't have wormwood makes it way more palatable for me. That and it's perfect for lazy people who can't be bothered to prepare absinthe.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

Nope, burn it. Burn it with fire. While sipping Absinthe.

Meg Holbrook

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- - the alcohol content of it might not be enough to burn!

#babyabsintheforbabies

Thomas Schlegel

I grew up in South Germany, live now in North Germany, but never got used to some local northern food. No one in South Germany like licorice, kale or Labskaus (you have to google that, it looks awful), but most of people in North Germany do.

But if I have to remove one thing of these, I would choose kale. It's disgusting :-)

Alexey Matveev

I once tried Surströmming. I do not want to hurt anyones feelings, but I would banish Surströmming forever

Meg Holbrook

Second this notion. Kale is extremely prevalent in California cuisine.

Jack Brickey_h10pa4

well I love just about all food save one - Liver. But I guess if we evaporated that into the cosmos it might have a profound impact on life expectancy. YIKES!

Kat Warner

Durian! Nothing that smells that bad should be eaten - or brought into the office kitchen under the guise of sharing.

Meg Holbrook

I'm guessing this is similar to anchovies. I'm a fan of fish, wonder how I would feel about this stuff. Supposed to be pretty smelly, right?

Meg Holbrook

I have a hard time with organs in general. An old uncle of mine loved to grill up beef tongue. Freaks me out to this day.

Alexey Matveev

This fish is called herrings. It s a good one. But the way it is prepared makes the fish extremely smelly. And if you overcome the smell then the taste will get you

Jack Brickey_h10pa4

@Meg Holbrook, couldn't agree more. I don't want to taste anything that is tasting be in return. ;-)

carolyn french

But it is yummy.... Yeah not in the office kitchen. In fact, many places here in Vietnam have signs on the door with a picture of a durian and an x crossing it out. Will try to get a picture the next time I see it. Pretty funny, but one of those necessary measures for general sanity.

Thomas Schlegel

I had to ask Google about durian. I’ve never seen this in Europe before... Now I’m curious 😉

Meg Holbrook

I was wondering if it was similar to jackfruit, but jackfruit definitely doesn't stink.

Scott Theus

The 2018 Advent Calendar directed me here to select the one food item I'd never serve at Christmas (again), and after reading these posts, I'd also remove it from the menus around the world forever...

My first thought for a horrid food item was haggis; but as awful as it sounds I wouldn't was to deprive an entire culture of their traditions, so I'll pick something I've actually tried to cook (and failed miserably.)

Destructo5000, I give you the Turducken. While there is a long history of engastration, stuffing a chicken into a duck into a turkey is not a good idea. Now don't get me wrong...I like turkey, roasted chicken is my favorite "Sunday Dinner," and duck is okay. But I am not Fredrick Frankenstein; my kitchen is not a laboratory (you have to read that as "lab-BOR-a-tor-y," not "LAB-er-tor-y" for the analogy to work.)

The turducken is hard to cook correctly...it takes forever to roast it enough for all three layers to be cooked all the way, and by the time the chicken is done the turkey is as dry as Clark Griswald's in Christmas Vacation. And..if you don't cook it long enough the insides become a salmonella petri dish that is one bite away from a 3-day vacation in the local hospital. Oh yeah....it has to be made fresh, not purchased frozen because thawing a solid mass of poultry takes days and days, growing even more salmonella.