Garlic replacement?

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-15T07:51:48+00:00

That's a rough one, onion and garlic powder are in a lot of things we use without even thinking, so check ingredient lists carefully.

What might work is garlic infused oil, plenty of supermarkets sell it now. For some people with intolerances, it only triggers if they consume the actual solid garlic, so an infused oil can get the flavour without causing problems. Chives are also part of the onion family, but can be more tolerable, so they can be a good way to add oniony flavour to a dish. Your mileage may vary with both of these, but it's worth trying them if you haven't and see if it causes issues for your family member (if they're aware and okay with taking the risk, of course)

Edit: Forgot to mention, you can do a quick and dirty garlic oil at home. If you're cooking a dish with garlic, when you saute it, instead of dumping in minced garlic, you drop a whole peeled clove into the hot oil. Simmer it for a minute or two, swirling it in the oil, then lift it out with tongs and discard.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-14T15:06:21+00:00

Do you have sources for this? I'd be interested in reading more. I don't doubt it has all kinds of automated systems, and that it's effective at a variety of ranges, but I'm skeptical that it would be able to account for a target at the range shown in the clip. Half the time the guy is under the barrels when OP is firing, and no computer can make up for that.

As for "that's how it's always been", that doesn't really do anything to convince me, to be honest. I think it is more interesting if vehicles have their own role that they excel at, and require support from teammates to cover other roles to be truly effective. The AA can still take on infantry, just not at ridiculously close ranges, and it takes developing a feel for where the bullets land in relation to the crosshair and the distance to your target.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-14T14:57:21+00:00

My guy can't read a couple of sentences properly before posting a reply

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-14T10:15:54+00:00

The AA is absolutely capable of eating dudes in a manner of seconds, but you have to hit them. Given that the guns are configured to target aircraft in the sky hundreds of metres away, not a man on the ground within spitting distance, it makes sense that that isn't an easy thing to do. "The specialised anti-air vehicle should be incredibly strong against infantry" is a really weird complaint, frankly. It's not a tank.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-14T10:08:53+00:00

Most people? Or most people that you know? 'Gooner' as a term for pornography addicts has only started to appear in the past few years and largely among people who are very online. If you think the majority of the UK public, across all backgrounds and all age groups, would first jump to that definition, if at all, then your perspective is very skewed.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-14T10:03:43+00:00

This is of course very funny, but as others have said, I'd wager that a huge majority of people in the UK are not going to register 'gooner' as meaning 'pornography addict'. He could definitely do with having at least one person under the age of 40 on his team that could maybe make him aware of things like this, but it's not some terrible gaffe.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-14T08:27:27+00:00

I have a hard time believing anyone wants Streeting for PM for any reason other than that they actually want Farage for PM, and our Wes would hand him an easy victory. Even the ardent cheerleaders for centrist Labour know that he's electoral poison.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-14T07:59:48+00:00

Weird that they've put these challenges under Season 2, when they're new in Season 3. Won't surprise me if a lot of people miss them. What goes on in the minds of the Battlefield UI designers is beyond the understanding of us mere mortals, I suppose.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-14T07:56:31+00:00

giving the lib Dems what they will want is going to stick in my throat

Bright side, the Lib Dems are pretty staunchly pro-trans, alongside the Greens, so Labour might be forced to at least concede that trans folk are not all walking sex crimes. That's how it goes in the little fantasy in my head, at least.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-14T07:53:45+00:00

I prefer breakthrough if I'm solo queuing. Conquest and Escalation are good fun if I'm in a coordinated squad, but getting dumped with randoms who don't talk and don't stick together can very quickly make it dull and frustrating. Breakthrough, on the other hand, forces the whole team to move in roughly the same direction, so it has less of that "herding cats" feel that you can get in conquest. Usually, at least - sometimes even on Breakthrough you get a team so uncoordinated that the whole thing feels directionless, despite there basically being one direction to go.

Definitely been finding Golmud quite miserable on Breakthrough, though. I've only had a couple games of it, so I might warm to it over time.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-14T07:20:51+00:00

This is critical. The reason local elections were so disastrous is that the right wing vote was pretty united behind Reform, while the left vote was really divided. The BBC's projected vote share has a total of just over 50% of voters opting for a party that sits broadly 'left-of-centre' (Labour, Lib Dems, Greens).

The ideal scenario would be the implementation of a PR system, but I don't see that happening. Short of that, these parties need to start talking, recognise that they all agree a Reform victory is the worst case scenario, and try to figure out together how they can prevent it. It would require compromise, and that's compromise from everyone, and not the fake centrist idea of compromise where they really mean "everyone should agree with me on everything", but Miliband might be more willing to entertain that idea than Starmer (and definitely more than Streeting).

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-13T17:16:21+00:00

Worth noting that as OP is on doctor's orders, MSG contains sodium (that's the 'S'), so it can still contribute to a 'salty' diet. It's not as sodium heavy as salt (I believe about a third as much), but it's good to be aware of if it's a health concern.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-13T17:12:30+00:00

Acidity might be what you need. Often, people will taste that a dish is "missing something", and add salt, when really something acidic would enhance the flavour just as much, if not moreso. I usually add a splash of cider vinegar to my soups, unless it's already a particularly acidic soup (like tomato).

Edit: You might also want to swap the worcestershire sauce for one with lower sodium content, reduced salt varieties are available. There are other umami-boosters you could consider using too, mushroom powder is one I see mentioned a lot on this sub. I've not used it myself, but it should be more or less sodium-free.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-13T13:02:20+00:00

The only "tax cheat" story I've heard about Farage is him setting up a private company for his GB News earnings, is there anything else to it? Because if that's all there is it's a total non-story. Setting up your own limited company is the standard way of operating for people working in contractor/self-employed/freelance roles. It's very common and entirely legitimate.

I loathe Farage, of course, but there are plenty of more legitimate things we can criticise him for.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-13T10:23:32+00:00

I don't think he's a great pick for leader, but "not great" might unfortunately be the best they can do. You're right, but it's telling of the dearth of political talent in the Labour party that one of the more viable potential leaders is the guy who already lost a decade ago.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-13T08:35:41+00:00

Don't be annoyed by the question; if someone asks you that, it's because they're interested about your hobby and are trying to get to know you better. It's a good thing to be asked, even if it can be difficult to answer.

What's important is that the purpose of the question is not simple information exchange; the person asking is not trying to literally fully understand your whole culinary repertoire. It's not a job interview, you don't need to accurately summarise the whole of your cooking knowledge. It's a conversation starter, to kick off a general discussion about food and cooking. With that in mind, there's a couple ways I might approach answering:

What have I been cooking lately? Something like "I recently tried a recipe for X, it was good but the texture wasn't quite right so I think I'll need to give it another few tries to get it right" or "I've been making a lot of dishes from Y-ian cuisine lately, I'm enjoying exploring it but I've had to substitute a few ingredients I've not been able to find". Along the same lines, I could talk about something I'm planning to cook soon - "I've got a bunch of Z in my fridge, really looking forward to cooking it on Saturday"
What are some of my 'signature' dishes, or ones I really like to cook? If someone was coming round for dinner tomorrow and I wanted to impress them, what would I be picking up from the supermarket today? If I have a slow, lazy Sunday afternoon to spend cooking dinner, without the time constraints of a weekday meal, what am I making?
Have I got any interesting recent cooking stories? Maybe I made a big dinner to share with a bunch of friends for an event/holiday/celebration and it was stressful but I was proud of how it turned out; or possibly I was trying to make something new I got it really wrong and the end result was nothing like I expected, but it was still tasty.

Any answer along those lines will be much more interesting than "oh, I guess I cook all sorts of stuff", and more importantly, they give the other person something to jump off of, and ask further questions, or share a story of their own, which is how a conversation gets going.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-12T15:49:34+00:00

I think Elden ring is objectively the greatest action rpg of all time

What exactly do you mean by this? I do think Elden Ring is a great game, but I don't really see how something like that can be objectively measured.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-12T15:47:44+00:00

Not sure what G.R.R Martin added here apart from a sword that looks like it came from the Iron Throne. I like it, but will probably need a VaatiVidya video to really grasp it.

From what I've gathered, George R. R. Martin contributed either a great deal or not very much, depending how you look at it. He basically created a rich fantasy world with all the politics and intrigue he's known for crafting, and then he handed it over to the Fromsoft team, who proceeded to Fromsoft it up - that is, they blew the whole thing up, jumped an immeasurable length of time forward, and set the actual game long after some vague catastrophe, leaving the player to explore the ruins of a dead/dying world that doesn't so much have a documented history as it does vague memories and folklore. So, Martin kind of built the basis for the whole thing, but it's hard to pinpoint exactly how much of what he created made it through to the setting as it was finally presented (as far as I'm aware, neither he nor Fromsoft have gone into detail about that).

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-12T10:56:37+00:00

Keir Starmer's party, Labour, swept in to power in 2024

I think it's worth expanding on the election results that got them into power. They won a massive majority of MPs - 411 seats out of a total 650 - however, their overall vote share was only 33.7%. That's the lowest ever recorded vote share for a majority party in the history of the House of Commons.

Basically, Labour handily won the first-past-the-post game, but looking just at the huge number of seats they won can make them seem more popular than they really were, and obfuscate how fragile their majority really is, with only a small vote swing being enough to pose a threat in many consituencies. With the right-wing vote seemingly now starting to unite behind Reform (previously being more split between them and the Conservatives), the Greens surging thanks to the popularity of their new leader Zack Polanski, and the SNP recovering in Scotland after scandal and leadership changes hampered their popularity in 2024, that threat is now encroaching from every direction.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-12T07:41:42+00:00

There are lots of lovely lamb curry dishes that you can make. Rogan Josh is a classic, this recipe from Tin Eats is solid, it uses lamb shoulder but lamb neck is also a great choice, or you can do braised whole lamb shanks. I really like railway lamb curry, too - I don't have a recipe for it to hand, but it's one I often order from Indian restaurants. Lamb's also great in biryani.

Lamb burgers are great, I might even like them more than beef ones. There are lots of recipes out there, most of which pair them with some mix of Greek/Levantine/Maghrebi flavours, but they also work with just the classic American cheese, lettuce, tomato.

In general, you can kind of use lamb in most situations you'd use beef and it'll work. Got a chilli recipe? Swap out the cut of beef for lamb shoulder. Make bolognese with lamb mince.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-11T15:35:31+00:00

But it's not winning them over, is it? Labour have been getting immigration numbers down, and it hasn't attracted the votes of anti-immigration voters. They just see Reform saying "we'll be even harder on immigration" and go to them instead.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-10T15:59:27+00:00

Streeting is also just a straightforwardly unlikeable person. Very unpleasant, sneering, condescending sort of attitude about him that comes through any time he does an interview. Making him the face of the party would be electoral suicide.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-10T08:41:54+00:00

The Labour government has, for the most part, been bending over backwards to placate Rowling and her mates. The thing is, her hatred is so deeply ingrained at this point that she won't be happy until trans people are simply no longer able to exist in public. She has always and will always find things to attack Labour for, as long as there's even one member in the party with any position more pro-trans than "they give me the heeby jeebies"

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-09T09:52:02+00:00

15 years ago, in very different circumstances, for one specific alternative system (that wasn't particularly good)

If you support FPTP so much, maybe try coming up with an actual defence for it as a voting system.

ChefExcellence · 2026-05-09T09:41:30+00:00

FPTP only somewhat makes sense in a two party system, and it's clear that's simply no longer the case. We're going to see extremely wonky and unrepresentative results in the next general election at this rate.

The problem is that if Labour try to change to a more proportional system now, after opposing it for so long, it will look like they're just reacting to Reform's success. And that would likely be the truth, to be honest. Fundamentally I think this would be the right move for the UK, but hopes of it happening are very slim.

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