29.01.07 chips cheese beans

Just wrapping up some macroeconomics headscratching... conceptually I totally get this stuff, but the numbers we got for our assignment are totally weird. I went to high table tonight as the guest of Professor Kate Blackmon along with some of the Merton MBAs. Dr. Kate is one of my operations management profs, and she's pretty cool. She writes a lot of research papers, but most interestingly wrote one on the "pirate business" recently... kind of fun stuff. I'll try and get a link up here. Last night a bunch of us went out for drinks for Gabe's birthday, and didn't get home til 4ish. In the UK, there are these mobile kitchens called "Kebab Vans" on every street. Basically, they sell fries (called "chips"), gyros (called "kebabs") and burgers (called "burgers") to drunks. Opening at dusk and closing somewhere around 4 AM, these are sort of like the taco wagons you get in many US cities, but serve "England meets the Mideast" style food. There are a zillion variations on the chips/kebab/burger theme... grated cheese, salad, coleslaw, all kinds of gross sauces, BEANS, etc., may all be put on your chips, kebab or burger. It's quite common to see people ordering a kebab, have a bunch of lettuce and tomatoes and cucumbers dropped on it, then add literally a cup to two cups of mayonnaise or ranch dressing (called "garlic sauce") on the top, along with a few chips as a sort of garnish. TOTALLY gross. A particular drunk end-of-night favorite with the English, and even with a few Americans, is the "chips cheese beans" option. This is a styrofoam container filled with chips covered in grated cheese, with a healthy dose of baked beans poured over the top. I find this concept totally disgusting, but must admit that many people whom I otherwise respect eat it regularly. Pictured below is Pat Butler: deep in the throes of a chipscheesebeans induced tantric food trance. Pat (like all good Americans) has a band, check them out here: The Solids.

chipscheesebeanspat

Following are a bunch of gross photos of kebab-fare, courtesy of my crappy cell phone camera. Warning: these are not for the faint of heart! I really think that the only way people would ever eat this stuff is if they were totally drunk. Luckily for the kebab van operators, the English have got that end of the deal covered.

Gabe after a long night of "birthday"

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