Are you a vampire!?

It's death by a thousand cuts when it comes to the hideously named blood orange. Now I hasten to add that I am not a squeemish person (perhaps it would help my figure if more food was off-putting!) but the thought of eating a blood orange just about does my head in. 

A bleeding blood orange - ugh

Now I'm absolutely sure that if the orange had a different name I would find them just as delicious as a huge percentage of the population. Everywhere we went in Italy last year the dreaded blood orange was flaunted at breakfast, lunch and dinner! Well actually cocktail hour. Gin and blood orange I'm told go well together. Just don't mention the blood orange! I've been pondering what they could be called. Something as simple as red orange would probably be acceptable. But blood orange no no no no no!

Just how do these clever cartoonists think like this!

Are you put off by the gruesome name? Do you love them? Or do you hate the name? Are there any other food names that 'turn your stomach'?

Pardon? What? I can't hear you!

There's something about a small cartoon by one of my favourite cartoonists in The Age, Oslo Davis - I've written about him before here - he always seems to sum up what I'm thinking in such a succinct way. Currently one of my on-going beefs is restaurant noise. It seems that we can't go anywhere these days without blaring music, people talking loudly (often on their mobiles so we can all hear their most intimate secrets) banging and clattering of cutlery and crockery. I could go on! And on!

My local coffee shop is a case in point. Lovely people. Lovely coffee. Lovely homemade breads and pastries. But the noise! Now I hasten to add it is not from music blaring - but it is a combination of hard floors, the hissing of the coffee machine and to top it all off the cleaning out of the coffee grounds - bang, bang, bang that nearly does my head in! 

"Can you please ask that waitress to turn down the bloody music?! 

I did! Except I don't think she can lip read."

Oslo's cartoon took me back to an experience I had a few years ago when 3 'oldies' popped into a St Kilda coffee shop to have a catch-up and a chat. We couldn't hear ourselves think let alone hear what each of us was saying. I politely asked the waitress if she could turn the music down a little so we could hear each other - her reply "The music's not for you - it's for us!". We were 'gobsmacked'. Silly old us. We were just paying her salary! Suffice to say we got up and left and never returned. She probably didn't want old fogey's like us bringing down the groovy tone of the subsequently closed groove-pad! I suspect the waitress is the same one that Oslo came upon! Perhaps her mission in life is to blow her eardrums apart whilst closing every coffee shop she ever works in!

Are you like me? Can't hear? Pardon? What?