The Cloven Hoof
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11 August 2015 at 15:35 #41740
@whisht Tea! and in a pub!? Well we are a very different sort of pub here aren’t we?
I believe there could also be a menu in this pub which offers jammy dogers, custard with fish
fingers jelly babies and I would like to suggest Tardis brownies! (1 of my personal favorites)
all gooey, dense and yummy and they are shaped like the Tardis and covered in Tardis
blue frosting and when you bite into 1 they are always bigger on the inside but they can never
make you bigger on the outside 😉@Janette We have this tiny little pond with 2 pretty fish in it and we named both of them
Fester and Fang! 🙂 Never missed an episode of the Addams Family when I was a kid in the
‘last century’ (ugh!)12 August 2015 at 01:58 #41742Anonymous @
oh yes you are absolutely correct! Afternoon tea it was! Thank you for the distinction…now I know 🙂 but what do you call it if it was a combination afternoon and cream tea? Like with scones and clotted cream and all the little adorable sandwiches and pastries (must go EAT NOW) Because that is how it was at the hotels (for tourists maybe?) and also here in the U.S. When I had my tea parties … ?
12 August 2015 at 03:51 #41743@lisa our “local” pub has a cafe area and not too long ago I observed a young couple, maybe on their first date, sitting at the front bar, deep in conversation and sharing a pot of tea. Now that is something you would not have seen even ten years ago. Pubs have to be so much more than watering holes these days though unfortunately in this part of the world most have taken up the “pokie” option. Our Local is “pokie free” and thus far more creative in building business. They have a cinema screen in the back garden for short film screenings when the weather is more conducive too so it is not entirely unlike The Cloven Hoof. (Oh and they often sell brownies but they are not Tardis blue alas.)
@mudlark. Thank you for pointing out the distinction. I did not know that either despite having been reared on Enid Blyton where they were always taking tea of one form or another. Maybe that is why the evening meal is often referred to as “tea” here though in Australia it is usually the main meal of the day.
@Rose2112 the only time in the U.K that I had the full spread of scones, sandwiches, pate etc was at Fortnam and Masons and it was referred to as “High Tea”. I thought that was for snotty reasons and to mask the fact that the scones were dry and the sandwiches stale. Other times, down in the West Country it was “cream tea”. Ah a west country cream tea. I would almost endure the hell that is Heathrow for that. This conversation is giving me itchy feet and I don’t think the bank account will be saying yes to a major OS venture for a very long time. Melt in the mouth french style pastries in Vietnam is not such a bad alternative though.
cheers
Janette
12 August 2015 at 05:35 #41744@lisa @janetteb @mudlark @rose2112
indeed Bovril: a soothing soup? Yes, in the hospital it always smelled foul but it could be due to the general hospital stink that ensued with the arrival of ‘dinner’ which, in this case, followed the English term: a main meal served at lunch with supper at 7pm. But before that, we’d eat ‘tea’ at 5pm including a chicken broth and mixed sandwiches: egg, vegemite, beef or lamb slices with salad. Salad was odd. Not like any salad I’d eaten before.
Mainly tinned food, it encompassed a palate of sliced sweet pineapple; bright green, large gherkins; cubed cheddar to over-sweet beetroot slices also heavily salted. And this was a hospital with children. After that, there’d be ice cream, custard (from a packet judging by the odour) and a milky liquid drink called ‘Quick’ -usually strawberry.
I must admit I developed a fondness for ‘Quick’ after that and it still appears in most shopping stores equivalent to your Tesco’s.
I recall Tesco’s mentioned in The Satan Pit with Rose: “we don’t have a swimming pool and we don’t have a Tesco’s: let’s list all the things we don’t have!” A lovely sarcastic jibe showing how far Rose had come travelling with the Doctor using her ‘powers of deduction’ to remain calm and set out a plan for success which the group at the Base followed unquestioningly.
Three cheers for Rose, a character known for her uncompromising dress sense and slightly less than slim bottom -for which I admired her!
Once we were hit with Amy Pond and then Clara in her red dress, tights, boots and long, wavy, perfectly coiffed hair by the make-up dept first seen in the Dalek Asylum, I thought, “here we go, the beauties are being favoured. Again.” I suppose that’s why I liked Rose. She’s attractive, a ‘bombshell’, possibly (& with that phrase, I’m surely showing my age) but more normal: over done mascara, loopy hair and crap old jeans. I liked it. It made me feel more ‘normal’ and think that telly can do that -and should. It worked with Willow who was less than conventional in Buffy.
So, @janetteb, we need some Jammy Dodgers, custard tarts, Quick, coffee, a pot of nicely made tea and a cream tea with scones: oh the cream teas in Devon and Wales; the best I’ve eaten.
We once had High Tea at Harrods: I’m sure they listed this name or description on their menu? We had to put our names down in the form of a reservation whilst Mr Ilion bought a brief case (ever stood with someone basically OCD who has to check every pocket 2o times and then asks for all the other brief cases to be brought out? Only to decide on the original in the end! I imagine every salesperson was scowling). After that 200 pound purchase we really needed our Tea. 🙂
When the tomato juice I ordered came late and I showed my displeasure, they not only brought out a fresh one but took it off the bill! Man! There was a pianist (not me for once -I used to do that during univ days to gain an extra dollar here and there) and we had the best pot of tea, evah.
The sandwiches, even the cucumber & watercress ones rocked the taste buds and the petit ‘fours’ were delicious to the last morsel. And of course it was a morsel, really. Mr Ilion left hungry and I’m sure he made a beeline for the next McDonalds (Maccas @rose2112 !) or Burger King we saw (though in the UK it’s not Burger King I think? Neither is it that here).
What have we got? Hungry Jacks, Pizza Hut, Dominoes and The Eagle Boys -most ‘showcasing’ pizza. Dominoes has recently been on order here and The Boy ate AN ENTIRE PIZZA. Good thing he’s growing. At 13, he’s 5′ 6″ which is pretty tall??
@janetteb are your boys (loved the names by the way: Fester etc…Addams Family seems to be well and truly loved on this Forum, f’sure) tall children/teens?
12 August 2015 at 05:38 #41745@mudlark @Rose2112 @purofilion @janetteb
Two years ago, my mother, who is not much of a traveller, fulfilled a dream and visited Britain. One of the things she did in London was afternoon tea at a swanky hotel, where she discovered clotted cream for the first time, and learned about the distinction between afternoon and high tea. It bugs her to no end that even the fanciest establishments over here fail to make the distinction properly!
Janette, my grandmother lived to the age of 98, and never stopped calling her two sons “the boys”. They didn’t seem to mind.
But do tell me, what sort of frightening Aussie thing is “pokie”????
12 August 2015 at 08:50 #41747@purfilion. The two eldest have both just passed their father who is average height. They were both late “growers” and for many years I feared they were going to be shorties like me. The youngest is hoping to be the tallest of the three but will be a couple of years yet before that happens.
I was supposed to be going to Harrods for afternoon tea with friends for my 21st birthday but got food poisoning from trifle the day before and was not feeling up to eating cake and I never did get to Harrods.
@arbutus. “Pokies” are betting machines and the cause of much poverty since they invaded our pubs in the mid to late nineties. There is a song by Aussie band, “The Whitlams” titled “Blow up the Pokies” which aptly sums up my sentiments towards them. Maybe I will put it up on the music thread. I don’t go there often as for some reason it tends to crash my laptop. The poor dear is feeling her age.
I have warned the boys that they will still be “the boys” to their father and I when they are hitting retirement age, should we be still alive by then.
Cheers
Janette
12 August 2015 at 08:52 #41748@purofilion sorry I miss-pelt your name above. I think it is the cold affecting my typing. After two days of spring we are plunged back into wet, dreary winter. But the blossom is out and summer is coming.
Cheers
Janette
12 August 2015 at 10:36 #41749@janetteb ‘No wurries mate”
Oh gosh, full circle discussion: food poisoning from bad trifle caused no High Tea?? That would have hurt! In several ways.
Yes, @arbutus the pokies do sound awful: the name alone “pokies” suggests something creepy and insidious which is exactly what it is. When I visited the Hervey Bay RSL (a retired services league) I saw women in their 80s constantly pulling the ‘arm’ of the pokie machines hoping it would deliver “all apples” or “pears” and therefore a paltry $100 for all their efforts. Meanwhile, they’re not really socialising, they’re buying one weak cappuccino after another and sitting in an airless, foul environment where you can hear bingo down one end and screaming kiddies begging for giant-over sized muffins down the other. Simply? The pokies are hell!
12 August 2015 at 11:16 #41750@janetteb @purofilion Interesting that Harrods and Fortnum & Mason are now calling afternoon tea ‘High Tea’. It must be a fairly recent development, I think, and certainly contrary to the usage I am familiar with. I did once have afternoon tea at Fortnum’s but it was a long time ago, around 1968/9, and they were certainly calling it ‘afternoon tea’ then. As I recall it cost 7 shillings and sixpence per person (37.5 pence – equivalent to perhaps £5 – £6 in today’s money), but it wasn’t a particularly elaborate or lavish affair. Afternoon tea was considered rather posh. At home a relatively simple form of it was reserved for when we entertained friends, and when my mother was going shopping in the city she would sometimes arrange to meet friends for afternoon tea at one of the local tea shops.
During my early childhood and throughout my schooldays ‘dinner’ was always in the middle of the day. School dinners were served at table rather than cafeteria style, and there was no choice; you ate what you were given or went hungry. The meals at my school were cooked in kitchens on the premises and varied greatly in quality. Some things the cooks prepared were reasonably appetising, but others were culinary crimes. At my brothers’ school the dinners were prepared elsewhere and brought in in large containers (‘dustbins’, according to my brothers) and were by all accounts uniformly and utterly revolting.
At home we had high tea, or just ‘tea’ when my father got home from work. At weekends high tea was a more elaborate affair, at least after food rationing ended and foodstuffs which had been absent from the menu for over a decade started to reappear. My father used to call in at a delicatessen on his way home from work on a Friday evening, and we never quite knew what we would be getting. After the limitations of our diet during the early post-war years it was a revelation. As for the main meals, my mother was a very good, though not particularly adventurous cook (my father wasn’t bad, either) but when it came to desserts she was the pudding Queen.
Puro, I would describe Bovril as a savoury drink rather than a soup. It was also considered very sustaining on a cold day, and I believe was a staple of British Arctic and Antarctic expeditions around the turn of the last century.
12 August 2015 at 11:27 #41751@purofilion @janetteb While reminiscing on the subject of afternoon tea, I suddenly remembered that one of the staples when we had it at home was anzacs. Do you know what I mean? – the antipodean equivalent of flapjacks, and to my mind far nicer. I think my mother got the recipe from her mother-in-law, my paternal grandmother, but goodness knows where Granny acquired it.
12 August 2015 at 14:05 #41752@mudlark the Anzac is a staple here still. We often buy packs of them for the boys which is shameful as they are so easy to make. I recently bought a bag of whole oats with the noble intention of cooking some up with Recalcitrant 3’s help over the last school hols but there wasn’t time. Maybe I should make some for this weekend’s D&D session. Anzacs got their name because Aussie and Kiwi women used to send them over to the troops in WWI. I guess they travelled well.
Australian schools don’t supply hot meals at lunch time. Lunch is packed or purchased at the tuck shop and eaten or not in the school yard. When we lived in Sweden for a year one of the highlights for the boys was having lunch provided especially on Pancake Tuesdays.
@Purofilion. Yes and no. I bought a SLR (camera) instead, lost of lot of weight and became vegetarian so a lot of benefits as a result of eating that dodgy trifle. I shall endeavour to not mention that topic again I promise. I do however have another theory about that toy soldier..:_)
Cheers
Janette
12 August 2015 at 19:29 #41766@janetteb Anzacs are little known over here, other than among the Aussie and NZ expats. As far as I know they are not available in shops – certainly I have never seen them on sale – and no one who encountered them in our house seemed to have heard of them, although many asked for the recipe. They are, as you say, very easy to make and were a great standby. My mother might say around mid day ‘X and Y are coming round this afternoon for tea’ and would rustle up a batch of them, plus a batch of scones, in the space of an hour or so. I will take your word for it in the matter of their ‘keeping’ qualities. They never lasted long enough for us to test it 🙂
@purofilion It may be a small consolation, but the women’s cricket team are currently doing rather better against the English than their male counterparts, although today, perhaps because of a soggy pitch, the play has been more than a little slow.
12 August 2015 at 19:47 #41768When I was growing up Anzac biscuits were not sold in the shops, and nor should they be–the whole point of them was to come out of the oven and straight onto the table. The idea of commercialising and “packaging”them (ugh!) goes against the whole idea of the anzac. Come to think of it, I recall eating one purchased in a shop. It was terrible. Shortly after, I emigrated.
12 August 2015 at 23:12 #41772@janetteb, @purofilion
Ah. We do have those gambling machines here. But, at least in BC, they are not allowed outside of casinos. I’m not sure of the rules in other provinces; I think in some places, you are allowed to have them in pubs, but as far as I understand it, nowhere that minors are allowed. Every so often I read a news story about the problems of casinos and gambling addiction, and it all sounds very depressing.
Some years ago, an English family spent part of a year on sabbatical here, staying at the end of our lane. At the time, my son had several school friends living on the block, and they used to play various games in the back lane. The sons of the English family used to join in, and puzzled our boys exceedingly when, early in the evening, they would have to “go home for tea”! I didn’t know this at the time, it was only later that my son told me of his confusion, and I explained that they actually meant supper! A couple of years later, while reading the Harry Potter books, we encountered the same problem over the word “pudding”. Arbutus Jr. envisioned tables filled with literally different flavours of pudding: chocolate, butterscotch, lemon, etc. Here, of course, we call the sweet course dessert, and pudding is a very specific subset (usually premade these days, or at best, mixed up from a package. My mom used to mix up big bowls of Jello chocolate pudding when I was a kid… Also, Puro, we used to drink chocolate-flavoured Quick all the time, as it was cheaper than chocolate milk in cartons.
I have never tasted Bovril, but my granny, who hailed from New England and was very British in her upbringing, used to have it in her cupboard.
12 August 2015 at 23:19 #41773@janetteb @mudlark I’m puzzled about the Anzacs. Are they a kind of cookie? Because a flapjack is more of a pancake, and I don’t think you could sell them in packages. But anything with oatmeal in it is tops in my book. (Must be my Scottish heritage!)
@blenkinsopthebrave So Canada owes its gain to a packaged biscuit? Nice. 🙂
13 August 2015 at 00:34 #41777Because a flapjack is more of a pancake,
Ah, I think we may have a bit of a language problem.
A flapjack (UK and Australian) is a baked oat biscuit, made of porridge oats, butter and brown sugar; some golden syrup is usually added. If you don’t add the golden syrup, they will resemble sweet bricks and you’ll probably break your teeth.
It’s nothing like the North American breakfast pancake. 😀
13 August 2015 at 04:22 #41778@arbutus The Anzac is indeed a biscuit make with oats golden syrup, melted butter, flour and of course sugar.
@mudlark Maybe your grandmother found the recipe in English Women’s Weekly. My mother found some amazing recipes in that publication, the most remarkable being Dutch Apple Pie with which I greatly impressed our neighbour born to Dutch parents. I have googled it and the recipe is indeed “original”.
I have probably told this story before, so apologies if so but about four years ago I was called into the school to discuss problems with you youngest, (Recalcitrant 3) Amongst less pressing concerns, (homework not done) the teacher and counsellor claimed that we were not feeding him. Twice he had responded in the negative when asked if he had been given “tea” the previous night. They are very English here in S.A. I am not sure they were entirely convinced when I explained that we refer to the evening meal as “dinner” and he had indeed been given that. R.3 told me later he wondered why they asked if he had been drinking tea. Language confusion can occur even within a small localised community..
when I was growing up “sweet course” was referred to interchangeably as either “pudding”, “desert”, or “sweets”.
Cheers
Janette
13 August 2015 at 10:26 #41779@arbutus Pudding/dessert – the ‘common language’ problem again, although ‘dessert’ is also sometimes used on this side of the pond to mean the sweet course of a meal. Originally, though, ‘dessert’ meant the fruit and nuts, perhaps with a sweet wine, after the table had been cleared of the main meal. That was in the days when dinners were served ‘a la Francaise’ – i.e. with all the dishes, sweet and savoury, laid out on the table at the beginning of the meal (at large and lavish dinner parties there might be one or more ‘removes’ where the first assortment of dishes was removed and replaced by another). Around the mid nineteenth century that practice began to be replaced with ‘service a la Russe’, in which dishes were served separately in successive courses as now.
Oddly enough, the word ‘banquet’ in seventeenth century England denoted something similar to the dessert course – candied fruits and nuts and sugary confections served with appropriate wines after the main meal at grand dinners. Some great houses of that period had a banqueting houses – a pavilion in the garden to which the host would escort his guests to enjoy the banquet.
Over here ‘pudding’ in the strictest sense can be sweet or savoury dishes, steamed or baked – either with a suet crust, e.g. steak and kidney pudding, apple pudding (which we used to refer to as ‘cowboy’s hat’ because when turned out onto a plate it resembled a Stetson), jam roly-poly etc. – or with a cake-like sponge base and various flavourings- treacle, ginger, vanilla with jam etc. – substantial stuff to provide fuel for the metabolism in the days before most houses had central heating. But for a long time now it has been the general term for the sweet course or ‘afters’ – including pies, tarts, fruit fools, fruit compotes, syllabubs, milk puddings and so forth.
Maybe your grandmother found the recipe in English Women’s Weekly
Perhaps, but I doubt it. I find it hard to imagine her ever reading women’s magazines, and I never saw any in her house. It is more likely she got the recipe from someone she met in Egypt, which is where they lived from the 1920s until the outbreak of the war. They were Quakers, so it is also possible that she picked it up either before they went out to Egypt or after the war from some Antipodean Friend passing through.
13 August 2015 at 12:13 #41785It is regional – and inevitably, being Britain, to a degree class-related.
In some places, supper is tea, lunch is dinner (at school I took Dinner Money, not Lunch Money, but when it was permitted (such as on field trips) I took a packed lunch) and pudding is afters.
13 August 2015 at 13:00 #41786the Italians I knew and indeed the Czechs in the ’70s served dinners a la Francaise. I noted some missionary friends doing exactly the same.
There would be one or more ‘removes’ as well. I think this was done -at least in that company, and from what little I knew -because people didn’t have much in the way of possessions and so food was one way of showing hospitality -and demonstrating love thru the food which inevitably contained either a lot of salad, open sandwiches with anti pasto (the Italians) or Czech, paprika based, creamy piping hot meals (heavy on the topside) served on flat or slightly ‘dipped’ dishes so guests helped themselves and the food stayed warm. Having a side or serving table and a large dining table was more important than a ‘couch’ or sitting area and equally important as the family ceramics and the bed, passed down the generations!
Well, haven’t we progressed (as ozzies): the tea on the tray by the telly or on benches at the kitchen counter so mums everywhere can pile up plates, wash up and let the children hoover up the food in less than 5 mins. “May I be excused” -and yet all that work!
Off to catch some winks and dream of tables laden with puddings, tarts, lemon pies (oh God, I love a lemon tart -just tarty enough the tears drop) and summer fruits with marzipan. One thing I can make: marzipan. Thing is, I eat the whole darn lot…
13 August 2015 at 16:43 #41787Oh, I love these conversations!
@bluesqueakpip Ha. I should have realized that that was the case, as we had already been discussing other language variants. Fascinating!
@janetteb If your story had happened to us, we would never have heard a thing about it, as Arbutus Jr. really does drink tea every night (of the non or lightly caffeinated variety). If I don’t happen to be making it myself, he will inevitably ask me, usually by text message, “Tea?”
@mudlark Cool. I am familiar with the two styles of serving, but hadn’t heard the terms “a la Francaise” or “a la Russe” before. I grew up with the first, but I have learned from the Italians to enjoy the second as well. Interesting, in a way, the whole distinction between sweet and savoury. When we serve a squash bake (definitely sweet), it is part of the main meal, but a pumpkin pie is always “afters” (@pedant, I love that expression!). The idea of savoury puddings used to be more common here as well, but I think it has dropped away over time.
I had a conversation not long ago with an Italian-Swiss friend regarding meals. Our mutual language (but not the first language for either of us) is French, and he corrected me when I used “le diner” for the end-of-day meal. He told me: “le dejeuner, le diner, le souper”. I told him that in Quebec French, which is what I learned many years ago, it is “le petit dejeuner, le dejeuner, le diner”. So I guess they have these same conversations on French-language forums, between French speakers of different nationalities? 🙂
13 August 2015 at 16:44 #41788Oh, and @purofilion, you make your own marzipan? I am massively impressed. Can I come to your house for tea? 🙂
13 August 2015 at 17:48 #41789@arbutus I think that the linguistic difference is more likely to be between Swiss French on the one hand and Quebecois and French French on the other. The French I learned was that spoken in France and one of my brothers has lived in that country for nearly 45 years, and the terms you used are the ones I am familiar with. Souper is supper, which would be the main evening meal if ‘diner’ was eaten in the middle of the day, but not otherwise. So possibly the real difference is more a matter of eating habits, such as we have been discussing in relation to the different usages in Britain.
@purofilion Home made marzipan, yesss! So much nicer generally than commercially produced product, which all too often has an overpowering taste of almond essence (probably synthetic). I haven’t made it in donkey’s years, but I remember doing so, generally around Christmas time, and sometimes at Easter, for a Simnel cake. Fresh ground almonds, a mixture of caster sugar and icing sugar, white of egg and lemon juice or other flavouring to taste – my mother sometimes used orange flower water or rose water – kneaded together gently, et voila!.
13 August 2015 at 19:02 #41791Here in the SW US, “flapjacks” are pancakes, usually made with something other than plain white flour. A local restaurant serves a modern version using mostly seed and nut flours, and whole pumpkin seeds for crunch (no oats, and the result is more delicate and airy than pancakes, which are usually leaden around here), and some ghastly syrup that looks exactly like that old standby, Duco Cement (and tastes like nothing — well, like Karo Syrup, a loathsome goo made from corn and tasteless too unless you add sugar: “high fructose corn syrup”. Gag.). I complained on their fb page about the dreadful syrup, and they replied the same day that they’re “experimenting” with other syrups to find something better. I should damn well hope so. They went through a bankruptcy procedure recently, shut some branches, claimed that a financial officer made off with their $, so they are struggling a bit; but that’s no excuse for Karo.
Well. *Nothing* is an excuse for Karo, IMO.
13 August 2015 at 22:22 #41792@ichabod Pancakes are another source of transatlantic linguistic confusion. Over a period of eleven years during the 1970s and 1980s I spent between two and four weeks every summer working on an excavation in Derbyshire. During the latter part of that period we were assisted by American volunteers recruited through the Earthwatch organisation. One year, when the catering was being done by students from a neighbouring catering college, some of the American volunteers asked if we could have pancakes for breakfast. The cooks, puzzled, but ever eager to please, duly obliged, to bewilderment on both sides. Because what we call pancakes, you call crepes. The nearest thing to your pancakes on this side of the pond are known as scotch pancakes or drop scones, made on a griddle, and usually eaten at for tea rather than at breakfast.
I once tried pancakes with maple syrup when I had breakfast at a diner in Vermont, but although I love maple syrup I found the combination a good deal too sweet for my taste, especially with sweet cured bacon. I was warned to avoid the cheaper syrups on offer 🙂
13 August 2015 at 23:10 #41793@mudlark Too true; in most of the US, sugar is added to EVERYTHING, to the detriment of most things. I prefer flapjacks or (better yet!) crepes, but we can even muck up crepes — too much sugar, or nothing at all so it’s like eating lightly browned skin, because the cook doesn’t have the sense to add a touch of salt to the batter, to pick up the taste a bit. A nice little place near me began serving fresh-made crepes recently, and I don’t bother stopping there any more — no taste, damp dough lightly browned on one side, not worth the bother. My grandmother’s blintzes were wonderful, compared to the flat, dull rubbish (full of sugar though, of course) sold as frozen blintzes/blini/whatever the hell else they think they’re cooking. I’m not a gourmet by any means, but I know giant-sized food ignorance when I see it, and it’s still rare to find anything else in most of the country beyond the northeast big cities and the two coasts. A little place here, a little place there, known by word of mouth — and the rest is (usually) drek.
13 August 2015 at 23:20 #41794in most of the US, sugar is added to EVERYTHING
Yes, I did find it curious that so many things which were supposed to be savoury tasted sweet; and cakes were so tooth-achingly sweet that I avoided them altogether.
I think that it must go back quite a long way. Someone once gave me a book of traditional North American recipes, and I was amazed at how many of them included sugar or molasses. I very quickly learned to reduce the quantity of those particular ingredients, or to omit them altogether!
14 August 2015 at 01:08 #41796I once tried pancakes with maple syrup when I had breakfast at a diner in Vermont, but although I love maple syrup I found the combination a good deal too sweet for my taste,
That’s because you forgot the bacon and scrambled eggs.
14 August 2015 at 01:12 #41797@mudlark @ichadod et al
You may find this of interest: Why American Beer is So Bland
14 August 2015 at 01:25 #4179814 August 2015 at 02:28 #41799thank you for the beer Pedant! We are in a pub, after all.
Yes the homemade marzipan is better and there’s less almond or fake almond taste that you get with a bought variety. The first time I made it, it was on the laminate and it turned to goo! So, having bought a slab of marble for dough, I used this & it turned out very well but gosh, I had to keep tasting it until there was very little left.
I did find out, by way of a friend, that there’s a marvellous health food shop which sells a pure marzipan without any added nasties but with real almonds. It’s a touch ‘chunky’ rather than completely smooth like rubber and not a perfect white either but it smells delicious and I might just try it this year instead of making it. The heat plays up with the combination. And so, late at night or early in the morning is the best time for me to hop in the kitchen -and I’m getting lazy.
Simnel cake! Oh yes! I used to make it for Easter and used orange or some other citrus -delicious, very simple, yet filling after the traditional Lent fast.
14 August 2015 at 02:38 #41800I thought I’d virtually delete my F’book page after making the mistake of a) watching a cooking competition called The HotPlate on a commercial channel and then
b) making comments about how the women dress cheaply (I mean, leopard skin every night and at bumcrack level?) and the men in the comp are misogynist. There’s a Frenchmen who “cries” and all of Oz (“chicks”) cries and sighs with him. And yet he condemns every other chef for trying to make traditional French items when “ve, ze Frenccch are de only cooks in de vorld.”
What an arse and yet I’m the one roundly condemned. Thank goodness for this place: we have some semblance of intelligence. Well, more than that, of course. Oh and I was condemned in capital letters. All that screaming. Personally, I don’t think they understood “misogynist”: they took it to mean a type of cooking technique. And this from a woman who claims she’s a Doctor!!
Yeah, right. I wanna throw that marzipan. No doubt Phillippe would think it’s entirely “vfrunch”
have you seen The Hotplate on Channel 9? Or have you done the smart thing and avoided it? I haven’t watched a cooking comp since 2010!
Vent over but I need a drink & it’s a bit early…..so I’ll have a virtual one. <<*\*>>
14 August 2015 at 03:22 #41801@purofilion
and that is why I refuse to even start a Facebook page…there’s sooooooo much drama. My friends were horrified “HOW WILL I SEND YOU MY PICTURES?” (Um….email?) “HOW WILL YOU KNOW WHATS GOING ON IN MY LIFE??” (Um….exactly!)
I ate an apple. I’m sad. I like this!!! 🙂
these are things I don’t need to know
About anyone …
(sorry I am being a lil obnoxious about it )
And I’ve always felt as though no one is real there. You are shown what they want you to see about their lives. But everyone has the same amount of crap.
We just think we’re the only ones who have it 🙂
14 August 2015 at 03:42 #41802@Purofilion I’ve tried many confections in my years including cakes and pies
and crumbles, tarts even marzipan and tbh I cant totally live with out most of
this. But I still soemtimes have weakness for chocolate treats, vegie breads and fruit crisps.
I’ve learned to make good brownies, crisps and sometimes I like to make a vegie bread
and I might add a chocolate swirl in it. I know that there is a common notion that
Americans love everything sweet but me not so much. I could be wrong but I think it
might have a lot to do with the diet Americans grow up on. There’s tons of hidden
sugars in all the processed foods particularly the breads and cereals. I think folks
are beginning to get a grip on this and that’s a good thing.14 August 2015 at 03:56 #4180314 August 2015 at 05:08 #41804@rose2112
Oh I know! “eat an apple. Buy another house. Show me picture of house. Children are doing so well (18 different after school activities).”
My niece-in-law – who is 39 insisted on borrowing another $600 000 to upgrade house.
They’re so in debt my poor nephew is probably going to kill himself.
Still, this woman, who hasn’t ever worked (except for the time she tried the nail salon and the weekend scrap booking camp) took pictures of herself in the hot tub overlooking the acre of land they “bought” via equity and is sipping a wine basically saying “up yours’. I made some comment about how ‘Nuts’ she was and then.. poof my own nephew who I took care of for years “unfriended me.”
Puro sad. Well I am really because his wife is basically trash and he’s hen pecked. A sad story. For him. I’m well out of it.
Obviously, the wine at lunch has caused me to blab. How to connect this to Dr Who? No bloody idea!! Clara drinking wine and missing Danny? No, because they’re both classy. The fact that said nephew and family don’t like Dr Who and yet love CSI and other crime shows? Says something, I suppose.
@lisa your sweet tooth sounds great! Not like the idea some people have that Americans “all eat sugar all the time”. You should see Oz and their food fetishes. It’s become gastronomically mad! As if food totally defines us. What happened to food being something nutritious you ate just to get on with the rest of Real Life?
Not anymore. There’s a cooking show on every channel every night. Whoa.
14 August 2015 at 05:36 #41805Oh, and @purofilion, you make your own marzipan? I am massively impressed. Can I come to your house for tea?
Can I add my name to that please? Puro and @arbutus have either of you ever heard of or tried the Swedish Easter Buns, Semlor? They are large, very light, slightly spiced and sweetened bread rolls, split and filled with almond paste and whipped cream. Absolutely divine.
@mudlark I have always known “drop-scones” by the name “pikelets”. They are a useful standby when they boys have friends over, quick and easy. I often add sultanas and cinnamon.
@Puro. I have been spared the “Hotplate” agony. Our writing exercise yesterday was about internet abuse leading to an interesting discussion about how we are currently killing freedom of speech. There are some hysterically nasty people out there and yes thank goodness for this wonderful little haven of civility.
@ichabod and @lisa. My S/O spent two weeks in the US some years back and was begging me for salads when he came home. First and only time he had ever expressed a desire to eat healthy food. One morning he walked down to breakfast, surveyed what was on offer on the buffet and returned to his room to cold pizza figuring that it was the healthiest option. I do suspect however that Aussie kids eat more fast food than U.S. ones, a theory based upon a shared school diary that R/2 brought home many years ago. The early entries were done in a Texan school. I was able to work out where the entries changed by the different attitudes, humour and eating habits. (Though it did wonder if the Texan children were being entirely honest about their gourmet sounding home cooked meals.) I was really surprised but how many cultural differences were apparent in the writing of six year old children. I suspect, when the diary returned to Texas that the children there would rather horrified by the bad behaviour of the “toy” involved.
And now I am off to make some savoury damper for R/1 who is not feeling well today. I would have make pikelets but have run out of eggs.
Cheers
Janette
14 August 2015 at 05:52 #41806yes! pikelets. An awesome afternoon tea -or dinner! Mum used to make squashed strawberries with whipped cream served on hot pikelets. A fav once a month. I don’t know the Easter buns you refer to? We’ve got the Czech ones with sugar and jam inside: they’re hard to make well and so I resort to bought ones instead which are invariably heavy and too sweet. Yours sound luvly! I like the almond paste: just gives it that edge, I think, and tones down the sweetness.
Today on Facebook I’ve seen a Muslim gymnast accused of showing her ‘aurat’ and is therefore headed for Hell. Unflippinbelievable.
I’d like to show them my aurat, I surely would. Well, maybe not, but still, facebook and The Guardian!
14 August 2015 at 07:17 #41807@purofilion Well, Islamic zealots are crazy, Christian zealots are crazy, ultra-Orthodox Jewish zealots are crazy, and I have no doubt whatever that there are Hindu zealots and even Buddhist zealots who just as damn crazy as the rest of them.
Maybe they all just need a good dose of home-made marzipan? Not me, though. My Viennese grandmother loved marzipan and I had to eat it when I was sent over to buy her groceries, so I came to loath the stuff. Crystalized ginger, now . . . that’s another matter. The whole cooking craze looks to me like just another indication of the lethal political decadence of our times and our (western) system: not only bread and circuses to distract the masses from their powerlessness, but the circuses (phony politics, anti-social “social” media, electronic games and foolishness of all kinds including most TV) now actually include the bread — ads for fast food that is sometimes indistinguishable from slick photos of road-kill for the commons, and cooking shows on TV for the illusion of a middle class.
Food, my version: my mom didn’t cook (day job + freelance design at night + cocktail and political yak parties whenever), and I could burn a chop and make a stew when I got married. Learned to cook whatever I could make in ten minutes because my husband came home from his law office at any and all hours during the evenings and I never had much lead time; cooked happily and plainly from “Diet for a Small Planet” and “Good Cheap Food” (both excellent cookbooks for low budgets, which applied while he was paying his ex and then for college too); then unlearned any sort of normal cooking when it turned out that he was gluten intolerant and somewhat allergic to dairy products. Now he’s eating gluten free etc. in a dementia facility, no complaints (one symptom of A’s D is loss of the sense of smell, without which food is pretty tasteless anyway). And I’m cooking “singles” food, adult version, which means, fast, easy, tasty, and minimal washing up.
Cooking shows? It is to laugh. But then, I seem to have outgrown my native culture almost entirely, which is what age does to us; and I think it feels fine, as a matter of fact. I’d have to give myself an ice-pick lobotomy to get stupid enough for all the shrieking, celebrity-riveted, gadget-gobbling, terminally narrow and selfish idiocy around me. Luckily I’ve still got friends and colleagues enough of a similar mind, so far. Could do so much worse . . .
14 August 2015 at 07:47 #41808@janetteb I don’t know the Swedish buns, they sound fantastic. We had Ukrainian ones filled with cream cheese.
@lisa Whenever we have travelled to the U.S., we have always been delighted to be served entirely unsweetened iced tea. This is not something we ever see up here (except at my house!) and definitely goes against the usual expectation!
@purofilion I’m sure we’d all love to see your aurat. 🙂
All this talk of buns and marzipan is giving me ideas! I may have to go and bake something. Except the boy is away this week, hiking on glaciers in Alaska, and neither Mr. Arbutus nor myself need any extra calories at present (too much rose being consumed on the terrace!).
14 August 2015 at 08:26 #41811“anti-social “social” media, electronic games and foolishness of all kinds including most TV) now actually include the bread — ads for fast food that is sometimes indistinguishable from slick photos of road-kill for the commons, and cooking shows on TV for the illusion of a middle class.”
beautifully written.
well, buns and aurats. Now, we’re in the pub.
I like plain unsweetened tea. Also unsweetened lemonade -a bit sour, but golly with ice, “nothing compares to you” says Sinead.
14 August 2015 at 08:45 #41812@purofilion Thanks — I only wish that writing were less true, even if it would also be less beautiful.
Down here in the southwest, as in the South itself I think, you have to ask in restaurants that your tea *not* be sweetened if you don’t want to consume all that sugar. The US population at large is constantly regressing toward kindergarten.
On the other hand, I like my lemonade, and lemon curd in pastries, both very sweet and very sour. We have one wonderful baker here in town, on her own and using borrowed ovens, whose spectacularly good fruit tarts I used to get at a good local coffee shop; but like so many true artisans, the woman is hopeless at business, so they’ve stopped buying from her because she’s not “reliable”. She also sells at the farmers’ market on certain mornings downtown, but her baked goods are so good she’s always sold out almost immediately, and there’s no way in Hell or Heaven that I am going to show up *anywhere* at 7 a.m., not even for those fruit tarts. If I get up before 8, I feel sick and woozy the whole day, and end up sleeping away the afternoon anyhow. So my dumb, tyrannical body clock keeps me from getting too fat. What a deal!
14 August 2015 at 09:22 #41814@ichabod “So my dumb, tyrannical body clock keeps me from getting too fat. What a deal!”
The Tyranny of Body.
A name for a book in the lifestyle section; if it isn’t already.
Yes, some ppl are terrific cooks but can’t balance the books: Witness Gordo Ramsay and his tirades (mind you, most of those ppl can’t cook either!). In one episode (I binged watched them on youtube) he’s dealing with an owner called Alan”Love” in a restaurant called Ruby Tates (nope, no spuds) with a Vietnamese Ozzie who “farkin’ cooks shit and I don’t farkin’ care coz at the end of the day, mate, it’s just about the moolah, you farkin geddit? Fark”
I think he was pretty high and pretty dumb. But he was pretty.
14 August 2015 at 10:20 #41815That’s because you forgot the bacon and scrambled eggs.
I didn’t forget the bacon, but that tasted sweet as well
I generally pass on scrambled eggs, because they are almost always overcooked. And the very thought of scrambled eggs with sweet pancakes and syrup is enough to induce nausea 😮
Interesting about the beer; I always wondered. At least nowadays, with the rise of craft breweries, there are decent American beers to be found
14 August 2015 at 10:36 #41816@janetteb @purofilion Where I come from drop scones and pikelets are different things, though both are made on a griddle.
Drop scones are made with a batter which is slightly thicker than ordinary pancake batter and slightly sweetened, but otherwise similar. The batter for pikelets contains yeast and the finished product looks like a large, thin crumpet, with holes on the surface to trap the melted butter .
@ichabod I, too, like lemon curd, though I find the bought stuff too sweet and rather bland. I sometimes make it when I have some left-over lemons, but where the recipe calls for equal quantities of butter and sugar I halve the quantity of sugar, which I find produces just the right balance between tartness and sweetness. And then there is lemon meringue pie …..
14 August 2015 at 11:00 #41817@purofilion
What happened to food being something nutritious you ate just to get on with the rest of Real Life?
But isn’t a leisurely meal of good food, well prepared, eaten with congenial friends and/or family members and accompanied by good wines and good conversation one of the great pleasures of Real Life?
Anyway, I like cooking, and if people enjoy what I cook I don’t feel that the time spent on it is unprofitable. When I’m cooking just for myself, though, I generally go for what is quick and easy, or else cook a large quantity of something I really like, so that I don’t mind eating it for several days in succession 🙂
14 August 2015 at 11:24 #41818“But isn’t a leisurely meal of good food, well prepared, eaten with congenial friends and/or family members and accompanied by good wines and good conversation one of the great pleasures of Real Life?”
But it’s so much work; I used to do dinner parties way back when -and the stress of it. Yes, yes it was nice but really in the end….going out for a coffee or a wine was better -certainly easier on the bank book and a whole lot easier on the kitchen hand. I don’t have the health to eat beyond lunch time (so I suppose that’s dinner!) and also there’s a sense of needing to impress -I’m sure my friends don’t think that -or act like this, so perhaps it’s my imagination. But no, no interest in that type of leisure, really. I wish I could or perhaps that part of life is over? Who nose!
Also, I have absolutely no attention span: 2 hours with friends and I “gotta go” -in more ways than one. It’s exactly 8:21 pm here and I have to hit the sack. Dinner parties wouldn’t work! I’d have to start them at 4: 30! Also, not long after Boy Ilion arrived into the world, all that prep of soft food, solid food, can he eat egg yet…made the idea of actual ppl or grownups over for dinner just another bit of work to do.
Course, I could be just lazy. Most likely that’s it!
14 August 2015 at 11:31 #41819before I hit the proverbial…aren’t drop scones those scones made in a special griddle?? I know you mentioned griddle @mudlark but these are small half circles, into which the batter is placed and these are put in an oven -I think. They’re very heavy – iron, I suppose.
They’re like a mixture of pancake and scone but very little?? Not sure of the name. It’s almost impossible to buy, new, this particular wotsit (can’t even recall the name of the jolly ‘appliance’) @janetteb perhaps you know what I mean? It was an Ozzie thing about 30 year ago? Occasionally they show up at fetes.
Perhaps we’ve already talked about them and I’m at cross purposes!
14 August 2015 at 13:16 #41822@purofilion The griddle I am talking about is like a heavy cast iron frying pan, but flat. It is heated on the stove top, greased lightly, and the batter is dropped on to it, about a tablespoonful for each drop scone, to form discs around 6cm to 8cm diameter, according to the size preferred. When one side is done you flip them over (much like making a crepe type pancake, in fact). Depending on the size of the griddle around four to six can be cooked at a time. Or a large, heavy, preferably cast iron frying pan can be used instead of the griddle. Pikelets are made in much the same way, though they are generally larger and a bit thicker and of a different texture. Despite the name, drop scones are quite different from scones. The one is essentially a small pancake around 2-3mm thick, not unlike an American pancake; the other is made with self-raising flour (or plain flour with baking powder), butter, sugar and milk to form a fairly stiff dough which is rolled out to an even thickness, cut into circles and baked. Raisins and sultanas are often added to the scone dough, or the sugar can be omitted and grated cheese added if you want them savoury.
As for cooking, I understand your point, though I wasn’t talking about formal ‘dinner parties’ which is not something I have ever gone in for. When I do entertain people to a meal (not all that often these days, as family and friends live some distance away), it is a fairly relaxed, informal affair. As I said, I enjoy cooking and will generally choose a menu where a lot of the preparation can be done well beforehand, so there is no pressure involved, I can take my time over it and I don’t feel stressed. And if there is any last-minute fiddling to be done, the guests can sit in the kitchen with their drinks and chat to me as I work 🙂
14 August 2015 at 13:58 #41823@purofilion and @ichabod
Well, Islamic zealots are crazy, Christian zealots are crazy, ultra-Orthodox Jewish zealots are crazy, and I have no doubt whatever that there are Hindu zealots and even Buddhist zealots who just as damn crazy as the rest of them.
Yup. Hindu zealots are generally called ‘Hindu nationalists’ or get described as ‘ethnic nationalists’, and yet, are strangely prone to murdering or driving out people who aren’t Hindu. The Tamil Tigers are often described as ‘secular’. I can only presume that their opposition to ethnic Tamils who happened to be Muslim as well as the ethnic Sinhalese (who are usually Buddhist) was a complete coincidence. 😈
The Tamil Tigers are the people who invented suicide bombing, btw.
Buddhist zealots, likewise, usually get called ‘nationalists’. Or it’s ‘economic’. Again, the fact that many Buddhist terrorist movements are led by or consist mainly of monks is pure coincidence. Honest.
Before the non-religious get too smug, I’ll also point people in the direction of racist zealots and Marxist-communist zealots. 🙁
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