Early Risers.

[Gwiwer]

3 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Just into the second half of the AFL before I realised that its the Cats vs The Dogs....  Who will win?

Ah yes. It happens every season. Geelong vs Western Bulldogs.  Is it raining ….. ? 
 

Other apt pairings include Dockers vs Port (Freemantle - Port Adelaide) and Cats vs Lions (Geelong - Brisbane, ex-Fitzroy), 

 

[monkeysarefun]

27 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

Ah yes. It happens every season. Geelong vs Western Bulldogs.  Is it raining ….. ? 

 

 

No its not, just to spoil the saying -  the rain hugged the east coast.. 

 

 Its the Gather Round, held  in SA,  so almost every match is at the Adelaide Oval, except the Sydney Swannies match which was played in some small-town regional venue which made for some interesting camera angles filmed by some poor bloke running the sidelines. 

 

Edited April 6 by monkeysarefun

[woodenhead]

Result - extra sausage in my tin of beans n sausage 

 

You have to celebrate the little victories in life haha

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, Andy Hayter said:

Ah!  I assumed you would still get those freebees pushed into the letterbox.

 

In that case use toilet paper - much the same thing in many respects.  (Kitchen paper is probably more suitable.)

Old tea towels (clean of course) work quite well for fruit in the bottom trays of the fridge. We don’t want all the bananas we buy for a week to ripen at once so half get wrapped in a tea towel and get taken out a couple of days  before we want them.  
 

[PhilJ W]

We are now all used to air fryers, now we have the toaster oven. 

https://ninjakitchen.co.uk/product/ninja-foodi-10-in-1-multifunction-oven-dt200uk-zidDT200UK

 

[monkeysarefun]

25 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

Old tea towels (clean of course) work quite well for fruit in the bottom trays of the fridge. We don’t want all the bananas we buy for a week to ripen at once so half get wrapped in a tea towel and get taken out a couple of days  before we want them.  
 

 

 

 

And you can ripen that stubborn avocado by placing it in with those bananas. 

[woodenhead]

3 hours ago, DaveF said:

I sometimes wish other older people would "retire" and let younger fitter people who are less set in their ways take over.  I may not like what new people do but I was like that once and changed a lot of things the previous generation had refused to do anything about, both at the camera club and the Literary and Scientific Society.

 

 

I think younger people would have more respect and care for older people if said older people did step back from still trying to run the world after they retire.

 

Like you mention, rigidity in thinking, resistance to change are not helpful in solving problems for the young.

 

I look at the membership of certain political factions whose objective is to 'go back to how things were'.  Their memberships seem to be at the older end of the spectrum and it's no wonder they are completely out of kilter with society in general.

 

I read once that as teenagers we are all radical leftists because it spoke most to us about fairness and respect, but as we age we become more and more conservative in our views so it meant Labour attracted the young and Conservatives attracted the older generation.  There has been a change somewhere because a lot of older people are now looking outside of the Conservative party, but it's telling that the polictics of said party is all about a return to the past and constant reminders of how the past was so great.  I am guessing the other party now aiming to claim some more Conservative MPs is probably full of even more rigid thinkers who cannot see past their own nose.

 

By all means remain active as a retiree, your life depends upon it, but don't cling to the past and try and maintain it.

[jjb1970]

I had the pleasure of being reminded that it's not just jolly brits abroad that can be an embarrassment tonight😃

 

We went for dinner in quite a nice restaurant, not 3 michelin* but a nice Javanese place. A pair of French speaking fellows turned up in dirty boiler suits (there's a lot of shipyards in Batam) at which point the hostess politely said no workweek. They then played dumb (I would be amazed if anyone working in international service in a manufacturer serving marine clients has no English skills, but maybe they were genuine) and started speaking French very loudly and slowly, classic, I thought it was only English speakers that did that 🤣

 

They got the message eventually when the hostess just stood with the door open pointing out. 

[woodenhead]

Remove the tax exempt status of ISAs because they are costing the government and targetting the wrong people?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/investing/isas/20k-isa-tax-free-allowance-hard-to-justify/

 

No, sort out the low pay, high inflation, high rent and awful employment opportunities and perhaps low earners will be again able to save money.  All changing the status of ISAs will do is give the government more money to waste whilst impacting middle income earners and offering even less of an incentive for lower income people to even try saving any money.

[polybear]

4 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

That's the reason I hated any family gathering in the 80's and early 90's that involved going  to one of those "serve yourself" family restaurants. You'd always get  to the food bar or whatever its called to find some less evolved person had just used the same serving spoon in the sweet and sour pork, the mashed potato, the mysterious curry and the ice cream. 

 

 

The bit you need to worry about is when they lick the spoon clean before putting it back for the next person.........🤢

 

2 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

It used to be that the stored potatoes were sprayed to prevent them from sprouting but this was discontinued in 2019 due to concerns about the breakdown products of the spray then being used.  Some spraying with a different inhibitor continues, but now most stored potatoes are kept at a very precise temperature and may be also subjected to a light dose of ethylene gas.  This gas ripens fruit but inhibits sprouting in potatoes.

 

Nothing like some nice & healthy, freshly sprayed with chemicals & gassed fruit and veg; far healthier than all that UPF......

(And that's without even considering what chemicals they've been treated with whilst growing.)

 

2 hours ago, Captain Cuttle said:

Much changed since the sixties when i first went out with her and looking on YT not for the better.

 

You might not want to show SWMBO that sentence - it could very easily be taken the wrong way.....

 

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

Neither icing nor buttercream would be appropriate here - you don’t want a chocolate cake to be sickly sweet

 

Don't we??

 

5 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

By all means remain active as a retiree, your life depends upon it, but don't cling to the past and try and maintain it.

 

If it ain't busted......

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, PhilJ W said:

We are now all used to air fryers, now we have the toaster oven. 

https://ninjakitchen.co.uk/product/ninja-foodi-10-in-1-multifunction-oven-dt200uk-zidDT200UK

 

 

 

 

How did the human race last this long before this  sudden influx of miracle specialist devices aimed precisely  to cook  various specific things just so?

 

I recently watched some youtube video of a  US bloke living in a Mcmansion in the Florida Keys in a golf resort probably, proudly demo-ing his new steak cooker thingy that he'd bought.

 

To test it out he'd bought some kind of extra awesome special beef bit from an online butcher that from  the way he was building it up and pronouncing its amazingness  was  delivered   presumably by helicopter with an armed escort in some kind of  cooling device designed by NASA, then after he'd spent 20 minutes exclaiming how brilliant the bit of dead cow was and pointing at the various  fatty  bits  and pronouncing -'thats marbling........,now  thats  proper marbling........  hooey, THATS awesome marbling!!!" ' etc -   he fired up his cooking device and bunged it in.

 

He then had to spend several minutes going through the keypad menus to enter what kind of cow bit it was, how thick it was, how he'd like it done , would he like it done sous something or other as well ,would he like it sprayed with water for no apparent reason  etc etc etc etc etc.

 

Then the steak cooking machine  spent  about 2 minutes with the spinning icon on its LCD display, apparently thinking about something - maybe it had gone off on a tangent wishing it was a brain surgeon, or a poet or whatever , rather than having to spend its miserable life calculating how long to cook this blokes steaks for.

 

But anyway  finally the  answer eventually came back - 36 minutes.

 

36 *&$$#& minutes!  Every other bloke worth half his salt would have fired up the BBQ and had it all ready to go and done and dusted  in half that time, plus  knocked up a bit of a salad on the side.

 

But anyway,  finally it was all ready to take out, which he did like it was the ark of the covenant , and served it with asparagus or something that he just bunged in the microwave for 10 minutes  because its all about the steak. Then after "plating up" he had to saw a bit off, then  go through all those youtube prescribed "This steak is the best and I'm having an org@sm right now!!" facial expressions.

 

Stupid steak cooking machine - 0 stars. 

 

 

Edited April 6 by monkeysarefun

[Hroth]

42 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

We are now all used to air fryers, now we have the toaster oven. 

https://ninjakitchen.co.uk/product/ninja-foodi-10-in-1-multifunction-oven-dt200uk-zidDT200UK

 

 

My mother had the Dualit version of that over a decade ago...

 

The problem with all these cooking fads is that we'll start running out of space on the kitchen worktop!

 

[woodenhead]

I was looking at an “air fryer” last week in Asda whilst Mrs W was selecting a toaster for her gluten free stuff.

 

Unless my eyes deceived me, the fryer worked by passing an electric current through a coil of metal that would glow red creating heat.

 

I might be wrong, but isn’t that what a grill does in an oven?

 

So the replacement for an oven is to have your oven grill on top of a kitchen surface and be harder to keep clean?

 

I guess the money saving element is that the actual element is smaller than on an oven.

[Tony_S]

21 minutes ago, Hroth said:

My mother had the Dualit version of that over a decade ago...

My Mum  had some similar device sourced from Lidl or Aldi too, She didn’t really like cooking and didn’t like the oven in the retirement flat she had bought .

[jjb1970]

Remember the George Foreman health grill craze a few years ago?

[monkeysarefun]

I recall my mum having something called the Hotpoint Vertical Grill (maybe @Ozexpatriate will recall it!?)

 

It was basically like a toaster , but was meant for steaks etc. She'd bung them in a kind of very narrow basket that would slide down into  a narrow slot on top of the machine , along with sausages or chops and so on and they'd press up against a grilling element, similar to how a toaster works. 

 

Eventually smoke would pour out, meaning tea was ready to be served.

 

It did do a mean lamb chop , I liked the crispy fatty bit.

 

 

Edit: The internet came through again!

 

Edited April 6 by monkeysarefun

[Hroth]

7 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

Remember the George Foreman health grill craze a few years ago?

 

Sounds like a basic version of Chimpys steak cooking anecdote!

 

20 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

I was looking at an “air fryer” last week in Asda whilst Mrs W was selecting a toaster for her gluten free stuff.

 

Unless my eyes deceived me, the fryer worked by passing an electric current through a coil of metal that would glow red creating heat.

 

I might be wrong, but isn’t that what a grill does in an oven?

 

So the replacement for an oven is to have your oven grill on top of a kitchen surface and be harder to keep clean?

 

I guess the money saving element is that the actual element is smaller than on an oven.

 

There are a couple of advantages with an air fryer compared with a conventional fan oven.

 

1.  A smaller heating element

2. A smaller volume of space to heat up and keep warm.

 

Thats where the cost savings come in. Provided what you're cooking fits inside, it'll take about the same amount of time to cook, but'll use less energy.

 

Edited April 6 by Hroth

[Tony_S]

36 minutes ago, polybear said:

Don't we??

Thanks to horticultural explorers we can have sweet without all the sugar associated problems. I was at the RHS garden years ago and there was a plant from South America called Stevia that was used as a sweetener. Now used in reduced sugar baked beans.

When Aditi makes desserts she reduces the sugar content drastically. This does mean that rhubarb crumble tastes of rhubarb though. We have got used to it , like using very little salt  in recipes. This makes eating out a bit noticeable about just how much salt commercial cooking uses. 

[PhilJ W]

I wouldn't claim to eat healthily but I do watch the sugar and salt in what I eat.

[Tony_S]

27 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

Remember the George Foreman health grill craze a few years ago?

Yes, I do. Also, slow cooker crock pots and Breville toasted sandwich makers. We never had a George Foreman grill. 
After Aditi’s family forgave us for getting married they held a Havan where their friends could celebrate Aditi’s readmission to the family. Gifts were brought. I am sure some of these had been circulating through the Indian community like some sort of cargo cult for quite some time. There was an Indian copy of a Breville toaster and a slow cooker without a mains lead. 

As for worktop gadgets we have a breadmaker, a waffle maker, a Kenwood Chef, coffee machine, a panini press, an ice cream machine (not used much now), food processor, and a grill/oven combi microwave. Smaller stuff hides in cupboards. Breadmaker and microwave probably get the most use. Just remembered there is a kettle too. Some of the above devices live on the utility room worktops. I am sure Australian residents will be horrified that we make bread and coffee in the same room as the washing machine and tumble dryer. 

Edited April 6 by Tony_S

[Coombe Barton]

2 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Cup size is more of an enigma as I can think of three different cup sizes, you can use (no sniggering in the back): US cup, Australian cup and British/European cup, they are all slightly different; although I think now people have pretty much standardised a cup as 250 ml of volume.

See https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/apr/02/cups-v-grams-why-cant-american-and-british-cooks-agree-on-food-measurements

 

[Tony_S]

8 minutes ago, Coombe Barton said:

See https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/apr/02/cups-v-grams-why-cant-american-and-british-cooks-agree-on-food-measurements

 

Our friend sent us a cookery book published by someone from her small town in Connecticut and included a set of spoon and measuring cups. I am sure I am not imagining it but I think the waffle maker we bought a few years ago came with Australian cups to go with the recipe book. 

[polybear]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

 

How did the human race last this long before this  sudden influx of miracle specialist devices aimed precisely  to cook  various specific things just so?

 

I recently watched some youtube video of a  US bloke living in a Mcmansion in the Florida Keys in a golf resort probably, proudly demo-ing his new steak cooker thingy that he'd bought.

 

To test it out he'd bought some kind of extra awesome special beef bit from an online butcher that from  the way he was building it up and pronouncing its amazingness  was  delivered   presumably by helicopter with an armed escort in some kind of  cooling device designed by NASA, then after he'd spent 20 minutes exclaiming how brilliant the bit of dead cow was and pointing at the various  fatty  bits  and pronouncing -'thats marbling........,now  thats  proper marbling........  hooey, THATS awesome marbling!!!" ' etc -   he fired up his cooking device and bunged it in.

 

He then had to spend several minutes going through the keypad menus to enter what kind of cow bit it was, how thick it was, how he'd like it done , would he like it done sous something or other as well ,would he like it sprayed with water for no apparent reason  etc etc etc etc etc.

 

Then the steak cooking machine  spent  about 2 minutes with the spinning icon on its LCD display, apparently thinking about something - maybe it had gone off on a tangent wishing it was a brain surgeon, or a poet or whatever , rather than having to spend its miserable life calculating how long to cook this blokes steaks for.

 

But anyway  finally the  answer eventually came back - 36 minutes.

 

36 *&$$#& minutes!  Every other bloke worth half his salt would have fired up the BBQ and had it all ready to go and done and dusted  in half that time, plus  knocked up a bit of a salad on the side.

 

But anyway,  finally it was all ready to take out, which he did like it was the ark of the covenant , and served it with asparagus or something that he just bunged in the microwave for 10 minutes  because its all about the steak. Then after "plating up" he had to saw a bit off, then  go through all those youtube prescribed "This steak is the best and I'm having an org@sm right now!!" facial expressions.

 

Stupid steak cooking machine - 0 stars. 

 

 

Basically just a load of B.S in order to get viewers and earn money for the D.Head making the video

 

27 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

Sounds like a basic version of Chimpys steak cooking anecdote!

 

 

There are a couple of advantages with an air fryer compared with a conventional fan oven.

 

1.  A smaller heating element

2. A smaller volume of space to heat up and keep warm.

 

Thats where the cost savings come in. Provided what you're cooking fits inside, it'll take about the same amount of time to cook, but'll use less energy.

 

 

Bear has an AF and it gets loads of use - about the only time the oven is used now is for a Pizza;  I find the AF to be much quicker and cheaper to use.

As for keeping it clean, I use a silicon liner tray inside the basket and that gets washed instead - works a treat and keeps the fryer squeaky clean.

 

[Hroth]

@Tony_S  I've two* slow cookers. They're excellent for making casseroles and stews, especially when using cheaper, tougher cuts of meat.  I use them mainly in the winter and freeze what I don't eat immediately for later.

 

Toasted sandwich makers, panini presses and the like are the sort of gadget that get used once or twice and then ends up in the darkest deepest recesses of a cupboard, never to be used again...

 

* "small" and "large".  Admittedly the small one (3.5l) gets used more often!

 

Edited April 6 by Hroth

[Gwiwer]

 

There has been a lookage in the muddling box

 

It has been cloned with wetter and soup.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 6 by Gwiwer