Anna N

For the kind of shrimp that I am likely to get, headless and no bigger than eight to the pound, I learned to cook them until they resemble the shape of a comma which is quite a bit short of a C. But I have a friend who considers my shrimp to be a undercooked. So it comes down to personal preference I guess.

I’m with Kenneth. Bring it on!

One might question her taste in food but certainly not in dining companions though they might’ve been more fun above ground.

I found this intriguing especially the description of the texture of the mashed potatoes: “The gibelotte was all right, the mashed potatoes the best I had ever eaten, pushed through a sieve, buttered and moistened with enough of their hot cooking water to bring them to a supple, not quite pourable consistency—no milk, no cream, no beating. I had never dreamt of mashing potatoes without milk and, in Iowa, everyone believed that, the more you beat them, the better they were.”

Speaking strictly for my own family in the Midlands, Afternoon Tea has become a birthday treat at some relatively posh place. One of my nieces had a birthday very recently and because of Covid Afternoon Tea became a take away!

I don’t eat a lot of watermelon but yours looks quite different from the ones I have seen. The colour is much more intense and the rind much, much thinner.

But did he use canned peas?😝

But also I would think that two hours at 425°F would not be recommended for any glassware used in a domestic oven. edited to clarify - this is how Jo makes her salt baked potatoes!

Once again lunch during the week proved a challenge when weighed against getting a few more needles into a few more arms! But @Kerry Bealwas determined that lunch with me would happen. We decided on Turkish food from Rose in the Kitchen again. I checked on the website which clearly showed that they were open every day of the week. This information was there In more than one place. So I made my selection — lamacun — even if I had to settle for beef instead of lamb! As lunchtime approached, Kerry began calling the restaurant only to end up in a full voicemail box. Right then perhaps we should have had our suspicions. Kerry drove over there and was feeling very confident when their open hours on the door said “noon on Sunday”. Being a little early she went off to do some grocery shopping. When she returned there was still no sign of life in the restaurant! Damn. We had no Plan B at that point. Fortunately there are a number of restaurants nearby and we settled for Montforts but our disappointments were still not over. Kerry ordered two servings of Montfort chicken thinking she would get meals. What we ended up with, however, was chicken with pineapple, two sauces and pita bread. No salad, no rice, none of the usual fixings. Was just not our day for lunch! The food was perfectly adequate but you can all relate to expecting and hoping for one thing and getting something entirely different.

It is not really a panade. It is tangzhong, a water roux.

Looks very tasty and at least this time I am caffeinated enough to know what you did with the rest of your sprouts.

No one as far as I know suggested that the conversation should stop. Differing opinions should be tolerated. Humour is very tricky. When a need arises to insist on it then you can be fairly certain it has fallen flat somewhere. I will happily bow out since I have no dog in this race. It seemed important to show that @Kim Shookwas not the only one feeling uncomfortable.

I am neither Japanese nor American but yet I do not think that @Kim Shookis overthinking it. Oyakodon is an iconic Japanese dish but when I read the posts here it would seem there is a determination to dig up the very worst American stereotypes in order to make the dish American. I find myself shuddering for all my American friends although I am sure they are capable of dealing with it without my help. This is just an opinion from an outsider. Carry-on. You are just as entitled to your opinion as I am to mine.

This. The large central image. As the baby bok choy became smaller and smaller I began renaming it as neonatal bok choy and finally foetal bok choy. 😂

Actually the green that we call baby bok choy does not look like that. It has very white stems and much more crinkly leaves. If I’m not mistaken we call the one that you illustrate Shanghai bok choy.

@liuzhou Forgive me. I was sure I had seen them but I thought it was in different thread than the dinner thread. I will blame it all on being decaffeinated at 7:30 on a Sunday morning. They look very good. I had a bad experience with them a few years ago and haven’t been able to look at them again although they used to be one of my favourite vegetables.

@liuzhou did I miss what you did with the sprouts?

The very thought of you being allergic to mushrooms now that you live in China and are surrounded with such bounty gives me the shivers. When you mention cereal I do recall Weetabix!

Given that I left Britain in 1958 and have only returned on two occasions in the 80s, even the term Full English Breakfast had no meaning to me except from afar. There are many reasons why my experience should never be considered usual. Weekday breakfast for the most part for me was porridge or bread and dripping or bread and jam. Yet I have an enduring memory of a Sunday breakfast. I would like to think it’s a real memory but I I’m not sure. When I do the math there are certain things about it that could not be unless we want to rewrite the history of time. My father is cooking it. There are eggs, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms and fried bread. I do not recall a single Christmas dinner/lunch (I am sure there must’ve been such things) and yet I can smell the bacon and taste the fried bread from this breakfast. Sunday breakfast seems to me to have been much more in use in my family than full anything.

I do not ever remember being in a restaurant when I was growing up. I was in lots of pubs because my family were largely publicans. In those days few pubs served food on a regular basis. In our own pub we hosted weddings which we catered and occasionally, for a cribbage or darts tournament or the meeting of the Elks, we prepared cheese and onion sandwiches (raw onion and sharp cheddar ground together in the meat grinder and spread on white bread —still a favourite!)

My memory told me it was 1/3 of a pint but I couldn’t find any confirmation and wondered if I had mis-remembered! Thanks.

Like @liuzhou, I was raised in wartime Britain. I would love to share a few stories with this caveat. It is easy to feel pity for those of us who were children at this time. But just like children raised in an abusive home, we knew nothing different and so suffered, I think, far less than the adults. It was just the way it was and we knew nothing different. like the person in the video I don’t ever remember being hungry beyond what kids are when they’ve been playing too long. I also know that long after rationing ceased the feeling that you still had to be stingy with everything remained. Just as we had a Depression syndrome that lasted long after the depression passed so I believe we had a rationing syndrome. To this day if a recipe calls for more than four eggs I have coniptions. I still feel guilty if I put butter and jam on the same piece of toast. Doesn’t stop me doing it though! I still take bag of sugar apart to make sure that there are no crystals left in the creases. I have a recollection of being severely punished when I was sent off with a 10 /- note (10 shillings) and the required coupons to buy bacon and somehow lost both. I also recall putting my sweets coupons into my socks for safekeeping and forgetting them and they went through the laundry and I went a long time without any sweets. Canned salmon was a luxury and I knew that my grocery store owning aunt kept cans under the counter for special customers. I recalled going home for a visit sometime in the 70s and my aunt proudly serving me a meal of canned salmon, mashed potatoes and peas. Nothing was done with the salmon except to remove it from the can. My ingrained manners came to my rescue and I managed to choke it down. I have no recollection of marrow jam thank God. My father shared an allotment with a man named Albert who apparently knew about gardening. It was within bicycling distance of the pub where we lived. They grew vegetables and raised rabbits. I suspect Albert did most of the gardening as I don’t believe my father had much gardening knowledge. He had spent much of his life in the British army. Again, without any reason for pity, I suspect because we were already working class we suffered less from deprivation than did the wealthier classes. We never had very much and now we had less. But there is no doubt but how if you discussed or were subjected to British food at this time then most of the myths held up very well. Tea, which was our evening meal usually consisted of bread and jam or bread and dripping or canned spaghetti or canned beans on toast. During the school year we got a hot meal at lunchtime. I do not recall it being awful which may say more about what was on offer at home than anything else. I know how much I resented the trip to school every single day during the holidays to collect the milk that was served to all children. Perhaps that explains my dislike of milk today. Imagine ruining the holiday just to get a bottle of milk! Rationing may also be responsible for my absolute horror of orange juice. When you get it combined with cod liver oil you will understand.

One needs to bear in mind that from January 1940 until 1954 food rationing was a fact of life in Britain.

I’d say if you’re pulling in six figures that qualifies as a career!

Here “The Good Food Guide was created in 1951 by Raymond Postgate in response to the dire state of postwar dining in Britain. Postgate, a journalist, author, first world war pacifist and socialist, founded the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Food – later the Good Food Club – and invited volunteers across the country to submit reports of restaurants serving decent food.”