Hi Intesha, well done on the weight loss.

I have a bit of driving to do today. My elderly uncle had some heart issues on the weekend and is in hospital for tests. My aunt had her own medical appointments today and as she won’t drive anywhere other than around our town I’ve offered to take her to her appointments and then onto the hospital to visit my uncle.

NFD today, but I might need to rethink my planned lunch as I will probably be in the car.

Monday fasters – have a good FD.

I’m finally home and having my first cup of tea (or two) since 9am. At least it was a mild sunny day here so lots of driving parking and waiting (and reading) was actually quite pleasant. I have a confession. I was meant to be avoiding discretionary foods M-F, but my aunt gave me 2 jelly cakes to say thankyou for driving her around. I’ve just eaten both of them. Very delicious, but not what I’d planned to eat today.

Intesha – I took cake decorating classes at TAFE in the 1980s. Although I don’t do it anymore because of the arthritis, I used to really enjoy it. I made some birthday and christening cakes, but my most ambitious project was my own wedding cake. My mother baked the fruit cakes for me and she made an extra bottom tier. This gave me a “canvas” to practice on until I could be sure that my cornelli work pattern and placement was right before working on the final cakes. It ended up being quite helpful for the caterers as they were able to precut my practice cake for handing out to guests. The actual bottom tier ended up being split between both parents. My ex-husband and I were both from country towns and we chose to have a fairly small wedding in Adelaide. By sending home such a large slab of the wedding cake, our parents were able to invite people over (who we hadn’t been able to invite to the wedding) for afternoon tea and offer them some wedding cake. It all worked out quite well. I kept the top tier in a container for several years.

Hope everyone is having a nice day.

Way back in 1887, Oscar Wilde wrote in his novella, The Canterville Ghost, “…….. we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language”.

Penguin, they needed a few Aussies of a certain age working on that satellite (basically anyone who was still at school in 1970).
Australia stopped using imperial measurement and officially adopted metric in 1970. As I was part way through school I had already learned imperial measurement and was then taught everything again in metric. So I can claim to be bilingual when it comes to measurement. I’m still perfectly comfortable working with either metric or imperial.
We switched from using Farenhiet to Celsius for measuring temperature at the same time and I can still remember the quick conversion formula.

I didn’t see the post about faggots, but I know what they are as I watch lots of cooking shows and I seem to remember the Hairy Bikers making some. If I remember correctly they are basically a sausage without the skin that’s sometimes wrapped in caul fat to hold them together. I guess no-one bothers these days, it’s easier to make meatballs.

My dad was a builder and when metric first came in they produced tape measures and builders folding rulers that had both metric & imperial on them. After 2 years they were no longer produced and only metric was available. I remember my dad getting rather pissed off that he could no longer buy a ruler that had feet and inches on it. Although once he adapted he loved it – probably because measuring by the mm is slightly more accurate.

Not sure my mum adapted though – she still cooked & baked in ounces and pounds.

I still have many of my mum’s and grandma’s handwritten recipies – all in ounces, pounds and pints. So I have to be bilingual when it comes to cooking.

Good morning all. FD today 68.3.

Interesting conversation about recipes and cooking. I still have cookbooks that belonged to my grandmother that go back to the 1800’s. In this day and age people wouldn’t eat what they cooked back then.

Penguin & Cinque – I think every cook worked out heir own measurements with their own kitchen tools. Both of my grandmothers measuring tools were an old teacup that had lost its handle and 3 metal spoons from normal tableware – a large table serving spoon, a dessertspoon and a teaspoon – they would all have held very different amounts than our current metric measuring tools. Their hand written recipies always describe whether something was scant, rounded or heaped. I actually have my mothers old cooking spoons and I get them out when using old recipies.

I still use some of the really old recipies – mainly for jams, chutneys, cakes, biscuits and old fashioned puddings, although they need to be adapted to modern appliances. For example some of my nana’s jam recipies talk about heating the large copper that was normally used for boiling clothes, and all of her old baking recipies were done in a wood oven where you had to stick your hand it and decide how hot the oven was by feel. Long ago most of the family favourites were adapted to a modern stove – mainly by my mother because she needed to figure out how to keep cooking things when our wood stove was removed and replaced by an electric one.

Cinque, one of my biscuit cookbooks explains the origins of the words “biscuit” and “cookie”. Biscuit comes from the French and means twice cooked – referring to very crisp biscuits that would keep crisp for travelers (eg ships biscuits). Cookies comes from the Dutch koekje meaning little cake and originally described biscuits of a softer texture. Eventually each country seem to settle on one term and apply it to all biscuits/cookies regardless of whether they were crisp or soft.

I’ve noticed that where there is a difference between the English and American words for things we tend to use them interchangeably in Australia – combining our language history of using the English terms with the influence of American culture through our television. Eventually I think we will adopt one or the other and it will become the norm. An obvious example is peanut butter. When I was growing up it was only ever called peanut paste, and the labels on the jars called it peanut paste. In the 1970-80s the commercial TV channels started showing a lot of US programming and so “peanut butter” started being known. I think the greatest influence was probably Sesame Street. Now, not only does everyone call it peanut butter, every jar on the supermarket shelves is labelled as peanut butter. We completely transitioned from one term to another in about 30 years.

Thanks Cinque another skill to add to my list😉

Penguin I think all of us have been interbred you don’t need an excuse only a purpose to be on this forum. One of my ancestors came out in the first fleet and he wasn’t a convict. He was a marine on the Sirius. My Dad was in the Navy and was in the street lining party as part of the Australian contingent for the coronation. My ex comes from Mansfield and my daughter has lived in Essex for the last 14yrs. We all have interesting histories.

I told my Dad why you were called Penguin and he had never heard of it.

End of an FD for me.

Cinque – must have been a state difference then, because I was born in the early 1960s and it was definitely peanut paste in my early years. I knew of a few differences between states (eg fritz/baloney) but I hadn’t know that one.

Intesha & Penguin – our ancestry links are definitely pretty tangled. Sometimes we don’t even know just how many links there are until someone decides to do a family tree. I was lucky enough to have a relative on each side of the family who put a great deal of effort into tracing family history. We’ve learned a great deal that wasn’t known by current generations, and it became obvious that some things had been deliberately hidden by past generations. I found it quite interesting to see what previous generations considered unacceptable and worthy of hiding.

Penguin, it’s extremely lucky that your father was not sent to Australia with the other poor “orphans” (many of whom were not orphans at all, just in care because their parent couldn’t afford to care for them at that time). They had an appalling abusive upbringing in Australia and it was only in the 1990s that the Australian and British governments accepted their responsibility in this. I don’t think they were sent just to Australia, I think they went to many other Commonwealth countries as well.

You are also right about the inaccuracies in older records (those that exist). When one of my grandfathers tried to apply for the age pension he was told he had to wait another 4 months – apparently he’d been celebrating the wrong birthday for 65 years. Even my own birth certificate has recorded my mother’s name incorrectly – her name was recorded as she was known in our family rather than by her official name – makes it difficult when trying to reconcile documents.

My father also lied about his age to join the army in WW2 (I think it was fairly common). I’m sure he regretted than in the end, as his experiences in New Guinea left him with PTSD that got worse with age. It became a real challenge when he developed dementia as it became impossible for him to escape his traumatic memories.

I also have my father’s and grandfather’s military records. I had planned to re-trace my grandfather’s path across the Middle East and Europe in WW1. It’s on my list of things to do in retirement.

LJoyce. I have never been to New Guinea, but I’ve been in other jungles. That was without an aggressive and competent enemy, but I still don’t want to go back. The older members of my family who had been through hard wars never talked about it. As a lad I didn’t understand why, but after 27 years in the service I did. We see a lot more PTSD now. I don’t think the people are very different it is just that we are better at recognising and treating it.

I would love to trace my Grandfather’s path but it would be difficult – he was on his way home after 12 years in northern China and India/Pakistan when the first war started. He spent the next 4 years in what he called “the Messpot’, Mesopotamia or Iraq to us. I think it has changed since he was there. As an indicator of how well our leaders study history, his Regiment were in Afghanistan on three separate occasions before our latest effort. On one occasion the British got beaten up so badly that the Regt subsequently had the name “Jalalabad” on the cap badge.

Good morning!
Welcome home Cali, and congrats on that lovely low number!
(And thanks but no thanks for the biscuits and gravy 😉 )

Hi Minka! I’ll fast on Thursday with you!
Hope we both stay on the rails today!

And everyone else! Hi, and keep on those lovely shiny rails if you can!

Morning all, I’ve enjoyed the military discussion. FD for me, just finished the first A&C milk coffee. LJ or anyone else fasting today?

Penguin, I’m impressed by your ‘hard fast’. I’ll be embarking on a 24 hour fast next week; my plan is to eat a normal dinner the evening before we travel, enjoy a cup of decent coffee before leaving at 4.30am, eat nothing all day, drink lots of water and and then have a light evening meal on arrival.

CalifD, you’ve cooked up some unpalatable food memories from when I lived in the deep south. Biscuits and gravy with grits usually served with slices of fried sausage. I thought it was a disgusting way to start the day but it remains a very popular breakfast in the south. The gravy is made from the drippings of pork sausage. Good job on the weight loss. And Intesha.

Hi Minka, Cinque, Merry, GDSA and everyone else.

Gritty. 😆 And bland. I’ve seen people smothering them in butter. They’re made from corn or hominy.

From memory, it was a savoury dish so I’m not sure about adding sugar and milk. It was 40 years ago so I’m not certain on that.

Enjoying my fasty morning watching the downpour. Last night, DD took OH and me out for dinner to thank us for our support during the first two trimesters of the year which was a lovely gesture. We went to an Indian restaurant. The food was exceptionally good as was the service. Damage this morning was limited as I had just one large spoonful of rice. Good thing too as plain steamed rice was $4.95 so we expected a huge bowl – but it was really only enough for one. I remember the days when complimentary poppadoms appeared on the table, rice came with every dish as did a triage of chutneys & raita. Now everything’s an add-on. But it was very delicious.

DD reminded us of our trip to Portugal last year where they have a traditional of bringing all sorts of extras to the table – but then charging you for anything you ate. When we first arrived, OH was getting stuck into what he thought were complimentary sides like bread and butter, various hors d’oeuvres, etc only to discover these items on the bill!

Thin, grits that are gritty probably aren’t cooked well enough or with enough water. I think the ones I had were made from hominy because they were white. I first tasted them when visiting New Orleans and occasionally buy and make them at home. They’re good with salt, pepper and a little butter. http://debbienet.com/hominy-grits/
Some people add cheese. They’re more of a savory dish than a sweet one LJoyce.
I prefer porridge.

Love Indian food!

Thin & Cali – I have made made porridge from semolina – really creamy texture and I quite liked it – with milk & sugar of course, definitely not salt, pepper or cheese. I was in hospital recovering from what they thought was appendicitis, but turned out to be a vicious gastric virus. Once I was finally able to tolerate food they offered me a very limited range of foods that included semolina porridge. Until then it had never occurred to me that you could even make porridge from semolina. When I went home I continued to make it for a few days while my appetite and gut slowly got back to normal. I still resort to it when I run out of oats but feel like porridge.
I have also experimented with other grain flakes for porridge – quinoa, triticale and spelt. Qunioa flakes dissolve and look a lot like a semolina porridge, but triticale and spelt require overnight soaking and retain a slightly chewy texture. I have developed a habit recently of combining oats, quinoa and spelt flakes, soaked overnight to make porridge. I get the best of all worlds that way – creamy and chewy.

I have just cooked what feels like a very decadent food – egg noodles. I normally never have white wheat or rice noodles/pasta in the house – although I will eat them occasionally at restaurants. I needed to buy egg noodles to go with stroganoff that I’d made for a “bring a casserole” dinner. I’ve just cooked the remaining noodles so they have time to cool before dinner – I’ll reheat it with hopefully a bit less starch from the cooling process. There are more noodles there than I thought, so I’ll split them and create 2 meals. Tonight I’ve teamed them with a small tin of tuna in chilli oil, sundried-tomato pesto, baby spinach and cherry tomatoes. I’ve also taken a small container of stroganoff out of the freezer to have with the remaining noodles on Friday.
Mostly I use konjac noodles at home, but when I do want pasta I usually use one made from lentil or soy flour.

Making pizza on a FD that you have to watch others eat – not sure if that’s awfully brave or just tempting fate. Hope you make it through dinner easily and enjoy your Spainsh Fideos. I’m sure it’s even more delicious than pizza.

Thin, I haven’t thought of konjac as a fake food. If I’ve understood what I have read about konjac, it’s a tuber, but unlike most other tubers it doesn’t contain all types of carbohydrate (starch, sugar, fibre), just the fibrous component. I don’t see this as any different to turning a tuber such as potatoes into gnocchi. It’s not as if kojac has been artifically created to contain just fibre and water – that’s its natural make up.
I’d hate to give it up as I really need a minimum of 40g fibre most days and it’s quite a struggle to get that much fibre and still try to keep my grain intake at a moderate level. On fast days I eat so little that I get very little fibre without the konjac. Mostly I use the Changs low-cal brand because the packets are smaller and cheaper and I can use the whole thing in a meal – Splendier need to be divided. I do prefer to have konkac as my key fibre source on one of my FDs and usually legumes on the other FD.
The only problem I see with a product like konjac noodles is that it can encourage people to make fewer changes to their diets – they can keep having lots of pasta and noodle dishes, just substitute konjac. So the potential to re-educate ourselves and eat a wider variety of meals that include more legumes and veg for instance, may be lost. Sometimes we really do need to make fundamental changes and substitutes can be a bit of a crutch that stop us doing this.
I have noticed that there is a real tendency for people to do this when adopting a new eating philosophy. When the “I gave up sugar” movement began – what were all of the sugar- free recipies plastered all over the internet for? – desserts. The same goes with regimes like paleo – what’s the most common recipie when you search on paleo – bread. People want to believe they’ve adopted a new eating regime but they don’t really want to have to give anything up. The fist thing many do is look for substitutes, whereas to adopt those regimes genuinely means changing your thinking about and approach to food in quite fundamental ways – most people just aren’t willing to make that level of commitment to change in eating.

That was very interesting reading Thin!
I think they were using ‘fake food’ as a term for ‘replacement food’, (as LJoyce indicated) like oat milk could be called fake milk, or gluten burgers be called fake meat.
So it is only to westerners who are replacing wheat noodles with them who are using them as fake food.
I am just reading the Food Safari book and under Japan’s ‘eassential flavours’ they have listed konnyaku, so definitely not a fake food there!

End of a good day for me. Looking forward to my fast day tomorrow!

Forgot to mention on the 14th that it was my second anniversary of my first fast day! Woot!

Good evening all. Loving the chatter around old recipes, measurements and cooking methods. I have fond memories of staying at my Nanna and Papas house as a child with the old wood stove (Metters – was that the make?) going non stop in the kitchen with the huge steel kettle sitting on top. My favourite mixing bowls that I use regularly belonged to my nanna and mum.

Ljoyce yes I remember it as peanut paste and not butter so must be a South Aussie thing. Haha Sesame St…..were they referring to jelly (as we know it in Australia) when they spoke of eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? I always wondered about that as it sounds utterly disgusting.

As for cookies I always pull Miss D up when she calls biscuits cookies. It’s one of my pet hates. I always say to her ‘we call them biscuits in Australia and in America they call them cookies – we are Australian’. No offence intended there CalifDream.

Ive been using soba noodles in a stir fry for awhile now and really like them. Havent tried konjak.

Ljoyce I had a great find at Woolies last week. Paris Creek Farm Cottage Cheese. The label also called it Quark. Do you know if that means it’s different to a normal cottage cheese? It seems smoother and not lumpy/watery like other brands. Was really yummy on top of brussel sprouts.

Miss D’s cake baking session went well on Monday. I was so over it by mid afternoon I didnt bother baking anything for myself. I helped her with the cake baking for which she insisted we needed to double the mixture. My largest bowl was barely adequate and the little hand beaters were struggling with mixing such a large quantity. The mixture filled 2 large and 1 small round cake tins plus 24 cupcake patty pans !! Miss D also insisted on making the icing and decorating herself without me seeing what was going on. There lies the mistake ! 2kg of icing sugar was used to make icing and most of it ended up stuck to the bench and sink along with 2 blocks of 90% cocoa chocolate grated and again most of it stuck to the bench and sink. The icing in the piping bag wasn’t a success – too runny. The end result was a 3 tiered cake with icredibility sweet icing. Miss D was very happy with the end result and had a great time – it tasted quite nice. Cupcakes were frozen (un-iced) and copulous amounts of cake are being packed into her school lunchbox each day to share with friends. Will post pictures in a few days when this post is further up the chain so she doesnt see it. She went to a lot of effort to take great photos as she wants to impress you all !! Oh and she still won’t believe that the handbag is actually a cake.

Still maintaining the same weight so may do an extended fast later in the week. Eating cake is not helping shift the last 1kg but I cant say no after all her efforts. I’m really surprised I havent put weight on to be honest.

Bedtime for me now. Good night everyone.

Hi GDSA
Hope first day back to school went without drama.

The jelly in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is jam. What Aussies call jelly, Americans call jello and what we call jam they call jelly. Although technically we do have preserves that are called jelly, eg quince jelly, mint jelly, red currant jelly – it’s a similar process to making jam, but is strained through cheesecloth to make a clear jelly that sets like jam, but doesn’t have all the bits of fruit in it. One of my grandmother’s grew both red and black currants and both were made into jelly each year. The red currant jelly was used with meat in a similar fashion to cranberry jelly but the blackcurrant jelly was just used like jam. As to peanut butter and jelly, it probably doesn’t taste much different to peanut paste & honey, which is more common here. (Although I didn’t discover its delights until I went away to college – I lived in one of the University residential colleges in North Adelaide when I did my first degree, so I got to see an awful lot of different eating habits first hand. Some were awful and others were a delightful discovery.)

There are 3 soft fresh cheeses that are similar – Quark, ricotta and cottage cheese. They are similar but not quite the same as they are made from different dairy byproducts and are heated to different temperatures when creating the curd. Cottage cheese is made from the thin watery buttermilk that’s left behind when making butter. Quark and ricotta are made from the whey that’s left behind when the curds for hard cheeses are removed. For both cottage cheese and quark, the whey is heated to blood temperature, but for ricotta it’s scalded. Because they use whey or buttermilk, they are naturally low fat cheeses if they are made the traditional way – historically they were a way of not wasting anything. I find quark has a sourer taste than the other soft cheeses – this is because the traditional process includes fermenting – similar to yoghurt. I have found quark is a useful substitute for both ricotta or feta when baking. I often find feta too salty, so in dishes like spanikopita I usually replace some or all of the feta with quark. Quark can also be used in baked cheesecakes – I find it interchangeable with ricotta in baked cheesecakes.
I am familiar with the Paris Creek Quark – I buy it intermittently. I’ve tried a few brands but I think Paris Creek is the nicest.

Sounds like you had a well iced bench top as well as iced cakes. At least she had fun and there’s one item in the lunch box you don’t have to think about for a while.

Well done with the stable weight even with cake. Hope that last kilo does a disappearing act soon.

LJoyce. I understand what your dietician is saying. I am actually quite pleased with myself but I do have more to lose. I have lost masses, but still have a BMI score of 26. Not that I believe in BMI, it doesn’t work for anyone above average height or with much muscle – the entire All Blacks rugby team are either overweight or obese by their BMI scores. Five years ago, when I set my initial target, I was enormous. The year before my father and younger brother were both dying and my wife had just had a knee replacement. They lived 250 miles away. I was spending my life in a car eating pies and chocolate and drinking fizzy liquids. My problem now is that whilst I am reasonably satisfied with the actual weight, the balance of muscle and fat isn’t what it used to be. That will be rectified.

Cinque, congratulations on your 2 year anniversary!