General Chat

I have enjoyed reading your cooking stories ladies :-D.

My mother also cooked veggies to death with loads of salt. My MIL wasn't a great cook but she could make wonderful pastries and scones.

Lamb here is a bit fatty and the beef shrinks to half the size and there is always a lot of liquid to drain off. I also much prefer meat from the butcher. We have a fish market in town and also a poultry shop.

Good morning everyone, I must say it is lovely to be home after ten days away. Don't tell my daughter, but my home is far more comfy :-)

I never buy meat in the supermarket as I think it is tasteless and often second rate.
I buy all my meat from the local independent butcher, we are lucky to have four inthe town, with no national chain butchers at all. The one I use sources all their meat as locally as possible. Everything is free range and it shows in the taste. They make their own burgers of various types and lots of different sausages with real meat in them, not reconstituted slime. All the beef has been well hung as opposed to the bright red stuff you find in the supermarket. Of course it costs more and I am lucky that I don't have to count the pennies, so I can afford to indulge myself

My mother belonged to the boil it to death school of veg cooking as well

When my dad cooked we really enjoyed the meals but even he did not know about cabbage being cooked in very little butter or marg and in a very short time. This did not happen until the mid sixties.

My mother was amazed at what I put together for meals.. but her comment was not gee that was nice.. it was a sneer as to where did I learn to cook. She went away for a week or two and I cooked and dad told her how well I had done.. and I just got a humph.

However, to her credit her baking was fantastic.. no one else could make a sponge like she did, she was known for her hostess skills with savouries and cakes.

My mother taught me a little bit about cooking, she usually preferred to do it all by herself ................... but the cookery classes I had at school in the early 1950s taught us ......................


cook all meat to well done ................. preferably 30 minutes to the pound

boil potatoes for 35-40 minutes

boil vegetables for 30 minutes


hence we grew up eating old leather, potatoes and veggies that fell apart and tasted awful



Coming to the US was the best thing we did in terms of learning about better cooking sooner than I think we would otherwise have done!


OH's mother was very rude about my cooking after she had spent a holiday with us in 1970 ..................... she told everyone in the UK "Poor xxxx, his wife cannot cook"

Then, they came out for Christmas 1972, and OH was eating brussels sprouts, which he'd never ever done "back home"

Her comment was "You must really like them crisp"


Next time we went over there, in summer 1975 ...................... they were eating crisp vegetables and slightly (but only slightly) "underdone" meat.

My mother boiled nearly everything into oblivion.

and boiled the cabbage until it fell apart????


I've never cooked them myself ................ but I love venison, bison, and rabbit :-)

Our best mince is premium.. usually Angus as well... we also have minced venison patties which have been smoked. They are really nice no fat.. they seem to use cheaper mince for the ready made fresh patties which ooze fat, so prefer to make my own or better still have the venison ones.

They sell minced lamb here as well.. but I have only used it to make sausage rolls with a bit of harissa in the lamb to spice it up.

We would often have ox-tail in the winter but OH is not that fond of it.. I really enjoy it though the best ox-tail I have ever had was in a French Restaurant in Tokyo. My Aunt gave me what I thought was ox-tail when I was little and I told my dad later how I did not like her ox-tail and he said that she would have given me boiled mutton.. it was terrible. This was in the days when they used to boil cabbage as well and do leeks in white sauce.

I hadn't come across hogget until OH and daughter were living in Palmerston North back in 92-93.

I knew mutton of course, but hogget was a new one.

I liked it ............ but we don't even get mutton here, let alone hogget.


We also used to mince the last of the left over roast .............. but you don't do that with the meat sold here.


There is something very different about the way that beef, in particular, is raised in Canada and the US that means mincing cooked meat results in a taste of cardboard! With no evidence to prove it, OH and I think it is due to the fact that most beef sold here is feedlot finished ....... ie, fattened up on grain before being sold ............. rather than grass fed for all its life.


We tried mincing the left overs when we first started living here in Canada, even buying a cheap mincer when we couldn't really afford one. The shepherds pie we made was awful!

................ the mincer went to the back of the cupboard until after daughter was born and was moving onto solid food, then we used it for a couple of weeks or so to mush up her food.

Finally, OH needed a mincer in his lamb for some experiments ................. he took the one we had at home instead of buying another new one.


I buy my minced meat at the butchers ........................ called ground beef, ground turkey, etc, here. We only buy extra lean ground beef.

I think you might be correct there Huia.. we often had a forequarter of mutton as a roast on a Saturday lunch time and then cold meat and hot veg for Sunday lunch and it seemed to last as cold meat for about another three nights. Our meals seemed to follow a pattern. Roast Beef would be the next Saturday and the same treatment and then corned beef hot then cold etc... we never had chicken.

Thurs and Friday were usually mince, or steak&Kidney (S&K often with a pastry top) and maybe chops or sausages and then we took to having fish on Friday because it could be guaranteed to be fresh on a Friday.

Now Sylvia you should not comment on Linda's habits on the train.

I don't believe Yorkshire export lamb somehow. That could be a question for their next quiz.

Personally I prefer hogget or mutton to lamb. It has more flavour and less fat, but I never see it in the supermarket these days. I have a suspicion though that what is labelled as lamb is in fact one of the others, as the legs seem rather big for lambs.

Hi Sue, and everyone


the weather is changing here .............. it is a bit cooler today than it was yesterday, and much more cloud around. Tomorrow, it might even get as low as 18C instead of the 25C or so.

The garden will like the showers forecast for Saturday :-)



I love turkey ......... hot or cold.

I also love lamb .............. we usually buy NZ, more often than not frozen, but our butcher does also carry fresh NZ.

We never see Welsh or Yorkshire, and very very rarely see OZ.There is some lamb raised here ............... but it has a very different taste to it.


Have you guys heard anything about the price of pork and beef rising in price?

Beef prices in the US and here are at an all-time high, and still going up, and pork prices are rising almost as fast.

Pork prices are rising because there is a virus that is killing off pigs in the US and Canada. It kills almost 100% of nursing piglets if they get it.



We do like our small roast on a Sunday though .......... and think that it is worth it if w manage to get another 2 meals out of a roast when cold.



Persie ........ nice to see you around, causing trouble :-)


Linda ....... sorry you had such a noisy boozy trip home xxx





take care, everyone




s
xx

Sorry Persie - I disappeared :-(. I went to technical college with a woman who did the most wonderful needlework and baked scrumptious cakes and biscuits but obviously couldn't read or write. I often completed forms for her.

The sun is shining and I'm off into the garden having done what I need to do indoors. Enjoy your day Lady Persephone <3

I can get frozen export lamb cheaper than the fresh stuff. As far as I know Welsh Lamb never gets to come here.

Yorkshire Tea does.

Speaking of illiterate when I went to fill in for someone on holiday before I got a job in the place permanently.. there was one recycling contractor that had not brought his invoice in. I called him up on the RT and asked for it a couple of times, finally he arrived and I met Rob for the first time and he handed me an invoice book and the form was not filled in. I clicked straight away for some reason and filled it in for him and he signed it. He must've had an accountant cause he certainly could not have done the work himself. He also worked as a fitness instructor and was a very likeable chap and education had just passed him by.

Goodnight Linda and goodnight Tec <3 <3

Goodnight Tec, I am off to bed as well

Enjoy your chilly day down under

Good evening Linda - glad your home safely <3

All our best beef and lamb is exported so we get second rate meat. Still good quality but not the best :-(

Linda - cheek :-D :-D

Goodnight,

Well I must be off to bed now,

Enjoy your day Sue, and Persie,

Sleep well Linda - you deserve a lie in tomorrow :-)

Goodnight,
Tec. :-)

We only have Yorkshire lamb, not that foreign Welsh stuff :-D

Good Evening Linda - Glad to see that you are home safely, even if you did have to share a carriage with boozy ex soldiers.