The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[Quoth]

Main course meals don't need recipes as such, but cakes, desserts, buns, biscuits, cookies, pastries do.

Some things you only do once, like trying to make soup in a pressure cooker with tinned peas and chopped pork sausage. Bright green with white lumps.

There are plenty of good free recipie books on Gutenberg. You don't need photos or even illustrations. They have Mrs Beeton's Household management which is not a good starting point now. Current supermarket custard is not the same thing at all as Mrs Beeton's which does need a recipe and might have been 300 years old then.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

Pick your protein. Mine is a chicken piece, a pork chop, or a fish fillet.

Egg is simple and has so many options.
Cheese is better still. No cooking needed. Good when power cut, no BBQ, no gas etc.

And get a tea towel with an Irish Soda Bread (needs oven) or soda farl (Griddle or big frying pan) recipe. Flour, milk + vinegar (or real butter milk, or cultured butter milk), bicarbonate of soda. No yeast activation or proving or kneading. Just mix and cook (farls need a very slow heat, so top of a range or stove works). Things like treacle, raisins, sultana, currents, beer/stout, cherries etc are options.

Irish scones are basically the same mix and usually have currents or sultanas.
This has farls too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_bread

Farls need to be toasted or fried. Soda bread just needs sliced. Soda bread, but not farls, can use mixed flour & wholemeal (called wheatmeal here).

Because butter milk is rarer now (and all is cultured, not the liquid left after making butter), it's common to use milk and a little vinegar (vinegar activates the soda).

Most people make either without a recipe. Just by appearance.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I guess we need a "Cooking Vent & Rant" thread...

I'd be up for a "Cooking Tips, Tricks, Troubleshooting, Vents, and Rants" thread.

One specializing in cooking for 1 would be a plus.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Egg is simple and has so many options.

I have eggs for breakfast almost every day, so they're out for dinner.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

I'd be up for a "Cooking Tips, Tricks, Troubleshooting, Vents, and Rants" thread.

One specializing in cooking for 1 would be a plus.

I think you can shorten that to 'Cooking' and still get the point across.

[issybird]

A thread exists, but people are welcome to start a different one with whatever title they'd like.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=292246

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by issybird

A thread exists, but people are welcome to start a different one with whatever title they'd like.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=292246

Thanks, good enough for me.

Looks like it is even more comprehensive than I proposed, but petered out pretty quickly.

Maybe the V&R crowd will keep it going.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by issybird

And cheaper, too.

Seriously, as a non-cook to a non-cook, you don't need recipes.

First of all, for one person, I use my toaster oven; I fill up a sheet and that does me. Obviously, it depends on whether you have one and how big it is; otherwise, your regular oven.

Pick your protein. Mine is a chicken piece, a pork chop, or a fish fillet. While you're finding your feet, google times and temps: it's a fast learning curve. If you feel like it, marinate it in something or rub some herbs/spices into it. For your veg (which can be almost anything -- broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, string beans, zucchini (courgettes), spuds, etc.) -- get it into reasonable pieces, drizzle it with some oil, plus salt & pepper and herbs if you want. The timing and temp on the veg are are not critical; sometimes it might be more al dente, sometimes crispy, but it'll be fine. You'll figure it out; depending on how much time the protein takes I may start the veg first or the protein first.

That's it! It already sounds more complicated than it is. It's maybe five minutes of food prep altogether.

With long cooking vegetables you can jump start the cooking process by microwaving them. Then if you are cooking something quick like fish, they can finish cooking at the same time. Onions, broccoli, carrots, and potatoes to name a few. For onions and carrots, you can brush with a little oil to help.
Apache

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Apache

With long cooking vegetables you can jump start the cooking process by microwaving them. Then if you are cooking something quick like fish, they can finish cooking at the same time. Onions, broccoli, carrots, and potatoes to name a few. For onions and carrots, you can brush with a little oil to help.
Apache

I don't consider broccoli slow cooking.

If I'm making rice in a rice cooker, I put broccoli in the rice cooker steamer basket the last 5 minutes.

My microwave time for "microwaved baked potato" is 6 minutes followed by 5 minutes of "self cooking". I add the broccoli after the first 3 minutes of microwaving.

[tempest@de]

I don’t enjoy cooking and if I can avoided it I will, but I prefer to eat home cocked meals instead of the frozen processed ones or take out, so I have to cook, when It’s just me I tend to eat soup and a sandwich, I live in a country that has great love for soups so I was raised eating soup pretty much every day. I do a batch and place it in individual containers ready to eat, If it is to much I freeze it, it lasts several days in the fridge and it’s a way for me to eat vegetables since I don’t particularly like them.

I have to say that for someone living alone a good appliance to invest on is an air fryer, there are some that look like an oven, they are great to cook for one. Since I bought mine I reduced the oven use by a lot and I use it at least 4 times a week, sometimes more, it consumes less power than the oven and doesn’t eat the house like the oven.

You can do sheet pan meals with it, like the toaster oven, cook lasagna, things like fish sticks, chicken nuggets, frozen potatoes, even a whole fish can be cooked there, the outside gets crispy and the inside is moist. If it has the rotating accessory you can roast meat or chicken, although a whole chicken for one might be too much, you pretty much just have to season the food and chuck it inside and program the temperature and time, I have a bad memory for this, so I have a list where I take note of the them, the first time I cook something new I keep an eye on it and may have to adjust the time. I even use it to eat some foods, things that in the microwave get soggy in the air fryer stay crispy.

[John F]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I can't say the database of a Sony is not accessible given that calibre can manage collections on a Sony. If the database is not accessible, then there is some other way Sony deals with collections.

Depending on the definition of database ...

From what I recall, collections were stored in an separate XML file accessible from a PC for the 505 firmware.

[JSWolf]

Never use a Kindle to display your recipe. It turns the screen off after 10 minutes.

[issybird]

I came across a reference in the Guardian just now that seemed exactly my thing, so I looked for it at Amazon Kindle as a jumping off point. $22 to rent and $43 to buy! I obviously won't be reading that.

I'm not opposed, at all, to charging what the market will bear and this is an academic work. Still, it's only 172 pages in paperback (again, length doesn't bear on the price except tangentially). I can't help wondering if this is the correct assessment of the elasticity of demand for this. And as an aside, it includes the original Spanish, the English translation and critical essays, so the translation of the base work (which is all I want) must be quite short indeed.

Well, can't read everything!

I get why students pirate.

[issybird]

Chapter headings in Victorian novels which spoil the ensuing chapter...

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

Chapter headings in Victorian novels which spoil the ensuing chapter...

It's in some more contemporary ones too.

But did the author or publisher add them?