Miraz Jordan

After @cheri’s photo of Dutch Apple Pancake, with its perfectly placed apple slices, I decided to have another go at making it. Again, delicious! Better slice placement (I use way too much apple and like it like that!). Tried a couple in muffin moulds, with ‘interesting’ results.

I bought my Fuji X-T2 camera a few years back with the intention of growing into it. 📷 That growth has been given a big nudge this week with my discovery of Dan Bailey’s tips and lessons. Practical, easy to follow. I’m looking forward to trying out some stuff.

At the river mouth this morning: looking left and looking right.

Apparently I keep forgetting how to do this:

Rename flags In the Mail app on your Mac, click the arrow next to the Flagged mailbox in the Mail sidebar. … Click the flag name, click it again, then type a new name…

Source: Flag emails in Mail on Mac - Apple Support

Formation flying.

Black-backed gull.

Gull flying with bivalve in its beak.

(Mount) Taranaki.

Whitebaiter with (Mount) Ruapehu and bird.

Excited: I’ve booked on the West Coast Wilderness bike tour for April 2022.

We bike through unbelievable scenery, from wild coastlines to lush rainforests … beautiful sweeping downhill trails … historic waterways, … past waterfalls and … on stunning backcountry tracks.

🚲

Hmmm, downloaded free samples of two Kindle books: The Odyssey by Homer (Author), Emily Wilson (translator) and The Iliad by Homer (Author), Caroline Alexander (Translator). It might be interesting to read these again, some 50 years later, and translated by a woman.

I was a teen when I read the Iliad and the Odyssey. The ‘teeth’ of this quote have always remained with me. Today I found the source (my bold):

Son of Atreus, what manner of speech has escaped the barrier of your teeth?

Homer, The Iliad bk. 4, l. 350

// @hollyhoneychurch

OK, you’ve bought ingredients, rewritten the recipe and you’re ready.

You’ve set up your workspace, got the pots out, found the knives, measurers and stirrers and whatnot. Now on with the cooking.

Tip: follow the recipe exactly, at least the first time. Measure ingredients, set timers.

This is where you’ll discover the parts of the recipe you hadn’t noticed before: it fails to tell you what temperature to set the oven or the stovetop element to. It mentions adding in an item that never appeared in the list of ingredients. Or it uses some cooking term that you just don’t really understand. You may need to do some quick web searching…

Ultimately though you come up with a finished dish. Maybe take a photo before you tuck in. I hope it was delicious.

But here’s an important step: make some notes on your recipe. I’ll often add a Delicious! to remind myself for next time. Or it might be a longer note about some problem with the cooking process or a thought on how it could be improved — too spicy — use less chilli.

If you detected a problem, like adding an ingredient that wasn’t mentioned, or steps that should have been in a different sequence, then edit the recipe ready for next time.

If the recipe worked out for me then I’m likely to cook it again, perhaps with some variations — different veges are in season or I couldn’t get a particular ingredient and either left it out or found a substitute. I note that down.

We live in a rural area and buy ingredients from our local small town. The chance we won’t be able to get hold of some slightly ‘exotic’ ingredient is very high.

Also: cook the recipe again in a few days or weeks if you enjoyed the food. The next time through should be a bit easier because now you have some clues about what you’re doing.

I’m adding a few screenshots that show some of my comments.

Next time: links to a few recipes I really like because they’re simple and delicious.

Kiwis: if you’d like to make a donation to Afghan refugees arriving soon in Aotearoa New Zealand this GiveALittle page might be of interest.

Hey @help I’ve seen an interesting bug in the web interface — see screenshot. The Reply box multiplies. It’s the morning. I reply to someone and get one box. I reply to another and get 2 boxes. By this screenshot I was on my 5th or 6th reply. Safari Mac, latest release software.

As A Reluctant Cook I’d regularly get really stressed while cooking. That still happens sometimes, but a bit of prep goes a long way to making the whole process smoother.

First rewrite the recipe.

I find most recipes are written for people who know how to cook or enjoy cooking. They lump a whole lot of steps in together and even get things out of order. They also seem to assume that you’ll have all the ingredients measured out and prepared beforehand in a dozen little bowls.

That may be how things work on cooking shows, but in real life I reach for a packet and measure out the spice or whatever straight into what I’m cooking.

The first thing I do is to go through the recipe I’ve saved in Drafts app and break it down into tiny, single actions. I’ll often also set up a separate Preparation section for things like making stock (from boiling water and a cube), or chopping up veges.

For that recipe for Mexican-style Mince (from the first post in this series) my Preparation section has this: Make 1 cup beef stock, cook rice, drain can of beans.

I also expand abbreviations: when I’m cooking I can easily mistake 1 tbs for 1 tsp. I’ve made TextExpander abbreviations so I can easily go through and write tablespoon or teaspoon where it’s needed.

Then I work through the steps and add in amounts of things. A recipe may say something like:

In a large bowl combine the beef mince, onion, carrot, celery, garlic, paprika and chilli powder.

I rewrite that with quantities, so now it says:

In a large bowl combine 500 grams mince; 1 carrot, finely chopped; 1 stick celery, finely chopped; 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped; 1 teaspoon paprika; 1/2 teaspoon chilli powder (or more to taste).

Note: I don’t eat onion, so I remove it from my copy of the recipe.

OK, recipe rewritten, I’m now ready to cook, so I get out the pans and dishes I’ll need, spoons and measuring jugs and so on, plus the ingredients.

I also grab my iPad, call up my rewritten recipe, make sure the text is large, and put the iPad on a stand so it’s easy to read.

Note: Drafts has a Shopping Mode that I only recently learned about. It stops the iPad from going to sleep and also stops you from accidentally editing a recipe you’re simply trying to scroll.

It’s time to cook!