The totally off-topic thread

[love_the_life]

Having one of those moments again.

What do you do when you don't know what to do? Nothing?

Sorry can't provide context but don't know how to deal with a situation that requires my attention.

Perhaps just give up. Or at least give in....

I'm a bit of a T chart person - advantage of course A, disadvantage of course A - etc though for smaller decisions it takes place in my head. If it's really important and I'm really stuck I'll write it down. And then usually end up doing the total opposite with often poor results.

 

[love_the_life]

I dunno. Sean still has it I reckon.

Yeah, but not as a current Bond, unless Bond has taken up using a zimmer frame.

 

[Pushka]

Harsh Dame, Harsh. Besides, I just googled and Sean Connery does not have a zimmer frame!

 

[anat0l]

I'm a bit of a T chart person - advantage of course A, disadvantage of course A - etc though for smaller decisions it takes place in my head. If it's really important and I'm really stuck I'll write it down. And then usually end up doing the total opposite with often poor results.

We got asked the other day in a class to create a T chart on some topic or proposition.

We didn't know what was going on until the teacher told us to draw a vertical line dividing the paper into two. We wondered why she just didn't say to list the advantages and disadvantages.

 

[JohnK]

50:50
Phone a friend
Ask the audience



Or does this post count as ask the audience?

That post was all of the above. Can't use logic or reasoning which is why I'm stumped.

Think best to just play along and go with the flow.

 

[love_the_life]

Harsh Dame, Harsh. Besides, I just googled and Sean Connery does not have a zimmer frame!

But it got you going though

 

[RAM]

The Internet isn't helping me due to various opinions, so I might as well ask here too.

If you have a poor cut of steak (say rump with lots of sinew and gristle features) but can't slow cook it and have to pan fry it.... Will it be better rare, or medium rare? Internet seems to have a lot of conflicting opinions, gristle and sinew can render down if the steak is cooked well, but conversely, I've always thought that rare keeps poor steak tender.

Thoughts?

Back in the distant dark days of poor impoverished uni student - a Malaysian friend of mine let me into a very useful secret.

We'd been talking about the cheap eats on campus at UNSW and how the Asian food place was such good value yet you got huge serves (relative) of meat such as the Chinese Fillet steak and black bean sauce.

He promptly revealed the secret. Take any tough/cheap cut of meat. Place it in some sealable container (4 litre icecream) and make up a VERY weak mix of soda bicarbonate with lots of water.

Leave it in the fridge for a day or two - turning the meat a few times a day (if around). Them take out to drain, rinse by putting back in the container in just water for 10-20 minutes....

and you get meat that is so tender you'd think it was eye fillet steak.

The soda bicarb helps dissolve the sinews/soft tissue to leave the piece incredibly tender.

Haven't done that for some decades now but your question brought it back.

WARNING: Too strong a mix and your meat will froth a lot when cooking. From memory it took 3 or 4 trial and errors to get the right ratios. Did not seem to matter on whether beef, lamb or mutton for the mix strength.

But it is a great way to turn any 'economy' cut into melt-in-mouth AND still have meat with a great flavour (very weak mix remember).

 

[JohnK]

The Internet isn't helping me due to various opinions, so I might as well ask here too.

If you have a poor cut of steak (say rump with lots of sinew and gristle features) but can't slow cook it and have to pan fry it.... Will it be better rare, or medium rare? Internet seems to have a lot of conflicting opinions, gristle and sinew can render down if the steak is cooked well, but conversely, I've always thought that rare keeps poor steak tender.

Thoughts?

Interested why you couldn't slow cook it?

If you have a smallish pot then you can braise the steak (lightly fry some chopped onion in oil first) and then start to add water and allow to boil/simmer for as long as you feel necessary and keep adding water. Towards the end add some rice or risone and you have a wonderful meal.

I do this quite a lot with lamb off cuts but also with say chuck steak or gravy beef.

Which reminds me. Have a lamb shank in freezer. Time to braise/slow cook with some rice. Aroy mak mak...

 

[RAM]

Except Canola oil (used in margarine ) has been implicated via Internet chatter in age related macular degeneration so I have eschewed all vegetable oil products except for olive oil. It's butter for me not that chemically altered canola or sunflower oil or palm oil. ( Though animal fat is implicated too). Not yet ready to give up a tasty beef steak

Back in early 00's I was doing some old fashioned research on investment themes (my day job) and came across a great source of medical data covering most OECD countries stretching back decades.

So with a little bit of cross data-basing I created a mini-system to be able to pull together all the sources to then chart for every OECD country with a range of different factors (from illnesses to shipping volumes) and be able to introduce leads and lags.

Long winded lead in admitted.

I typed in the wrong code for one comparison I was trying to do (lucky mistake) matching margarine consumption against income growth lagged (getting ideas for what may boom in China and India). What I graphed was margarine consumption vs Alzheimer incidence lagged.

The charts shocked me. With a 10 yr lag (Alzheimer incidence matched against absolute margarine production 10 yrs earlier) for nearly all the countries - the two lines virtually overlaid each other. With those that it didn't match almost so perfectly the lag seemed to get slightly longer (go to 12-13 yrs) a couple of decades into the series.

Could have been a total coincidence but for it to be the case for nearly every OECD country - well the odds of that would see me equally as likely as to win Lotto 7 weeks in a row. Showed it to the cynics there and they thought I must have used my computer skills to doctor the images.

Some months later I was out and met up with an engineer from a very large Australian based margarine producer. When I found out who he worked for I asked him some questions. He started out by asking what colour I thought the margarine came out initially?

A very dark black/brown that is then repeatedly bleached to get it to the yellow colour you consume. He added that in theory there is no build up of bleach in the production system (= taints finished product) which is cleaned every 10 to 14 days.

In reality, the smell of bleach never leaves the machinery and not one worker continues to eat margarine after working there....

 

[love_the_life]

Eek....no gin in the cupboard :shock:

Wonder what else is in there instead

 

[JohnK]

If I had 60gms of spaghetti and boiled it how much would it weigh?

I have a cooked spaghetti bolognaise and trying to work out how much spaghetti is in there as I did not cook it. The spaghetti weighs 180gms.

Worse case scenario is I will estimate 100gms of spaghetti which is ~360 calories.

 

[blackcat20]

If I had 60gms of spaghetti and boiled it how much would it weigh?

I have a cooked spaghetti bolognaise and trying to work out how much spaghetti is in there as I did not cook it. The spaghetti weighs 180gms.

Worse case scenario is I will estimate 100gms of spaghetti which is ~360 calories.

60g of uncooked spag is 218 cal. An average serving of spaghetti bolognese can be in the region of 500cal.

 

[RooFlyer]

Back in the distant dark days of poor impoverished uni student - a Malaysian friend of mine let me into a very useful secret.

We'd been talking about the cheap eats on campus at UNSW and how the Asian food place was such good value yet you got huge serves (relative) of meat such as the Chinese Fillet steak and black bean sauce.

He promptly revealed the secret. Take any tough/cheap cut of meat. Place it in some sealable container (4 litre icecream) and make up a VERY weak mix of soda bicarbonate with lots of water.

<snip>.
WARNING: Too strong a mix and your meat will froth a lot when cooking. From memory it took 3 or 4 trial and errors to get the right ratios. Did not seem to matter on whether beef, lamb or mutton for the mix strength.

Similar idea for fresh caught squid. Cut it into rings / chunks and massage pureed kiwifruit around it; leave for an hour or so, cook and serve very tender squid.

Leave it too long and you get pre-digested mush.

 

[anat0l]

Back in the distant dark days of poor impoverished uni student - a Malaysian friend of mine let me into a very useful secret.

We'd been talking about the cheap eats on campus at UNSW and how the Asian food place was such good value yet you got huge serves (relative) of meat such as the Chinese Fillet steak and black bean sauce.

He promptly revealed the secret. Take any tough/cheap cut of meat. Place it in some sealable container (4 litre icecream) and make up a VERY weak mix of soda bicarbonate with lots of water.

Leave it in the fridge for a day or two - turning the meat a few times a day (if around). Them take out to drain, rinse by putting back in the container in just water for 10-20 minutes....

and you get meat that is so tender you'd think it was eye fillet steak.

The soda bicarb helps dissolve the sinews/soft tissue to leave the piece incredibly tender.

Haven't done that for some decades now but your question brought it back.

WARNING: Too strong a mix and your meat will froth a lot when cooking. From memory it took 3 or 4 trial and errors to get the right ratios. Did not seem to matter on whether beef, lamb or mutton for the mix strength.

But it is a great way to turn any 'economy' cut into melt-in-mouth AND still have meat with a great flavour (very weak mix remember).

You could also just slow braise most meat or cut it up differently too. Lots of economy cuts of meat are suited to those kinds of cooking methods.

Is this method safe, i.e. use of bicarbonate soda? Yes, I realise you must be still alive and all, but...

Also, once you sauce things enough, you can hardly tell what meat it might have been, let alone does one care too much about the cut or the tenderness! Ironically enough, Chinese people tend to enjoy chewy textures (although there's a difference between chewy and the bottom of a boot).


Mum, I believe, puts in sodium bicarbonate (a spoon-ish) when blanching Asian green vegetables (or even broccoli). Apparently it allows the veggies to be a bright green colour. It does seem to make it taste a bit funny though; I personally don't do it when I blanch vegetables.


An irony now is that some traditionally tough or "unwanted" cuts of meat which used to be flogged off fairly cheaply, are now more expensive than some common cuts of everyday meat. Examples include beef cheeks, osso bucco, pork belly, sweet breads...

 

[JohnK]

60g of uncooked spag is 218 cal. An average serving of spaghetti bolognese can be in the region of 500cal.

That's correct. I am trying to workout how many calories I had when I don't know the original weight of the ingredients.

Talking with mum and it looks like we had 8 servings from a 500gm packet of spaghetti. I brought 2 of those servings to Brisbane but split into 3 servings and froze the other 2 servings which would mean the serving I just had contained 40gms spaghetti which is ~140 calories. Add 50gms mince, olive oil, mushroom, onions and garlic and there's another ~160 calories so I have just had~300 calories for dinner on top of ~700 calories for the day.

No wonder I am still starving....

 

[Pushka]

I cooked lamb shanks before they became recipe de rigeur. Prices have soared as a result.

 

[Princess Fiona]

That's correct. I am trying to workout how many calories I had when I don't know the original weight of the ingredients.

Talking with mum and it looks like we had 8 servings from a 500gm packet of spaghetti. I brought 2 of those servings to Brisbane but split into 3 servings and froze the other 2 servings which would mean the serving I just had contained 40gms spaghetti which is ~140 calories. Add 50gms mince, olive oil, mushroom, onions and garlic and there's another ~160 calories so I have just had~300 calories for dinner on top of ~700 calories for the day.

No wonder I am still starving....

I'd be starving too if that's all I had for dinner !!!

 

[Deleted member]

Back in early 00's I was doing some old fashioned research on investment themes (my day job) and came across a great source of medical data covering most OECD countries stretching back decades.

So with a little bit of cross data-basing I created a mini-system to be able to pull together all the sources to then chart for every OECD country with a range of different factors (from illnesses to shipping volumes) and be able to introduce leads and lags.

Long winded lead in admitted.

I typed in the wrong code for one comparison I was trying to do (lucky mistake) matching margarine consumption against income growth lagged (getting ideas for what may boom in China and India). What I graphed was margarine consumption vs Alzheimer incidence lagged.

The charts shocked me. With a 10 yr lag (Alzheimer incidence matched against absolute margarine production 10 yrs earlier) for nearly all the countries - the two lines virtually overlaid each other. With those that it didn't match almost so perfectly the lag seemed to get slightly longer (go to 12-13 yrs) a couple of decades into the series.

Could have been a total coincidence but for it to be the case for nearly every OECD country - well the odds of that would see me equally as likely as to win Lotto 7 weeks in a row. Showed it to the cynics there and they thought I must have used my computer skills to doctor the images.

Some months later I was out and met up with an engineer from a very large Australian based margarine producer. When I found out who he worked for I asked him some questions. He started out by asking what colour I thought the margarine came out initially?

A very dark black/brown that is then repeatedly bleached to get it to the yellow colour you consume. He added that in theory there is no build up of bleach in the production system (= taints finished product) which is cleaned every 10 to 14 days.

In reality, the smell of bleach never leaves the machinery and not one worker continues to eat margarine after working there....

And that doesn't even consider the macular degeneration risk.
I have NEVER allowed margarine in my home. It's poison IMHO

 

[Deleted member]

That's correct. I am trying to workout how many calories I had when I don't know the original weight of the ingredients.

Talking with mum and it looks like we had 8 servings from a 500gm packet of spaghetti. I brought 2 of those servings to Brisbane but split into 3 servings and froze the other 2 servings which would mean the serving I just had contained 40gms spaghetti which is ~140 calories. Add 50gms mince, olive oil, mushroom, onions and garlic and there's another ~160 calories so I have just had~300 calories for dinner on top of ~700 calories for the day.

No wonder I am still starving....

If you're counting calories. Eating spaghetti would appear to be counter productive. But then you may not like salad

 

[JohnK]

I'd be starving too if that's all I had for dinner !!!

Yesterday's dinner of ~900+ calories scared me. Still going good this week. Only ~1400 calories Monday and ~1700 calories yesterday.

Weighing food is making me eat less.