General Chat Thread II

Steak and a salad.

🤔 Would you not do the wedges in the airfryer also to speed up! I can do frozen ones in about 10 and with fresh potatoes in 15-20 depending on how many I'm trying to cook.

Dishes with fresh pasta are probaly about the quickest hot meals I can make. Fry mushrooms garlic and chilli off, lemon juice then stir in the cooked pasta butter and parmesan. Can knock up in 10 minutes. Even with dried pasta barely takes any longer.

Well my last post here was declaring my love for Smash… and now I'm lowering the tone again 😀

Bought a 'luxury' frozen pizza, the instructions just say fan oven 190°C. (they probably even left out the fancy degree symbol). No conventional electric oven, never mind gas mark, which is what we have

Turns out the internet consensus is that you add 20°C from the fan temp to conventional electric, and it's gas mark 6 and a half.

It really wouldn't kill them to put this on the box, would it? 🙄

Nobody felt like cooking or eating 'proper food' tonight because last night was a night 'on the town' or as near as it gets these days…

Child 1 turned 18 and we'd agreed to vacate the premises - Free Gaff!

Of course when this promise was made, we didn't realise that Dublin was hosting (a) a home 6 Nations rugby match - indeed their final fixture of the campaign (b) pre-"St. Patty's" 🤮 weekend, so we paid a totally ridiculous price for a room in Staycity Francis St - which was A1 in every way apart from the most important aspect of any hotel, having a comfortable mattress 🤨

It's kinda fun playing the tourist in your own city though - al fresco lunch cod'n'chips from Leo Burdock's, feed the pigeons and dodge the seagulls

Popped into Brogan's on Dame St just in time for the match and a couple of nice pints.

Dinner in Madame Pho - lovely. Never had Vietnamese food before. It's pronounced "fuh" apparently which is probably why the most expensive dish on the menu is called the "Pho King" 😀

Could have settled for all sorts of places for breakfast this morning but Child 2 wanted pancakes, y'know, the thing that Yanks like for breakfast and the city was full of them. Yanks I mean, not pancakes. They proved hard to find (pancakes, not Yanks - most in their uniform of Guinness jumpers from Carroll's Irish Gifts) Traipsed around for an hour and most places doing breakfast didn't do them and anywhere that did had a massive queue. Ended up in Bewley's, just after 12 when the breakfast menu had officially finished, but could still get a generous serving of pancakes and syrup - and two massive rashers - on the kids' menu (go figure, as they say). More than enough to satisfy a rapidly growing 15 year old. And they do an excellent fry-up on the lunch menu so we were sorted. Expensive, but once in a blue moon - worth it.

We returned home to a remarkably un-wrecked household - Child 2 (yes, a male) is not getting that treatment though. I'd give him a pile of cash to do whatever he wants when he turns 18, just don't do it here 😁

It depends what you're going to use them for. If it's just to throw into chilli or something then you won't notice any difference and it's not worth the time and effort. If you're using them as the basis of an actual bean dish - proper slow-baked beans, pork & red beans, etc, then yeah, it's worth using dried.

If you're blending them then I really wouldn't bother, the main difference between dried and tinned beans is texture rather than taste, and you're literally removing that differential by blending them.

As in, a Gregg's style steak bake? On what planet is that equivalent to a lamb shank? 🤣 Jesus, Tesco, do better!

I've hardly ever done home delivery. Can you reject the substitution at the door, or bring it back for a refund?