Comfort food to the max!

For the first meal we have two family standbys – both easy to make from what’s in the pantry, and both I know the Boys will eat!  

I’ve tried to make the instructions as ‘foolproof’ as possible, apologies if anything is unclear.  Both recipes were adapted from those in Marguerite Patten’s Everyday Cook Book (1983).

As you can see, I’m no professional photographer, but these photographs show the start and end result.

This is the starting point – all things I had in the cupboard:

Corned Beef Hash

•          1 can Corned Beef
•          10oz (250g) Boiled Potatoes
•          1 Onion
•          1oz (25g) Butter / Marge
•          1 ½ cups frozen peas

Wash the potatoes, cut into pieces, and boil until cooked.  Drain through a colander and leave to cool.  Alternatively, use leftover potatoes from the day before!

Chop the onion into pieces (small if you don’t want to notice the onion at the end, larger if you don’t mind onion slices). 

Melt the butter / marge in a frying pan, and fry the onion gently until softened.  

Once the onion is soft, add the corned beef, and the potatoes.  

Stir to mix them together, gradually mashing the potatoes and mixing in the beef.  This should take 5-10 mins to cook together. 

When it’s nearly ready, stir in the frozen peas.  They will cook in the heat from the rest of the meal.  

Serve hot or cold.

Possible Variation:  Put it into a pastry case and bake (Corned Beef and Tatty pie was a childhood fave of mine).  I’ll get him to try this once he’s mastered pastry making…that’s for a few weeks’ time.

Semolina Pudding

•          1 pint (600ml) Milk
•          1-2oz (25-50g) Sugar
•          2-3 oz Semolina.

 

Bring the milk to the boil (we used a microwave to prevent it sticking and burning), add the sugar and gradually whisk in the semolina. 

Stir very briskly until thickened and smooth (we cooked it for a min at a time, whisking very well between sessions).  

Cook for about 10 mins on top of the cooker, or pour into a dish and bake for 45 mins in the oven at 150⁰C (this is the option we took).  We serve this with a teaspoonful of fruit jam and fight over the skin!

Parental comments:

He did all the prep and cooking himself, with advice and comments provided.  Only things I would have changed was to cut the onion a little finer, and sauté it for a bit longer before adding the other ingredients.  The semolina separated out a little during cooking as he’d not whisked it for quite long enough before it went into the oven but stirred in fine and tastes "amazing!" (his brother's comment).

Comments / suggestions for future recipes welcome - just leave a note.

A slight change of direction….adventures of a Teenage Cook

I initially created this blog as part of my MIS studies, as I was required to blog on library related things as part of that. Now that that’s (mostly) completed, it’s time to change the focus of this blog.

As the family definition of “manavellins” is a meal cooked from whatever leftovers are around, I thought the title remained appropriate, so I’ve kept it.

I’m going to be using this as a way to record (and share) the meals my son is preparing whilst working towards his Gold Duke of Edinburgh award – he’s using Cookery for the ‘skills’ part of this, so will be doing at least one meal a week for several months. This is a win / win situation as he gains a heap of skills he can use when he leaves home, and I get one night a week I don’t have to cook! This means there will be approx. one posting a week, covering the meals prepared by him.

I thought a blog on this subject could be useful in several ways:

1) To document the meals he’s cooked, so his assessor can see what he’s done, and sign it all off at the end.

2) As a place to record and share the recipes he’s used – so others can try them if they want.

3) As a way to record my thoughts on the process – to help anyone else encouraging their kids to cook.  and finally;

4) It will get me writing again on a regular basis (something I'm not as good at as I should be!)

I’m going to start him off on cooking relatively basic meals, building things up as he gains skills and confidence.   I’m also going to be focussing on things I know he likes. Later on, he can choose what's on the menu, as long as it involves him learning something new.

I use a mix of old and new recipes, so some of the quantities will be metric, others in ounces and pints – I don’t promise to be consistent!

 If you need to convert measurements:

1 oz = 25g (near enough)
1 lb = 450g (approx.)
1 pint is 20 fluid ounces, 2 ½ American cups, or 600ml.

 I hope you enjoy this journey with us - please add comments of things you think he should cook, and any suggestions that would make this blog more useful to others.

Is an e-reader what you really need?

Hello, and welcome back to my blog.

For this posting I’m trying something a little different, an audio podcast.

This brief audio clip discusses the e-readers available in New Zealand and whether they are compatible with e-books which you can borrow from your local library.

Sadly, not all e-readers are created equal in this respect.

Click on the link below to listen.


If you like the music at the start of this podcast, it's Bourée recorded by Jethro Tull in 1969 "Stand up" published by Crysalis Records.

The podcast was created using a program called 'Audacity' - and I can conclude that, whilst I may have a 'face for radio', I don't necessarily have the voice for it! Or perhaps I'm just getting over a cold?

Where have we come from, and where are we going?

Today’s posting is a variant on the usual e-reader technology theme, exploring some of the historical alternatives to the traditional printed book, and asking what’s likely to come next.

Ever since writing was invented, people have been seeking different ways to record, share and store information. Cave paintings were replaced by stone and clay tablets. Writing provided a way to represent images and sounds, enabling information to persist beyond it’s creator. The Romans developed a reusable tablet, with wax held in a frame with a stylus to inscribe text, which could be reused by melting the wax. My grandmother remembered using a writing slate and pencil at Primary school. Papyrus, paper and vellum were used to generate readily portable scrolls and later books and folios with the precious information held in a protective binding. A forerunner of e-reader cases perhaps?

Growing up in the UK, there was a TV Program called "Tomorrow's World", featuring products and inventions that (in theory at least) were going to radically change our world, and how we lived. This series introduced the British public to such revelations as the digital watch, the CD and barcode readers. However, as far as I am aware, it never featured a replacement for books, such as an e-reading device.

Why? Replacements for books had already been suggested by entrepreneurs and authors.

Thomas Edison proposed printing on sheets of Nickel, as this would accept ink and could be made cheaply and much thinner than paper.

I remember a story by Isaac Asimov, where children find an ancient book made of paper, and how teaching and learning was predicted to have changed. I read this in the early 1980's - already much of this is superseded!

Microfilm enabled a large volume of text or images to be stored in a small area. However, this required a specialist reader to view the information, and has largely been replaced by digital storage.

Digital storage has the advantage that it can be searched and viewed remotely. If you look to the right of this blog, you will see a ‘widget’ this is a search tool enabling you to look within the DigitalNZ collection, and see what items are held relating to “Embroidery in New Zealand”, one of my other interests.

Audio bookshave been used for years by blind and vision impaired people as well as those who want to be doing something else whilst catching up with the latest bestseller, one of the classics, or whatever takes their fancy.

Conversion of existing text to an audio book has been a costly exercise, limiting the range accessible, and the results are of variable quality. Where content is digitally created, distribution via e-publishing is inexpensive and rapid, compared to printing in a variety of formats and the traditional distribution networks through Bookstores and Libraries.

A relative who works in a UK library provided this anecdote:

"I met a 30 year old partially sighted fantasy fan who had been using talking books as the range of books in large print which interested him was limited. I don't know which type of e-reader he bought but he was able to enlarge the text size and a whole world of books was opened up to him at a greatly reduced cost."

Another alternative has just been publicized - re-writable 'paper', capable of being reused up to 260 times.

Formats are changing as e-reader specifications change. Microsoft has just announced that it is discontinuing it’s Microsoft reader software and bookstore. Sony has discontinued it’s current e-reader range. Amazon has dropped the price of a Kindle 3 to $99 dollars, and the price of a Nook is also falling. Although new releases from these are anticipated, what these will offer is currently unknown.

So will future developments (e.g. affordable tablet computers, erasable e-paper) and patent wars limiting the options for displaying information consign the Kindle et al. to a technological backwater, to keep company with Betamax and the Sinclair C5?

How will we look for (and look at) information? Crystal Ball Anyone?

The shape of things to come... and looking back

Most blogs provide information, with the content chosen by the Author. Input from readers is limited (at most) to leaving a comment for the writer, and future visitors to the site to read.

This week I’ve added something a little different. If you look to the right of this blog you’ll see a “widget”.

What’s a Widget, I can hear you asking? In this case it’s a mini search engine (like Google without the adverts)!

This one is linked to the DigitalNZ website, and can be used to find images and articles held by a variety of New Zealand Organisations.

The search I’ve created is for “Embroidery in New Zealand”, and ongoing interest of mine. You can use this site to search for relevant items held in a variety of collections. The majority of the items returned relate to items in the Te Papa Collection, but also includes National Library, Ministry of Culture and Heritage and many more contributors.

You can then restrict the results by date, source, item type, creator etc. to highlight things you’d like to know more about.



Go on, give it a go! Try a search (or several), and let me know what you find and like best.

What are Manavelins?

Manavellins

It's a strange kind of word isn't it?

It's been used by my family to mean "The sort of dish cooked up from whatever leftovers are in the fridge and need eating up".

I thought it must be an Irish dialect word as some branches of my family tree came from there, but no one I spoke to of Irish extraction had ever heard of it!

My husband used it as the name for any Scratch Band he played in for a few years, but no Muso had heard of it either. Was it a product of my deranged Whanau's imagination?

So I decided to try and track it down, and see if the word had ever existed. The first challenge was that I'd only ever heard it, and never seen it written down. Munavelins? Menavellins? Manvaeeyns????

Trial and error eventually tracked the following definition down.

Here's a wonderful blog about the word

"Assorted ropes and equipment". so now I have an explanation for the word, but another mystery. How on earth did it get into our family's vocabulary? None of us have ever had any links with the Sea and the family historian (my Cousin) is no wiser!


So, what strange words are common to your family and rare elsewhere? Any ideas why you use them and others don't?

Devices and desires - e-readers in a learning enviroment?

Hello and welcome back to my blog.

Many of us have worked for a number of years in a corporate environment, and are used to creating, sending and receiving digital documents.  But at what point should this start?

I’m going to ask you to think back a few years, and imagine yourself (or your children) at school – should they have an e-reader, and if so what format?  Orewa College is requiring all year 9 students to possess a one-to one computer device for use in the classrooms.  The School preference is an iPad 2, although other devices may be used.


Setting aside the issue of whether the school should be introducing this, what are the options?  If you were a parent, what would you be purchasing for your child?

To help you decide, I’m going to look at some of the differences between the equipment available and their advantages and limitations.  I’m also trying something a little different, an embedded presentation.  This is a way of sharing content, using Googledocs.












Please let me know if this works for you, and what other areas you'd like me to cover in the next few blogs.




Sources:
Slide 1 Image
Other image sources  and technical specifications taken from the Dick Smith's Website