Petty Vents II

[Marlingardener]

Ah Ginny, you reminded me of another peeve. People who talk too loudly, no matter where they are. We were waiting in a doctor's office, and heard all about a lady's diet, and she was a good 15 feet away!
I was asked where something was at the local grocery, and I told the lady asking that I was not deaf, and would she please lower the volume.
People who stand not three feet apart in a parking lot, and yell at each other while having a friendly conversation.
There is very little decorum left in our world.

 

[GinnyPNW]

Ah Ginny, you reminded me of another peeve. People who talk too loudly, no matter where they are. We were waiting in a doctor's office, and heard all about a lady's diet, and she was a good 15 feet away!
I was asked where something was at the local grocery, and I told the lady asking that I was not deaf, and would she please lower the volume.
People who stand not three feet apart in a parking lot, and yell at each other while having a friendly conversation.
There is very little decorum left in our world.

Agreed...and no common courtesy, it seems. Things that are accepted now, would have had one asked to leave (or thrown out!) of many, many places, when I was growing up! These days...not!

 

[Aunt Bea]

IMO the silent majority still paddles along quietly without notice while the ill mannered boors are allowed to take center stage in most areas of daily life.

Maybe it’s my age or because I’m an introvert but I’m most comfortable when I’m home.

 

[GinnyPNW]

One of the great things about living out in the country is that most people just keep to themselves!

 

[Texmex]

couldn't find the original - either my search abilities REALLY suck or it is buried buried very very deep.

Why do recipes say 'Prep 10 min. Cook 25 min. Total 35 min.' ?
Here is a typical Beef 'n Mac dinner.
Gather ingredients - How long does it take you to go to the fridge, the cupboard, wash, chop and measure? That alone, only if you are super fast, your fridge, stove, sink, cupboards are all reachable without moving a foot, can you do that in 10 minutes? and I forgot to say getting out a pot and casserole dish plus grating the cheese.
Boil the water - 5 min? Cook the pasta - 7 min? OK, while water boils, you can saute your mirepoix. about 7 min doing it slowly from oil to garlic and paste (according to directions.)
Brown the meat - now this is 1.5 lbs - browning and breaking up, they don't say how long this takes but it is at least 10 minutes right there!
Add sauce, simmer 5 minutes. then you have to layer it all together and bake 20-25 minutes.

An experienced cook will realize that the times mentioned are not even close. But for a newbie/beginner - that is very misleading. When I look at recipes I often check the times needed. Do I need to start around 2 pm because there is resting/marinating times? Or 4 pm or 5 pm to have dinner on the table by 6?
When I see a recipe that states 10 minutes prep time I think OK, they put on their apron then they walked to the stove, turned the oven on, walked to the fridge, removed the casserole, took it to the counter next to the stove, removed the cardboard cover, pierced the film to vent. Poured a glass of wine and put the casserole in the oven. 10 minutes.

Thank you - I feel better (almost, if it wasn't 8:35 am I would be pouring that glass of wine)

Edit: Egads, just found original Petty Vents, 5 threads below this.
I could merge them if y'all think I should. (and there again, I think I can! LOL)

I stopped even paying attention to the times. A lot of them are talking if you already have the ingredients cut and measured. I do have a couple of 30 minute recipes but I have a lot more that are 30 minutes prep and then have to cook a while. Either one is okay with me because I'm not cooking for a family. The older I get the more I need a short recipe and especially in the summertime in my kitchen is not too cool.

One genuine 30 minute recipe is one of Rachael Ray's older ones called hot pepper brick chicken. I do add 5 minutes because chicken pieces are so big now but it's still right at 30 minutes.

And then I have one simple beef and Mac recipe that is really quick and easy. It originally came from a longer recipe that added more ingredients. And I did go ahead and make that full recipe but in the middle of it before I added the other ingredients I had tasted this and loved it and so now I just make the short version and it's tasty because it has beef broth in it. I'll put it up sometime.

 

[Texmex]

One of my petty rents has to do with the cooking shows on TV. I won't name names but there is one show that has two chefs that I have never seen make anything that they didn't learn in early cooking school. All those recipes they do are in the very earliest cookbooks that I ever had, just basic cookbooks. The other people are kind of creating new recipes or at least stealing them. One of them was cooking salmon almost every show. The other one just chooses something out of the basic cooking school repertoire. They're both very boring and not at all original.

My other cooking show pet peeve his people from the Northeast who think they know how to cook Tex-Mex but they are still putting ballpark quesos on nachos and calling those nachos. Even one of my favorite ones who makes a lot of good stuff and original stuff say something like let's face it what people really want on their chips is (insert runny cheese). So disappointing.

 

[GinnyPNW]

@Texmex, I'm with you on the Chicken and the Cheese(NOT), too! Where possible, I go to the local butcher store and get my meats there. The other chickens, I call Chernobyl Chicken!

Maybe we should start a Nachos thread? I bet there are as many versions as we have chefs to discuss them!

P.S. My Mom was born and raised in Pearland..and used to send me to visit relatives there on summer school break!

 

[Texmex]

@Texmex, I'm with you on the Chicken and the Cheese(NOT), too! Where possible, I go to the local butcher store and get my meats there. The other chickens, I call Chernobyl Chicken!

Maybe we should start a Nachos thread? I bet there are as many versions as we have chefs to discuss them!

P.S. My Mom was born and raised in Pearland..and used to send me to visit relatives there on summer school break!

We will definitely get around to that. I hate those big chickens. I have an old farmhouse recipe from my mom that you just can't use a big chicken on and they're all stringy and not tender. I used to occasionally buy organic because they were a little smaller but now they're organic breasts look just as big as the other ones almost.

 

[Texmex]

@Texmex, I'm with you on the Chicken and the Cheese(NOT), too! Where possible, I go to the local butcher store and get my meats there. The other chickens, I call Chernobyl Chicken!

Maybe we should start a Nachos thread? I bet there are as many versions as we have chefs to discuss them!

P.S. My Mom was born and raised in Pearland..and used to send me to visit relatives there on summer school break!

Kroger used to have some smaller breasts in their meat counter and I still ask them to find the smallest ones but lately they still have just been too big.

I went to a HEB owned gourmet store here that has a great meat counter although everything is of course more expensive. I bought some breasts there and they were slightly smaller but not so much.

But for my farmhouse recipe it uses a whole chicken that needs to go in a Dutch oven for boiling and needs to fit in there. For a few years before covid Target carried small whole chickens but they changed what they bought. That used to be my go-to. I have ordered a whole chicken from the HEB store but it wasn't as small as I'd like it.

That farmhouse recipe depends on using the fat from the whole chicken in the broth and then you drop noodles in. Hardly any ingredients but they're all essential for the outcome. It's possible I could get a half of a huge chicken and do that but again those big chickens aren't very tender even after they've been boiling and everything. I don't know what the growers are thinking. Bigger is not always better.

I don't have a proper butcher shop anywhere nearby. It's possible some of the hispanic markets might have something like that but I'm not sure about that.

 

[dragnlaw]

I'm not understanding how you guys seem to get "tough" chicken, especially after braising!
I think I can honestly say I've never prepared any chicken that ended up tough with exception of accidently over cooking a skinless boneless breast in a frying pan.
and it doesn't matter how big or how small the bird is.

Chicken now-a-days almost can't be tough, they are butchered at 6 to 8 weeks. They don't have time to get tough!

 

[GinnyPNW]

I don't find them tough...just too big. Too much. More than I want. And the whole ones are still "fryers" even though they weigh as much as a Roaster, but without the flavor of one.

 

[msmofet]

I find a lot of chicken these days are rubbery no mater how you cook it.

 

[Kathleen]

And so this is why my HOA needs to allow me to raise my own

 

[msmofet]

The first and only time I got a Costco rotisserie chicken it was nasty, undercook, and rubbery. I don’t see what people think is so good about them. Except the price. I’d rather pay a little more for a good chicken.

 

[GinnyPNW]

The first and only time I got a Costco rotisserie chicken it was nasty, undercook, and rubbery. I don’t see what people think is so good about them. Except the price. I’d rather pay a little more for a good chicken.

You know, I've never purchased one from Costco! And, when I've compared the purchased rot chicken vs homemade, there's really no comparison. Except for price. The already cooked chickens can be a bit cheaper. But there's nothing like making it at home! There are many ways to do them at home! Showtime, Airfryer, Oven (with or without the rotisserie, yes...without is "just" a roasted chicken), BBQ...and probably some other ways not coming to mind at the moment.

 

[Andy M.]

We were not pleased late yesterday afternoon to find our A/C had died. We've been OK using fans and tomorrow is supposed to be cooler. The A/C guy is coming Monday at 8:00AM.

This in not an expense I was planning on. We replaced our furnace a couple of months ago.

 

[dragnlaw]

Ouch.
Didn't someone else just have a/c trouble? Skillet? Pepper?

 

[GinnyPNW]

We were not pleased late yesterday afternoon to find our A/C had died. We've been OK using fans and tomorrow is supposed to be cooler. The A/C guy is coming Monday at 8:00AM.

This in not an expense I was planning on. We replaced our furnace a couple of months ago.

We changed out our AC at the same time as the Heater. The way our system works, can't really do one without the other. Sigh. Could have bought a new car...well, maybe a new used car...

 

[Marlingardener]

We were lucky. We called a local HVAC repair shop, who sent out a so-called repairman, who made a mess on the carpet and told us we needed a new "board". He said he left a part on his desk and disappeared, never to return. We called a non-local shop who sent out a repairman who said we simply needed a new relay, installed it, and within a half hour we had a functioning unit. So much for shopping, buying locally.

 

[pepperhead212]

Seems this is happening all over! But then, this is when we find these things out.

I was lucky - my friend's friend, that fixed that capacitor in the motor, came back the next day, when I called him and told him the thing wasn't shutting off, so obviously something else was wrong, probably what burned the capacitor out. He had to go over to his son's garage, and pick up some R-12 freon, and a meter, that he hooked up, and he gave it intermediate pulses of coolant, then let the numbers equalize, as he explained to me. He was doing this for well over an hour, and his son called him from vacation (!) And walked him through the numbers, and what he could do with this old system (his son went to tech school for this). This cost me $300 more, but this was mainly because that old freon is extremely expensive - they only use it for refilling old systems. And they have to do a recovery thing, not just let it out of the units, as this is one of the worst things for destroying the ozone layer. I went out the next day and covered that cooling line, running up to my attic, from the outside line - I used all but about 7" of the 12' of the insulation. The old insulation, esp. horizontal by the unit, was almost gone, plus, this is thicker than the old insulation. I slid as much as I could up the line, but I wasn't going to try getting a ladder! I texted him, and thanked him again, for his help, and told him that it is on much less than off, so it is obviously much more efficient. He agreed, and said hopefully we can get through another year, though I'm just hoping to make it through this season.