Stuff

Reply to: I only buy Barilla gf pasta. I find it tastes almost like regular pasta and unlike Jasdip’s experience, it takes pretty much the same amount of time to cook. The main difference is that it’s a little more fragile than regular pasta and can break up if you stir the sauce through too vigorously.

Q

Reply to: Google suggests it’s a variant on another slang expression for being pregnant, being ”in the pudding club”. I guess this originated from a pregnant belly looking like the woman has a (British style) pudding under her dress. Steamed puddings were traditionally ball shaped as they were boiled in a pudding cloth which was drawn up to make a sphere by its nature. ”Plum duff” (steamed pudding with raisins) was a popular dessert, ”duff” being a dialectical variant pronounciation of ”dough” (rhymes with ”enough” and ”rough” and ”tough”).

Q

Reply to: I have done this myself once due to a time crunch. I used to work for a difficult employer who ran a b and b and treated all employees like lowly minions. She was hosting a group who owned and worked at a fairly posh restaurant in the city, and they were dining in house one evening, celebrating a birthday. With three hours' notice she told me they were expecting a celebration cake, and would I provide it? I ended up baking the cake, then slicing it into thin layers and cooling it in my freezer in order to cool it quickly enough to fill, frost and decorate it in time. It can't have had too much of an effect on taste/texture as the restaurant folks (including chefs) were very pleased with it. She pulled quite a few stunts like this and eventually I decided that, as good as the money was, it wasn't worth the aggravation. When I handed in my notice to move on to another job, she asked if I knew of anyone who might replace me. My first thought was, "I don't know anyone I dislike that much!" 😂

Q

Reply to: It's "fairy BREAD" not toast. As the article says, plain white squishy supermarket bread, with nonpareil round sprinkles. Some people put the hundreds and thousands into a plate and lay the bread butter side down on it for even coverage. I remember reading a little anecdote in a women's magazine decades ago where a lady related that her construction worker husband loved fairy bread and would ask for it in his lunch box occasionally. At lunch time at work, he would open his lunch box and exclaim, "Oh! My wife must have mixed up my lunch with the kids' lunch. Well, there's nothing else to eat so I might as well eat this," and scoff down the fairy bread :-D

Q

Reply to: Here’s a story for you, Elmer. We were travelling in Viet Nam, visiting Hoi An. It was Easter weekend, and the gates of the Catholíc church were open, something we hadn’t previously seen in our travels in this country, so we decided to have a look. While we were there, a young man came up to us and asked if he could practice his English with us. Knowing that many Vietnamese see English skills as the ticket to better employment, we were happy to sit down with him for a chat. He ran through the standard questions: ”Where are you from?” ”Do you have children?” and answered ours. When he ran out of questions he readily knew, he started to consult his textbook. Looking up at my husband, he announced, ”You are handsome.” DH preened. Then the young man looked at me. ”You are fat,” he stated. Now, I could easily have taken offense. But I chose not to. This young man clearly did not intend to be hurtful or mean, to him he was just stating a fact. So instead, I laughed, and have told this as an amusing story ever since.

Q

Reply to: Actually, it's not even a year out of date and has been in the fridge. It's probably still alive. It might not be so rapid, however. I wouldn't use it for something like bread machine without some backup yeast. For regular bread, proof it. Let it warm up to room temperature, then put it in a dish or measuring pitcher in about a cup of baby bottle temp warm water with a spoon of sugar or white flour, and set it somewhere gently warm. I use the top of the cable box. :) If it goes cloudy and starts to bubble within half an hour, or even an hour if your kitchen is cold, it's alive. If it just sits there and looks sad, toss it.

Q

Reply to: Dear young people who think they know how to type: the two spaces make it easier to read.

Q

Reply to: Not sure what this has to do with desserts.

Q

Reply to: @Toronto Veterinarian- If local municipalities aren't imposing some kind of taxing regime on STRs then they're foolish. The STRs would still be cheaper than hotels because there isn't a host of staff running around to satisfy every whim of the guests. (Meanwhile, those staff are still being employed by the hotels to cater to their guests, so they're not losing their jobs because of evil STR customers.) Tenants in an STR do not necessarily create more trash or use the roads/other services any more than a long term tenant in the same property would. In fact I suspect a lot would use public transport to avoid the hassle and expense of renting a car and driving in a strange city, so the coffers of the public transport companies and ride shares/taxis would gain customers they wouldn't otherwise have. And they're less likely to be making the kinds of purchases that generate a lot of trash- most of their trash would be food waste from any self catering and a few incidentals like tissues and the like. Factor in the times that the STR is empty and not generating any trash and the overall result would be more likely to be putting less pressure on municipal services. Go ahead and feel noble staying in hotels, but your reasoning for this is flawed.

Q

Reply to: I drink a lot of iced tea in summer so I switched to artificial sweetener. Equal For Baking was fine but went off the shelves for a long time, so I switched to Splenda. Towards the end of summer I started wondering what was going on with my innards, because they’d been going on for a good while. Thinking back, I began to wonder if it might be the Splenda so I stopped drinking iced tea. The issue went away. Luckily Equal For Baking is back on the shelves and it doesn’t affect me.

Q

Reply to: jojoco...no icelandic or fair isle work...it's self patterning yarn! This is the pattern for the sweater: https://www.themakeyourownzone.com/another-5-hour-baby-sweater-knit-pattern/ Only I didn't do the extra garter rows as I had the patterned yarn instead. What I like about the pattern is it's top down, which makes it easier, but the sleeves are worked flat and then sew the underarm seam. Much better than going round and round on double-pointed needles.

Q

Reply to: Oh we will get a Randy parody about Peckr. That one will write itself. Happy Friday Eve! Pu$$y Grabber given the shaft by Peckr!

Q

Reply to: LOL. LOL. LOL.

Q

Reply to: Miz_G (Tx 8a) Can he go one day without being a d-bag? Just one?

Q

Reply to: Regarding the Tiger Woods tweet:

Q