What a Barbaric idea…Hey, I like it. Maybe they could finally knock some sense into her.
Latest SIL Baking Report:
She says she wants to bring something to us called “Cake fudge.” She bakes a chocolate cake, then covers it with icing, cuts it into little squares, puts more icing on, then chocolate candy on top.
Sounds like extreme brownies to me.
Got milk?
Good grief. Sounds like extreme pain.
So MaxBabe doesn’t feel like cooking tonight. That’s fine. In fact, she is actually allowing me to cook. To be clear, MaxBabe is very possessive of the kitchen. In the entirety of our relationship, she’s allowed me to cook twice. So this is an unusual turn of events.
So I’m whipping up an exciting meal of chicken kiev (from a box, stick it in the oven and leave it there, very hard to fuck it up) and mashed potato (I am the mashed potato god!).
While I’m waiting for the Kiev to sort itself out in the oven, I’m reading this thread. It is a laugh a minute, and somewhat pertinent! I am not a bad cook (not that I’d know anymore, since I’m never allowed to cook) but I can totally relate to these!
And now, for my own bad cooking tale:
Once, when I was a student, I decided I’d impress my girlfriend by baking Anzac biscuits. I hadn’t had a great deal of experience in baking, but I figured it was an easy enough recipe… I surely couldn’t screw it up. Well, let me tell you it is entirely possible to fuck up anzac bikkies.
I took out all the ingredients, the sugar, the butter etc. I measured it all out, and put the various ingredient-filled measuring cups on the counter, ready to add to the mix. I greased the baking tray, heated the oven, put the mix together and made little bikkies on the tray. I popped it into the oven and waited patiently.
The bikkies cooked, I pulled the tray out of the oven and put them on a cooling tray. I couldn’t wait for them to cool down so I could eat these wonderful home-baked bikkies! Finally, they were cool enough to eat, yet still warm enough to fully appreciate the joy of eating freshly-baked bikkies. Salivating, I bit into the first biscuit. And spat it back out. “What the fuck is this shit?”, I spluttered. And then I saw it. The cup of sugar. On the bench. :smack: Oh, the horror!
The really sad part of this is that I was so broke that I couldn’t afford to replace the ingredients until the next AusStudy payment, so I ended up eating the biscuits because I didn’t want to waste the food.
Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that MaxBabe keeps me out of the kitchen! 
Max.
After reading this, I (a poor, lost American) had to find out exactly what “anzac bikkies” were. I found this recipe. For the most part, the cookies sound good, but the thought of “dessicated coconut” made me laugh VERY hard for some reason…
I might try making them, but can I leave out the coconut?
It reminds me of that dessicant stuff they put inside various products. What a memorable name for an ingredient!
Thanksgiving is around the corner, so I might as well add a relative here: My cuz, “Cee.” Last year she made no-carb stuffing and it was absolutely inedible. Cardboard would have tasted better than this stuff. If you’re going to do a Thanksgiving feast, why skimp? She’s also quite good at making lumpy, cold mashed potatoes. Can’t wait to see what she comes up with this year.
My mom was not the most domestic of women. She cooked for the family for years because we had to eat, and when she didn’t have to cook any more, she quit doing it. She wasn’t bad at it, but not very exciting. And it was all very basic. I can’t blame her, really. She had very little sense of smell, and not very strong taste buds, apparently. Partly because of her dentures, I think. Anyway, one of the fond memories my siblings and I share, of holidays at our house, is scraping the burnt bottoms off the rolls. They always got forgotten, either before they went into the oven, in which case we didn’t have them at all, or while they were baking. It just wasn’t Christmas without Mom jumping up during dinner, exclaiming, “The rolls!” and dashing to the kitchen.
She had a recipe for chocolate chip cookie bars that made people weak in the knees. I don’t know where she got it, but it was a big hit every time. At some point she decided it was too rich. So she just cut the sugar by half. She still made the cookies sometimes, and people actually ate them, but they were awful. Dry and hard and almost flavorless. Makes me sad just thinking about it.
When we were in the U.S. and my husband absolutely had to have some ANZAC biscuits, I used regular coconut that you find in the baking aisle of the grocery store. Turned out great. Actually, my husband liked these better than the standard ones because they were kind of soft and chewy, which I think was due to the goo-ier coconut.
I don’t know that you’d want to leave the coconut out all together because it provides the structure to the cookie - I think they’d just be a mess without it.
WhyNot,
Try putting your milk and instant pudding powder into an empty quart jar. Screw on the lid and shake like mad. It’s a tecnique i devised when camping once. It works every time, even on difficult to dissolve powders in icy liquid.
I don’t see the problem. “Dessicated coconut” is just dried coconut, like any other dried fruit. Surely you guys don’t use fresh coconut for cooking, do you?
A Hamburger Helper question - I didn’t see the step in the explanation where the pasta was cooked. Presumably the pasta’s boiled, then you put the mince-meat / hamburger sauce on top, right? So why would anyone buy this if all you get is some pasta and a little seasoning for the meat sauce? I mean, pasta costs only a dollar or so and it’s easy to cook. Also, do you add anything to the meat in the sauce? Is it just meat and seasoning? No tomatoes, onions, garlic?
Atticus, it’s been decades since I ate this stuff, but you brown the hamburger, then add water and the powdered sauce mix, stir, cover, bring to a boil and simmer. That’s all there is. Why would anyone buy it? Beats the heck out of me! Maybe it’s because it’s so unappealing an idea to eat hamburger by itself.
Sorry, hit the wrong button. What I wanted to say is, you brown the hamburger, drain it, then add water, the pasta and the powdered sauce mix. The rest is the same.
That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard! You boil the pasta WITH the meat!? There is no other flavouring?! That’s an offense to all that is holy!
Dessicated coconut is very dry, more the consistency of what we would call toasted coconut in the U.S., but not browned like toasted coconut is. The coconut available in the U.S. is dried, but not nearly to the extent that Australian coconut is. I think sugar or something might be added, too, because it’s moist…kind of sticky.