Clearing Cooking Confusion!

My dancing buddy, Deb, told me a story about her youngest daughter the other day. Now her daughter is one of these kids who takes everything you say very LITERALLY!! So ... when her teacher said to her, "Next year you'll be learning another language, you'll be learning German." The little girl looked concerned and said, "I don't want to learn German, I want to keep learning English." When the teacher pointed out to her that, in Australia we already speak English, the little girl replied, "No we don't, we speak Australian!"

Well ... after posting my recipe for Choc Chip Cookies, I'm feeling a bit like Deb's daughter! Who'd have thought that something as simple as a bickie recipe could get so complicated - and lead to lots of giggles about the differences in labels, terms and measurements!! So, to help clarify things a little for my overseas visitors, I went in search of some cooking measurement conversions and found this web site which is VERY handy, in fact, I shall be adding it to my favourites list for future reference! You see, I have a number of recipe books where I have to convert them from "American" into "Australian"! Tee! Hee! Hee! One recipe book, a fabulous one in a series called "Mug 'Ems", had obviously brought lots of confused feedback to the Australian distributors before, because they had added an explanatory page to the front which included the measurement conversions, as well as the 'Australian' equivalent of certain ingredients. It didn't, however, tell me how to explain to one of my new American friends what a 'sultana' is!! Hmmm, how do you explain something that you've just always accepted as part of your cooking ingredients list?!?! They're like a small raisin - sort of - in size, they're somewhere between a current and a raisin ... oh, here's a photo!!


Hope that helps!! Whew! I dare say there are lots of other sites on the web that will give cooking conversions, this was just the clearest one I found. Any further cooking questions, send 'em on in and I'll try to answer them - I feel a bit like Jamie Oliver, without the funny accent!! Tee! Hee! Hee!

By the way, do you like the apron I've used as the backdrop for all my cooking hardware up the top of the post? It's one of those wonderful 'make do' aprons made during lean times by my beloved Geek Boy's grandmother (who is still going strong at 93!!) I've got a couple of other old aprons from my great-grandmothers displayed on my sewing room wall, because they were just too pretty to put in a drawer somewhere! Mind you, I should take a leaf out of our grandmothers'/great-grandmothers/' books and wear an apron when I cook, because I'm a bit like the cartoon Tasmanian Devil, "Taz", in the kitchen!! Flour everywhere, lids off things and my poor cook book has spill-spots all over the pages of favourite recipes. And I usually end up wiping my hands on either a tea-towel that I then have to wash, or my clothes because I'm in a hurry and can't find the cloth. Perhaps an apron would save my clothes from UCS's - Unidentified Cooking Stains!! Or maybe I'm just a grot!! At least the food always tastes good, and that's the main thing!

Anyways ... I shall sign off for now and go make myself a cuppa and munch one of my bickies, I think! Happy cooking and be sure to let me know what you think of the resulting bickies! Oooooh! And don't forget to leave a comment on Monday's post to go into my 50th post prize draw before Friday! I've been enjoying getting comments from new friends already and I know there are a lot more 'sneak peekers' out there who've not said 'g'day' before, so I hope they'll leave a comment to join the draw too. (I've seen these fringe dwellers referred to as 'lurkers' before, but that sounds a bit sinister, so I thought 'sneak peekers' was a nicer title for non-commenting visitors!!) Til next time, Bear Hugs!

CHEERS!
KRIS