Readers' Tips
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We do like to share around here: and this is your chance to share your top tips with other Public Address readers -- better recipes; ways to save effort, money and time; shortcuts; hidden gems; painless solutions -- in pursuit of a happier planet.
147 Responses
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Vegetarianism/Veganism - It's a tough road to hoe in this country - not the choice but the reactionary responses - but consider these words from some pretty wise souls:
"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
Pythagoras, mathematician"The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men."
Leonardo da Vinci, artist and scientist"To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime."
Romain Rolland, author, Nobel Prize 1915"If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth -- beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals -- would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals?"
George Bernard Shaw, playwright, Nobel Prize 1925"What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
Jeremy Bentham, philosopher"In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought."
Isaac Bashevis Singer, author, Nobel Prize 1978"Our task must be to free ourselves . . . by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel Prize 1921"I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being."
Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist"As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields."
"What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty."
Leo Tolstoy author"I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect...always when I have done I feel it would have been better if I had not fished."
Henry David Thoreau, author"While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?"
"Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research."
George Bernard Shaw"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
"To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being."
Mahatma Gandhi, statesman and philosopher"I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't...The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further."
Mark Twain, author"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
Thomas Edison, inventorFor some very well considered discussions on the topic, I highly recommend listening to a few of these podcasts
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So um... who's game to post a lamb recipe now?
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I'll do that, Andrew. Mostly because I rather dislike arguments from authority.
Rather than putting the whole post here, mostly because it's about 1500 words long, and it comes with piccies too, here's a recipe for lamb galette which fortuitously I put onto my own blog just the day before yesterday.
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Oh. I didn't know this was a 'guilt the crap out of you all' thread. I thought we kept all our guilt-tripping to 'Medical Matters' nowadays...
Trivially, I was just going to let you all know that you can get your car registration thingies online at landtransport.govt.nz, instead of standing in a queue at the post office. They send them to you in the mail. Never leave your computer again! (Except to, erm, collect the mail.)
(Of course, you might all know this already, being badass online citizens of the world and whatnot, but whenever I bring it up in front of a random group of people, there's always a large percentage of the group which says 'oh really? I didn't know that!' So. Thought I'd mention it.)
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Nice one Deborah, I might try that. I'm too lazy to make myu own pastry though.
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Lamb Saag
Ingredients
1 long green chilies
3 garlic cloves, chopped
2 cm fresh ginger, grated
3 tablespools oil
1 kg boneless lamb, cubed
1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 cinnamon stick
6 cardamom pods
2 onions, chopped
2 teaspoons, ground turmeric
1 teaspoon, ground cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground coriander
2 bay leaves
2 cups beef stock
1 bunch english spinach, de-stalked and finely shredded (I use food processor)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon fresh coriander, chopped
1/3 cup plain yogurt1. Remove seeds and white membrane from the chili and chop finely.
2. Set aside with garlic and ginger.
3. Heat 2 Tbl oil in frying pan/wok and brown the lamb in batches, drain on paper towel.
4. In a dry frying pan/wok, combine fenugreek, cumin, mustard, cinnamon, and cardamom.
5. Cook for 1 minute or until seeds start to pop. (You have wee while between seeds popping and burning, which you don't want)
6. Set aside. Heat remaining oil and cook onion until softened, 3-4 minutes, then add roasted spices.
7. Add garlic, ginger, chilli, tumeric, cumin, chilli powder, coriander, and bay leaves to onion.
8. Cook for a minute, then add lamb and stock.
9. Bring to boil, then reduce heat to low and cook, covered, for > 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
10. Add spinach and salt, cook for 5 more minutes, or until spinach is wilted.
11. Stir in coriander and yogurt, discard cinnamon stick and bay leaves, and serve.
My mods and notes:
* The chef at an Indian takeaway in Australia told me that "fenugreek and spinach is the heart of a saag". Consequently, I go hard on the spinach (two or three bunches) and slop in more fenugreek than the recipe calls for.
* He also said the longer and slower you can cook it, the better it tastes. So I drop the element down to 1 after bringing it to the boil, and leave it there for two hours at least.
* You can cook the spinach for more than 5 minutes. I try to have at least 15. The chef in Australia had it in there for hours.
* I dice the onions.
* I've used beef instead of lamb, with little suffering. I buy bags of diced meat from the butchers, so I don't know if any particular cut is preferable if you're doing it yourself.
* I love garlic, so I end up chopping in four or five cloves.
* Step 7 leaves you with a really dry powdery grot in the wok, which can easily form a coating on the bottom of the wok. It seems really weird, but it works out ok--when you add the water, the grot can be scraped off.
* I'm unsure what a cardamon pod is, but the seeds I have are about a cm long and very fibrous. Because they don't decompose in the cooking, they're bastards to find in your mouth, and they're really hard to identify before you've eaten them. My next innovation will be a wee muslin bag in which I can put the bay leaves, cinnamon sticks, and cardamom pods during the cooking, so they'll be easy to fish out.
* I use green herb stock when I run out of beef stock, and there's no appreciable difference. Salty stock water is the important bit, I guess.
* The yogurt gives it the creamy green colour you're familiar with, the spinach gives it the texture. I've never been able to hand chop the spinach fine enough--the food processor is a blessing here.
* I add salt with the spinach, until it tastes a wee bit too salty. The yogurt nicely takes the salt edge off. Salting is the bit I find hardest to judge, to be honest--I always hope like hell it won't suck, and it hasn't yet.
* My chillies this time were somewhere between 1 and 1.5 jalapenos, without the whites removed, and it had a lovely glow. I didn't add any extra chilli powder. -
Really? I didn't know that, thanks Danielle.
Closed captions for the Deaf. When someone is being sarcastic, the subtitle will have an exclamation mark in brackets after it (!). After watching a couple of seasons of closed caption Buffy - Whedon, sarcastic, who'd've thought (!) - I'd really like to see this practice catch on more on the net, for all I'd like to think we don't need it.
And here's my parental advice for the week. Do something utterly, recklessly self-indulgent every now and then. I just got my first tattoo yesterday, and I'm a much nicer mummy for it.
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Here ya go, ready made tips #2 - grow your own potatoes in buckets.
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So um... who's game to post a lamb recipe now?
I will!
The ubiquitous Jamie Oliver lamb shanks recipe from The Naked Chef, can be considerably improved upon. Indeed, I'd forgotten how much I'd evolved it until I went back and looked.
For a start, let's do away with the dried oregano (WTF?) and the celery (I hate celery). You're coating those shanks with a generous mixture of:
- Ground/chopped dried chillies (I like the Kaitaia Fire ones)
- Maldon Sea Salt
- Roughly/medium ground coriander seeds
- Chopped fresh rosemaryBefore sealing the well-coated shanks, I like to have made a sauce and drop them straight into the casserole. Now, here's where Jamie and I most notably part ways:
I like an onion gravy as the base of my sauce. Roughly chopped onions, sauteed gently with a couple of heads of star anise, caramelised with a couple of splashes of balsamic vinegar, then sauteed with some flour. I like to bring up the gravy with low-salt chicken stock, heated in advance if I can be bothered. (I'm not really sure if this is how you make onion gravy, but it's what I do.) Then and only then will you add tinned tomatoes or passata.
Simmer gently as you add the shanks from the frypan. Then add as many sliced carrots as you fancy (which is where I come back to Jamie). The carrots add a wonderful sweetness to the dish. Pop the whole thing in the over and braise gently for 2-3 hours.
I should note that these days I generally make this recipe with good, lean shoulder chops from the Westmere butcher. It's more practical, just as nice and doesn't take as long to cook to tenderness.
Also: Can't be arsed with the mess of mashed potatoes to accompany? Try couscous, or sliced rounds of potato, blanched, seasoned, spread out in an oven dish and slow-cooked for 60-90 mins.
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Fantastic, thanks, Andrew. I've been wanting to try something like that for a long time, especially because the potato supply here is Adelaide is very disappointing.
Jersey Bennys. My favourite. I can't get them here.
http://inastrangeland.wordpress.com/2008/02/05/dashes-not-lines/ about a month after we shifted to Adelaide.
And it’s the little things I miss. Kumara. Australian sweet potatoes just aren’t the same. Getting a choice of potato varieties at the supermarket. I’m used to getting nadines or agria or desiree or jersey benny pototoes, depending on what I’m cooking. Here it’s red potatoes, or white potatoes, and virtually nothing else, even at the famed Adelaide Central Markets. Again, no doubt sooner or later I will find a place that sells different varieties, but in the meantime, it’s something to grumble about.
I still haven't found anything as good as Agria potatoes, and all too often, even at the markets, all I can get is desirees or colibans.
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Really? I didn't know that, thanks Danielle.
I'm pretty sure I didn't know that either. But my darling probably does. She's the sensible one ...
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I've only done it with jersey bennys (potatoes, I've grown yams like this too), they work well, all year round even (Wgtn weather).
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I've only done it with jersey bennys (potatoes, I've grown yams like this too), they work well, all year round even (Wgtn weather).
Like Deborah, I love agrias, they're so reliable. I wasn't going to put any in this year because we're probably moving in a few months. But in buckets, I can take 'em with me...
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Hmmm... so you can do a bucket every three weeks, but it takes a month or two or three? How much room and how many buckets would you need to maintain year-round potatoes?? (Our balcony is a bit small...)
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I've never heard og agrias! Will look out for them though - or I'll ask the chief gardener & shopper to look out for them anyway.
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Closed captions for the Deaf. When someone is being sarcastic, the subtitle will have an exclamation mark in brackets after it (!). After watching a couple of seasons of closed caption Buffy - Whedon, sarcastic, who'd've thought (!) - I'd really like to see this practice catch on more on the net, for all I'd like to think we don't need it.
I was watching a DVD last night and for some reason it started with subtitles on. So I went into languages, and turned it off.
There were three options for subtitles:
1. English
2. English for the hearing impaired.
3. Off.At the time I thought it very strange that hearing impaired had different subtitles than the rest of us, but I guess other sound effects would be included.
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How much room and how many buckets would you need to maintain year-round potatoes??
Depends how many potatoes you eat :) I used to have 6 going at a time, & that kept us (3 adults) pretty sorted. These days we eat very few potatoes compared to then & I grow a couple of buckets a year & supplement from the local vegie outlet.
Thinking of planting a row in tyres later this year though - maybe after I source some old tyres.
But I checked, they take 10-12 weeks from planting to harvest, so 2-3 months was right.
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but I guess other sound effects would be included.
Oh yes, down to comments on the soundtrack - "trumpet music ends with flourish".
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i'll buck the trend in solidarity with michael, here's a recipe for a vegetarian, how to cure the flu pasta.
it's an absolute cracker.
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I might run a few buckets at my folks' place and a couple extras at ours, then.
Can't wait to try it. Please, more tips like this!
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At the time I thought it very strange that hearing impaired had different subtitles than the rest of us, but I guess other sound effects would be included.
Indeed, it includes important sound effects or anything an on-screen character reacts to - ringing phone, slamming door, distant scream, etc.
The trick sometimes is to not get these confused with the full descriptive subtitles that describe what's happening on the screen. I don't grok the purpose of these - surely if you can't see what's happening, you also can't see the subtitles, but I'm bound to be missing something here.
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And it’s the little things I miss. Kumara. Australian sweet potatoes just aren’t the same.
Too right they're not! And where's all the Feijoas for crissakes? Thank goodness for the Phoenix brand of drinks.
Andrew, can you start growing potatoes by this method anytime of the year?
I've got a simple recipe for puttanesca which can be very quickly prepared and gets pretty good reviews:
- 5 to 6 good sized cloves of garlic, diced
- generous amount of olive oil
- two anchovy fillets
- one tin of good quality tomatoes, diced (or around 8 fresh tomatoes, blanched with skins and seeds removed and then diced)
- at least a teaspoon of good bottled chillis (fresh is great if you can be bothered)
- at least 300 grams of olives (best to start with quality kalamatas and take out the stone)
- tablespoon of capers
- pasta of your choosing (penne's good)
- parmesan and bread to serveIn the olive oil, gently saute garlic, anchovy and chilli. Add the tomatoes and bring to simmer. Start the pasta around now. Add coarsely diced olives. Reduce to by about a third. Just as you drain the pasta, add the capers to the puttanesca. Serve with parmesan and some bread.
You can play around with the garlic and chilli to suit tastes but I'd recommend against excluding the anchovy; without them, the dish lacks a little something.
With appropriate chilli modifications, kids love this dish!
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Tempted to post a how to grow lambs in small cages... but I suppose that'd be pushing it a bit.
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Then there's always Ms Enid Tak-Entity's tips on how to minimise pain during waxing.
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Andrew, can you start growing potatoes by this method anytime of the year?
Yep, I don't know when official potato growing season is, but when I heard about this trick, they said grow them all year round & it seems to work.
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