Things That Annoy Me, But Shouldn't

Yes. A shame. However, it's pretty indigenous here, although it does require a thriving lamb/mutton production. I think Canadians and Americans eat more beef and pork in proportion to lamb, don't they? BTW, that tinned stuff is pretty horrible, compared to the real thing! If you ever visit Scotland, go for a locally-produced haggis if you can. There is a lot of competition to produce 'the best' haggis. My own preference is (or rather was, as I can't eat it any more due to a recently-developed allergy to oats!) for Cockburn's haggis, produced in Dingwall. But there are many many others that are simply delicious. ALWAYS served with mashed potatoes and 'neeps,' ...yellow turnips/rutabagas. There is something about the three dishes together that is irresistible. It's traditional to take all three on the fork at the same time.

 

Definitely. My family's farm used to keep sheep and it was sometimes hard to get rid of all the lambs come spring. I liked it, but it's also fattier than beef and most people I know think that it's super unhealthy or something, even though you can eat far less at a sitting because of it.

 

Yes. It's very very high in cholesterol. I eat very little meat at all, and very little lamb or mutton. But once in a while ...hey....

 

Midwestern American here, I've never really taken to the taste of lamb, although we did have it occasionally growing up. The only ways I like to eat it are either in gyros (Chicago style, never had the real Greek version) or doner kebab. Something about the way the folks along the Mediterranean spice and cook it makes it quite nice, but (for example) the one UK "roast lamb supper" I had was horrible. Home-cooked by an Englishwoman, so I have no idea how close it hewed to the ideal, but the other guests seemed to enjoy it.

De gustibus non est disputandum.

 

I accidentally read this as "Donner Kebab" and had no idea if that was appropriate or not, but hey, as long as it's a party.

I like my lamb cut into chops and given a nice sear on a cast iron skillet. Maybe a bit of salt and pepper and some fresh mint rubbed into it. Oddly enough I don't really like garlic with it unless it's a bitter, late season garlic. It's a really flavourful meat, though, so it doesn't really need a lot of spice. Maybe some red wine.

 

There's an album name right there, pity cover art is dead.

 

I think you're conflating the measurements with the tools... both imperial and metric have terms for measuring weight, volume, etc. (It's just that the metric terms make sense and fit together well). There's no reason you couldn't have measuring spoons that measure metric volumes... in fact, I just checked, and mine do. My teaspoon, for example, measures 1 tsp/5ml.

I'm not sure why NA tends to use volume while the rest of the world, I think, tends to use weights, but I don't think we can blame the imperial/metric systems for it. (And I have plenty of recipes that call for butter based on weight, not volume, so it's not like we're completely pure over here, either! 5 cups of flour and 1/4 pound of butter, in the same recipe! It's fine as long as I've got the measurements on the stick of butter, but it'd be a pain in the ass if I didn't.)

 

People who don't understand humor.

You don't have to think that I'm funny, but if you take everything I say/write (even with all the emojis in the world) serious then we won't be able to communicate.

 

Oh yes, you're right. We've got a very old measuring pitcher that is set up in metrics. Might be the best of both worlds, actually. The ease of a physical cup or pitcher for volume, but a different content level. Of course all recipes would have to be rejigged for certain things, like EGGS! As @Homer Potvin pointed out, it boils down to measuring ingredients by volume or weight. I do agree with him that, as an experienced cook, I think the 'volume' method (whether metric or otherwise) is superior to the weight method for just about everything but solid fats.

 

Japan doesn't put measure marks on their butter, but it comes in a block which I'm fairly sure is the equivalent of two sticks of US butter, and I grew up with the marks, so I'm okay with eyeballing things.

The thing that gets me about metrics is that they just seem so damn specific. If I'm asked for 1 teaspoon (tsp, abbreviated in Japanese [using Chinese characters] as a "small spoon"), I feel confident with a little bit of slop, like up to thirty or forty percent ("heaping" teaspoonful) over, but if you tell me I need 5ml, I'm back to junior high school physics trying to remember which part of the meniscus to read from.....

 

So - butter in 'sticks'
- flour in 'cups'

Beer in 'bags?' Shoes are 'merely dependent on the number of toes, sir.' Et cetera.

 

I always thought butter came in knobs.

 

I was fourteen at the time, (this was 1968) I was to spend four weeks with a British host family. I was (I thought) well prepared. We had made paper coins on our English lessons so you could handle the 12 penny/shilling, 20 shilling/pound. Then there was crowns also but I only think I saw half of them 2s6p? And there were guinness, 21 shillings?

I had mastered inches 12 to a feet, and 3 feet to a yard and 1760 yards to a mile.

Volumes we hadn't cowered that much. Gallon and pints, 8 to a gallon.

This to someone that never seen anything but metrics.

Mike, the father in my host family, used to run a pub. He saw a his task in life to educate me on important things. So he tried to teach me about finer scales for volumes how much is a double whiskey etc. Maybe it was the alcohol related view, but I never learnt that. For several years though, I could tell the different ways you could be ‘burned’ in cricket, as this was also something Mike thought was essential to know.

I have always loved England, you just have to get used to it.

 

@Iain Aschendale this may help some if you are converting butter standard based on the measure.
(May have to use a ruler for precise cuts, but I think it is doable based on stick dimensions.)

 

There's a particular facebook group for writing that I joined a while ago, and I can't help but get the impression that it's a bit of a pyramid scheme (in a loose sense of the phrase).

It's a valuable community for many, I'm sure, despite the overwhelming quantities of people who join just to spam their naff poetry and escape into the night upon catching the slightest bit of criticism. That said, the head honcho rarely misses a chance to mention that he edits (and no one can really argue against self promotion if you have the platform).
The main issue I have is that there are frequent anthology releases by this group, and every few months, everyone is whipped up into a furore about them, submitting them, panicking about acceptances, editing, all that jazz. The stories? Selected by Mr Honcho. The anthology? Published by Mr Honcho. The whipping? Largely instigated by Mr Honcho and cronies.
Then we get the inevitable flood of "gee willakers, I didn't get in" posts, oft replied to with a "better luck next time, btw I edit " by Mr Honcho.
The fact that, this being on facebook, the level of writing tends to be pretty abysmal, does lead to feel like the whole thing's just a bit predatory. Trawl a bunch of minnows into one place, and if you're lucky one or two will spit something out that you can put into your anthology, and the others are likely to just buy it thanks to the hype.

I've seen many other groups, on Facebook and no, that achieve much the same thing without the same icky, oligarchic undertones.

 

Do you think this thread runs through the whole scene - from competitions, big ones, through to ‘editorial services’ on the writing sites through to anthology publishers? No business, no show? :/

@Niall, answer me!

 

Was I supposed to print that out, cuz now my screen is all buttery

I can eyeball it pretty well though, and while that scale is useful if your butter is US standard size (about 1"x1", IIRC), Japanese butter is more rectangular, about a double-wide stick.

Don't have anything for scale, but this is the pack:



And here's a "stick" that someone has sliced:

 

No. Beer in acre-feet.

 

When you're out somewhere and sneeze like I do, 6-12 times in a row (I have no idea why, that's just how I sneeze) and some stranger thinks it's funny to say "bless you" after each sneeze, so everyone looks at you and you feel like even more of a specimen than you did originally.

 

I thought beer came in 'balls' when it was first harvested.

 

Correct, nothing beats a beer tree in one's greenhouse.

 

I thought everyone bought butter by the tub (bucket) or is that just here in Texas where we still don't believe in heart attacks?

 

That's margarine