What I've been up to.....

Not quite the same thing. I doubt you would want to be caught eating any of those things sans knife or fork and dripping from a napkin, while walking along in the street and carrying an attaché case or a purse.

Lucille

Ok - haven't had to go that far of hockey this year - yet!

You were talking so-called comfort food, not how you eat what !

Well, get busy, girlfriend. Order some kidney from your butcher, get him to order it whole (with the suet round it) and get started. Hint, I only make S & K pie these days, and then I cook the meat either in the Crock Pot or the pressure cooker, and finish the pastry in the oven, but if you want a real pudding, you could cook the meat that way, make up your suet pastry, fill it with cooked meat etc, and cook it in the microwave - takes about five or nine minutes, depending on size.

As for kippers, I used to buy all kinds of things like that in a Brit import store just north of Tampa. However, there are several of them around FL (Google is your friend!).

Nowadays I buy them in a store which started out as mostly Indian here in New Orleans - well, in the 'burbs, actually, but close enough - and they carry all kinds of Brit foods if you are willing to pay the price. For Christmas, I bought Cadbury;s chocolate, Quality Street, McVitie's and Crawford's biscuits, an Xmas pud, and I always have Branston Pickle and things like that in the house.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.

That is bastardization at it's worst - the full flavour of steak and kidney pudding IS the fact it has gently steamed from dawn to dusk. The best I ever made were at the cottage, I would put it on the wood stove after supper for supper the next day. The puds were famous, the flavour wonderful!

WEll, I used to make a S&K pie with the pressure cooker. The late DH really liked it. But a pud is an entirely different kettle of fish so to speak. It has suet as part of the inner shell of the pud and is steamed witha pudding cloth over the top of the bowl.(oops almost put an extra e in there which brings us to haggis which I love.).. I can promise you that I gravely doubt that you can get anything here in the US even remotely resembling some of the English ingredients. The LLDH really loved the pie....then my Mum made the pud on one trip to the UK...........................that was the end of that.

Kippers are not the horrid things you buy in cans/tins; or procesed for the US market. Maybe living at Holy Loch, on Loch Fyne helped to purify my taste.

If I can't have the real thing.............then I just don't want it.

Gillian

For a short while we had a Marks and Sparks in Halifax and joy - Loch Fyne kippers. Although NSians catch herring and smoke them they are still not what I would call kippered.

Surely you can get steak and kidney ? It's actually been awhile since I have made the suet crust with suet, hard to obtain here and I have developed a method using either lard or for lesser calories, Crisco. Tastes great (still has to have that long cooking though) and even better fried up later lol

Guess what I am making tomorrow for dessert ? Treacle pud by request of my SIL.

Aha! Aromatherapy. You seem to be sayng that you prefer the smell of the pud (and the steaming up o the kitchen) to the taste of the actual pud.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans

I make that in the microwave, too. Not often, as dh has to watch his intake because of diabetes, but we have it occasionally. Yes, I can buy both Golden Syrup and black treacle in my local import shop. BTW, I also use the microwave oven to make the custard - never any burned milk around here these days. The flavor of both items is just as good as the long method, and in this house, food on the table is more important than how long it took to get there.

Yes, I fire up the stove once a week, even in the hottest summer, to bake the bread, but I don't believe in doing things the old fashioned way if there is a better modern one. OTOH the slow cooker is magnificent for doing things like stewing meat, and it never burns anything either, and I can just fix it and forget it. Now THERE is an aroma for you. Just put the meat in it at night and go to bed. Next morning, a wonderful smelling kitchen.

Olweyn Mary in New Orleans.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.

Not at all - plus I don't know about nuking them but my kitchen or cottage was never steamed up. You must have been doing something wrong.

No way. The kitchen is bound to getr a little steamy when you steam puddings for hours on end - unless, of course, you have such dry heat in your house that the atmosphere is crying out for a humidifier, in which case it is not good for you or your skin.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans

None of that is correct - we are very normal in Halifax - it's odd - everytime you talk about how you cook and what you cook, I am glad I am not eating it !

My, my, you ARE feeling crabby today. Reminds me of a late unlamented aquaintance who always knew better than anyone else, whatever the subject, and who insisted on living firmly in the nineteenth century while the rest of moved on to the twentyfirst. Except, that is, when the latest technology suited her purposes, when she then demanded it from her unfortunate family.

Never mind, dear, I'll leave you alone and let you work off your spleen all by yourself.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans

Lucretia, not everyone on this NG lives in a climate like yours. Olwyn Mary lives in New Orleans, where it's hot most of the year, and humid all of the year.

The climate in Halifax is much drier and cooler. If Olwyn Mary says that steaming a pud makes her kitchen damp, why do you find it difficult to believe her? She cooks there, you don't.

-- Jenn Ridley : snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com WIP: Poppies (Art-Stitch), two knitted tops, Oriental Butterfly Most recently Finished: Floral Sampler, Insect Sampler

That may well be why she steams her kitchen up - but I can assure you she is incorrect, totally incorrect, when she tells me mine steams up!

Quite, but if you read what she actually said, she was not referring to her kitchen, but mine ! Well, she did manage to say "unless, of course, you have such dry heat in your house that the atmosphere is crying out for a humidifier, in which case it is not good for you or your skin."

So I suggest you crank on to her !

I didn't know Ben Frankins still existed. They're like an old time Five and Dime.

Elizabeth

There are a few left, this one is part of an Ace Hardware and has Carhart clothes and other stuff as well. I understand there is a still a CraftMania, which was a like BF....

Cheryl