The stuff of life

Many years ago (up to 15, I think), I switched us to the soy and linseed variety of a supermarket bread called Bürgen. It was for specific health reasons, and that decision meant that bread was a part of the life Nigel and I shared. Today it was announced that the Australian owners of the Bürgen brand are withdrawing it from New Zealand. That baked up some memories.

I suggested to Nigel that we switch to the bread because its soy and linseed were good for heart health, and especially because at the time it was the only low GI bread sold in supermarkets (this was well before my cardiac stent). Nigel and I ended up having some nearly every morning after that—in fact, it was part of Nigel’s weekday breakfasts for the last several years of his life (usually prepared by me): Peanut butter and jam on toast, and put on a plastic plate so he could bring it in the car on his commute to the office, and he’d use an old tea towel as a bib so he wouldn’t drop any on his work shirt. Because he’d often forget to bring them back into the house when he came home, he’d sometimes bring in a stack of plates and tea towels for me to deal with—and several times I had to go out to his car to collect them myself because we were starting to run out of the supplies (I mentioned all this in a a 2023 post (forst iterm).

After Nigel died I moved to Kirikiriroa-Hamilton and noticed that particular variety of bread was getting harder and harder to find, especially at my local Woolworths, where it was often out of stock (I could get it for more often by home delivery from Woolies, or from the nearest New World). So, I started using my breadmaker sometimes, and then started experimenting with other supermarket brands, including others with soy and linseed. That led to a bit of a revelation.

I was surprised at how much more fibre per 100 grams other brands had than the Bürgen loaf we’d always bought. In fact, I thought about blogging about that, since I’d talked about the bread and it also relates to my continuing health journey. If I’d done that post, I would’ve mentioned that the Bürgen Soy and Linseed bread has 4.4 grams of fibre per 100 grams of bread, along with 347g of sodium per 100g, and total cabs of 27.6g per 100 grams. This compares to the bread I usually buy these days, a “lower carb” loaf: Fibre is 8.9g per 100g, sodium is 355g per 100g, and total carbs is 24.8g per 100g. Well, at least the fibre of the current bread is a lot higher. But, there’s more!

As it happens, I’ve been learning a lot lately about healthier eating, and I learned that if you freeze bread, the carbs are turned into what’s called “resistant starch”, which is important because the body can’t break it down as quickly as normal starch, and that means the body treats it more like dietary fiber, which reduces the bread's glycemic index (GI), reducing blood sugar spikes (and lower GI bread was one of the reasons we switched to the Bürgen all those years ago). Bonus fact: refrigerating cooked pasta or white rice overnight does the same thing for them, and that doesn’t change when you re-heat it the next day. I definitely plan on starting to keep my bread in the freezer, but I need to clear space—and I only learned about these “resistant starch” tricks in the past week, so I’m cutting myself some slack on this.

in the past couplpe years, and probably partly because it was often difficult to get the Bürgen bread here in Hamilton, I gradually became less enthused about the bread we’d had for all those years, so I doubt I’ll miss it. However, the Bürgen slice size was smaller than most supermarket breads, and that I will miss.

Seeing the announcement this morning made me think of two things. First, how even something as small (literally) as a loaf of supermarket bread can be a constant in our lives. The other thing was that I really ought to resume trying to find a breadmaker recipe that I actually like (the results have been mostly “meh” for me for several years, which is why I hardly ever make bread any more). I know I probably won’t do that, though—there are far too many other things demanding my time, attention, and my sometimes limited energy. Besides, there are plenty of options available already made for me.

Yes, all that. But what I wouldn’t give to still be making peanut butter and jam on toast for Nigel. Of course.

Framing my egg choices

It’s not unusual for me to revist ttopics I talked about in previous posts, and it’s usually because something’s changed or I have new information. This post is about both. I actually had two cooking-related posts planned for last month, but only one made it onto the blog, and that one was without the relevant photos. I worked on the other one at the end of last month, and it was meant to be about revisiting my past—until I discovered something that meant I needed to start over, and that’s where this story truly begins.

In two different posts I talked about a breakfast meal Nigel called “Toasty Eggs”, which is basically a fried egg cooked inside a piece of bread with a round hole cut in the middle. It’s unhealthy, but also really nice, and I’m sure part of that is just because of the nostalgia. Both of the posts I mentioned the meal in were about memory.

In the first of the two posts, from October 2023, I talked about it in connection with my memories of Nigel and also from my childhood, and I talked about two things that struck me when I looked at the post last month. In that post, I mentioned how challenging I found making it because:

The hole in the bread had to be big enough to contain the egg, but not big enough to compromise the structural integrity of the bread frame—it was delicate work. Then, I had to flip it at exactly the right moment to cook the white on the other side without breaking the yolk, and then cooking it just long enough to cook the white without overcooking the yolk.

The second thing I noticed was that I mentioned the children’s cookbook we had in the house when I was growing up, which I later found online as a facsimile edition, something I talked about back in January, and I even referred to my 2023 post and how the cookbook had confirmed my memory of the book calling the dish “eggs in a frame”. However, neither in January nor since did I ever actually read the recipe—until I was getting ready for the July post that didn’t happen, and it was all because I wanted a photo of the recipe page.

When I actually read the recipe (at right), I saw that it said to cook the bread one side and flip it over before putting the egg into the hole. When I made it in late July, I thought about doing exactly that because I thought it might make the bread stronger before I added the raw egg. When I saw that the recipe said to cook the bread on one side first, I also realised that it would make it unnecessary to flip the bread.

When I make ordinary fried eggs (or poached eggs, for that matter), I break the raw eggs into a ramekin first, both in case the yolk breaks and I need to switch to scrambled eggs, and to make it easier to pour the egg into the pan. For fried eggs, I then add a teaspoon or so of water to the frypan and put a lit over it. The point is to let the steam cook the top of the egg while the hot pan cooks the underside (I saw some TV chef advise that). The lid I use is see-through, and I can watch until the yolk and white is properly set, and over time I’ve worked out by watching it when I can turn off the heat and let the residual heat finish the last few seconds.

I did basically the same thing with the “eggs in a frame” in the photo up top, and it was far easier than it was at any other time in New Zealand: The bread was, indeed, stronger after frying one side first, and the final result was more like a fried egg in a frame, which was the intent. The thing is, though, I know that when I was a little kid I followed recipes precisely, and that means I probably cooked the bread on one side first (and that I probably used butter to fry it in…). And I simply forgot that detail in the decades between when I made it in the USA and when I started making it again in New Zealand. If Nigel minded my mucked-up method, he never said anything—but I know he’d prefer it done the “proper” way.

When I was researching the post in July and read that 2023 blog post, I realised something else: I spelled it “Toasty Egg” because in my mind it was toast-and-egg. While Nigel never wrote down the name (and never had any reason to, of course), I think he’d probably have spelled it “Toastie Egg” because a toasted sandwich (sometimes called “grilled” in the USA, though there are differences) is often called a “toastie” in New Zealand, as in “a cheese toastie” instead of the USA’s “grilled cheese”. In my mind, Nigel used a common NZ term for something with fried bread to name this meal, while I made the name from the two elements in it, not directly connected to any other dish. Nigel would sometimes tease me, joking that, “you Americans are a simple people,” and this is exactly the sort of thing he’d tease me about—and I now know that he wasn’t wrong (to paraphrase a common Kiwi saying).

Back in July, this post was going to be about me making a meal I made as a kid, then again decades later for Nigel, and more recently for myself. I wanted to add the specific cookbook reference I mentioned in 2023, and that led me to a whole bunch of realisations, all of which I may never have connected together if it wasn’t for this blog. And that right there is why I still blog.

Eggs, cooked whatever way, are optional.

Successful return to the past

Yesterday morning I did something I haven’t done for nearly 60 years: I made scrambled eggs in a cast iron pan. That sentence raises so many eyebrows (even for me), that there’s only one logical solution: A blog post. And here we are.

When I was a young boy, my mother used cast iron pans—a larger-sized one, a medium one, and a small one. She also had a large deep-sided pan with a cast iron lid that she called a Dutch oven, but, to modern day me, it was like a very deep fry pan with a lid, though the use is what matters. Her pots, on the other hand, were all aluminium.

At some point around 1970, my parents got an aluminium fry pan with a Teflon coating, and that’s what I used after that—and nearly all my fry pans from that point were also aluminium with a nonstick coating right up until very recently. Some years back, I became aware of the research showing evidence of the potential toxicity of PFAS, the chemicals that are the artificial chemicals that are used in nonstick coating for cookware, but also in flame retardants, waterproofing treatments, carpets, yoga mats, wall paint, adhesives, and lots of other stuff. The stuff stay around in the environment for such an incredibly long time that they’re commonly known as “forever chemicals”. Some PFAS are carcinogens or endocrine disruptors and have been linked to all sorts of health problems. I wanted to move away from non-stick cookware to avoid PFAS.

Sometime between 15 and 20 years ago, Nigel bought us a set of stainless steel pots and pans from an online liquidation auction company, and I still have them all. He later got us a set of name-brand non-stick pots and pans that were all in a line carrying the name of a famous British chef and TV cooking show presenter (the brand and names aren’t relevant to my point). Nigel preferred the non-stick pots and pans, and for a time I was indifferent—though the nonstick frypans were undeniably easier to clean than the stainless steel one we also had.

Around 2015, give or take, I’d started becoming increasingly concerned about the proliferation of chemicals in everyday life—but I still used the non-stick cookware. That all changed after Nigel died and I moved to Hamilton: The hob (cooktop) in my new house was induction and incompatible with the non-stick cookware, apart from the two frypans, which had a steel plate in their bases for better heat capabilities (the pots’ metal were all exclusively aluminium). I gave the pots away, and kept the frypans.

The smaller of the two frypans (the oldest one, which Nigel bought separately) began to lose its non-stickiness, and I knew I needed a replacement. I decided to go back to my roots and buy a NZ-made cast iron fry pan, which I did in 2022. I didn’t mention that here at the time, but I did in 2024 when bought the same company's cast iron dutch oven to replace our older one that was also incompatible with my induction hob.

Cast iron has to be “seasoned” to be used, and over time it develops a natural non-stick surface. However, I only recently started using that pan reasonably often, so I didn’t know if it was non-stick enough. But it was becoming more urgent that I use it because a similarly sized ceramic-coated pan I was using was losing its non-stickability, and I needed an alternative.

It turned out that the cast-iron pan performed very well, with only a little sticking at the edges, where the base meets the wall, which is acceptable to me. It was, in fact, better than either the failed nonstick pan or the ceramic one, and the scrambled eggs stayed together, which is what I was after that day. My next attempt will be to try making fried eggs, and if that’s acceptable I’ll no longer need either the ceramic pan or the last remaining nonstick pan I have, although that one I’ll need to replace regatless because it’s slowly losing its non-stickability, and its surface is starting to get pits in it, which means it’s time for it to go).

I’m still mastering (re-mastering?) the use of cast iron cookware, a lifetime after I last regularly used that kind, but I feel good about this change—actually, it’s not a change as much as it’s going back to my roots. Apparently, this really is a successful return to my past from decades ago, but one that’s been in the works, one way or another, for many years. It’s about time. And patience. And the right cookware.

Before the later salty tale

Sometimes stories have extra dimensions. I recently saw that reality in a story where I hadn’t seen it before—until someone else’s reaction reminded me. That’s a good thing.

Last Sunday I published “A salty story peppered with more”, which was just a simple story about salt and pepper grinders—until I was reminded it wasn’t. My pal Roger Green left a comment on that post:

I had never HEARD of a salt grinder. A pepper grinder I use regularly.

As I said in my reply, “actually, I’d never heard of one until well after I moved to New Zealand.” Naturally, there’s a story there, too.

When I first arrived in New Zealand in 1995, Nigel had the sort of salt container that was common at the time, as well as a supermarket pepper shaker. The photo above shows both, along with a salt pig (stay tuned…). Nigel and I replaced the salt container several times, but what I noticed about it was that there were two settings: Pour a lot, or, maybe, somewhat less: There was no shaker. I found it very difficult to work out how to use the thing (to “sprinkle” salt, I had to make the opening as small as possible). Eventually we switched to salt grinders, something I’ve used ever since.

The pepper shaker is many years old, and I still use it—however, I don’t use it unless I’m mixing a spice blend that requires a certain amount of ground pepper: It’s far easier to use that shaker than to grind pepper and then try to measure it. When it does run out some day, whatever will I do? Probably buy another.

Now, the salt pig: It's a wonderful thing. A salt pig (in New Zealand) is usually an earthenware pot that contains salt. There’s usually a spoon, often wood (as in the photo of mine above), to help dispense the salt. The idea is that salt is always available when cooking, which is useful plenty of times. However, I personally use mine mostly when making pasta (I salt the water once it’s boiling to help keep the pasta from sticking; contrary to popular belief, salting the water before it boils doesn’t make it boil faster—it’s the opposite, actually—but it does, apparently, help prevent the pasta from clumping and sticking together, or, it seems to do so for me).

Nigel wanted a salt pig for a long time, even though they were kind of old fashioned. When we were out and about one day, we saw and bought the one in the photo. I’m pretty sure it was at our last house together (though it could’ve been the house before that), but I have absolutely no memory of where or when we bought it. At the time, it just seemed like a perfectly ordinary thing to do, not worthy of note—so now I have no idea how or when it came into our lives. Even so, I use it all the time.

What this addendum is about, really, is that every story has annexes and anterooms, some of which lead to whatever our current story is. This is one of those times.

When I posted last Sunday, I thought it was a very specific story about very specific things. Roger reminded me that it was actually bigger than that, and, in fact, there was an origin story behind it. I think it’s good to think more broadly about our own stories, even the salty ones. This has been one of those times.

The fruit of my labour

Behold the fruit of my labour! The photograph is of my tomato harvest for this year. While I did grow the tomato, this wasn’t actually the only one, just the biggest. But in away it was most of the harvest. As always, there’s a story to that.

Back in November, after the Labour weekend at the end of October had passed, I bought a 6-cell tray of little beefsteak tomato plants. I put them on my kitchen bench, under the Solatube skylight, and left them there—for months. By the time I was finally ready to plant them, only two survived (yes, I watered them, and I also rotated them periodically to make sure they grew well). There are a lot of reasons I didn’t get to them planted earlier, only some of which are kind of lame, but all of that’s kind of beside the point: It was simply the reality of what happened.

I planted to the two remaining plants in pots. As I have in previous years, but one of them didn’t survive the transplant. The one that did flourished and started producing—but time was running out. I was turning into autumn as the plant grew, and while we had a very mild autumn, it was still autumn. I left the plants to grow as long as I dared, but when nighttime temperatures started to get close to freezing, I picked the tomatoes green and put them in my fruit bowl with some store-bought tomatoes that weren’t quite ripe.

The tomato in the photo was the first to start growing, and was the biggest of the harvest (there were five in total), and it was also the first to start turning red. I had the first one over the weekend, and the others are all now ready, too.

The crop, small though it was, was quite good—sweeter than other varieties of tomato, and nice. Unlike the previous years I grew tomatoes here in Hamilton, I had no issue with blossom-end rot. That may be because of a change I made this year.

After the second year with blighted tomatoes, I did some research and read somewhere that calcium deficiency can cause or aggravate the problem. I also read that ground eggshells mixed into tomato soil increases calcium for the plants, so, I ground up egg shells in a mortar and pestle and mixed it that into the soil before planting the seedlings. I can’t know if that made the difference, but I do know the plant that survived was quite healthy and the tomatoes were as they’re supposed to be (unlike previous years), so when I next grow tomatoes, I’ll again mix ground-up egg shells into the soil.

The economics of this year’s harvest were not ideal, as Kiwis put it in their understated way. Each tomato that I harvested was more expensive than supermarket tomatoes in season—but they were also much better in every way. I like to think of this year’s tomato crop as being “Premium Tomatoes”. My garden, my rules!

For the next season, I plan on doing what I’ve wanted to do every year, but never have: Plan the next growing season while it’s still winter. That way, I’ll know what I’m going to do well before time, down to starting seeds so that the seedlings are ready to be planted-out when it’s warm enough (that method is also cheaper than buying plants…). That’s the plan, and maybe overly optimistic, but this year was an unusual deviation from even my worst years of gardening, so I think some optimism is warranted.

That’s the tale of my mini-harvest of tomatoes this year. All things considered, yes, it wasn’t ideal, but I still learned things, which is always a plus because I always like to keep growing. I just hope that my garden will next season, too.

A salty story peppered with more

Not all the stories in our lives are deep and meaningful, or, often, even worth telling—unless one is a blogger (or similar…), in which case they're "content". In those cases, even small stories may take on a larger roll. Even when they’re "just" about food products.

Many—many—years ago, we bought a salt grinder and a pepper grinder at a supermarket then called Countdown (now called Woolworths New Zealand to align its imagery and marketing with its Australian owner). At the time, one of the store’s own brands was called “Signature Range,” and the salt grinder with that branding is at the right side of the photo at right. Even that has a story.

When I lived in Chicago (roughly 1983 to 1995), I did a lot of my grocery shopping at a supermarket chain called Jewel (or “da Jewels” as some native Chicagoans said it), which is now owned by big US company Albertsons. Jewel started selling a line of Canadian products called ”President’s Choice”. Fast forward some 30 years later and Countdown’s “Signature Range” immediately made me think of the old brand, probably because of the sort of signature-like logo. Countdown began phasing out “Signature Range” and other own brand product names to consolidate their own products lines between 2016 and 2018.

We used the two grinders for many years, refilling them whenever we needed to, which seemed to be fairly often because they were what we used both for cooking and at the table. Over time, we bought other, fancier grinders that would grind both salt and pepper (from different chambers), but we still had and used the Signature Range ones, too, until the pepper grinder broke.

After I moved to Hamilton, I realised that the fancy salt/pepper grinders we had weren’t working as well as they once did, though the Signature Range salt grinder was still going strong. Because I wanted a pepper grinder, I decided to see if Woolworths still sold the grinders, and they do! Well, sort of.

The current Woolworths brand salt and pepper grinders are at the left and centre of the photo above, and they’re different from the old brand: Smaller and noticeably much less well-made. I have a feeling they won’t last very long, certainly nowhere even close to the one or two decades that Signature Range salt grinder has lasted. Still they should last a while, anyway, before I need to find a more permanent solution.

Meanwhile, the veteran salt grinder is now by the hob (cooktop) because, as I recently learned when researching something only barely related to to this story, many chefs prefer courser salt (like that produced by a grinder). Those chefs say that ordinary table salt (like from a shaker) overwhelms dishes with saltiness because it’s finely ground, and so, courser salt is better (some table salt also has additives to prevent caking, among other things, which can affect flavour, too). It turns out that I think those chefs are right, though it hadn’t occurred to me before.

This story is a perfectly ordinary tale about me needing to replace a perfectly ordinary thing, and, as so often happens, that resulted in me remembering things from the past, and also learning new things related to my ordinary tale. Ordinary, yes, but so much of life is “ordinary”. I think that finding the adventure in the ordinary, and also learning new things along the way, makes every day better. That’s my ordinary belief, anyway. Season to taste.

I’m a serial mind-changer

I sometimes change my mind (about any number of things) for reasons like better information, the price of something, or any number of other reasons. Every once in a while I’ll change my mind about something several times. Like about breakfast.

Back in June of last year, I wrote about bran cereal, because I tried a new (to me) one, but decided not to switch brands. However, I later decided that I would switch to the brand, and I talked about that in a follow-up post last November. I’ve now switched back to my original bran.

The fundamental reason for my switch back was the taste: I never actually liked it—it’s more more accurate to say that I tolerated the taste because of the cereal’s somewhat better nutritional profile. As I said last June:

There’s an irony here: Many people I know personally have screwed up their faces at the mere mention of All-Bran, declaring, "it tastes like cardboard", which made me wonder how they knew that. As it turned out, once I tried the Woolworth’s cereal, I understood: It’s not necessary to actually taste cardboard to get the sense that something must taste like cardboard would. To me, the High Fibre Bran was exactly like that

Irony maybe, but the taste never grew on me—in fact, the only actual flavour was the lemon yoghurt (maybe I should say the only pleasant flavour?). I recognised from the very beginning that “Just as I like All-Bran, which many people I know don’t like, it’s logical that other folks may love the High Fibre Bran cereal. To each their own.” Exactly.

In the November 2025 update post, I said:

I decided to continue to buy it—for now: If history is any indicator, it probably isn’t forever, because Woolworths has a habit of dropping it’s own home-brand products, though for all I know, they may just stop exporting them from Australia to New Zealand. In any event, it may not be around forever, but, for now, it’s my choice.

Woolworths has not (yet?) dropped the cereal, but I was nevertheless correct in guessing that “it probably isn’t forever”. I could get all philosophical and say “nothing is forever”, or wharever, but this is actually just about me changing my mind, then changing it again. Like I said: I'm a cereal—sorry, serial—mind-changer.

Important Note: The names of brands/products/companies listed in this post are all registered trademarks, and are used here for purposes of description and clarity. No company or entity provided any support or payment for this blog post, and all products were purchased by me at normal consumer prices. So, the opinions I expressed are my own genuinely held opinions, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the manufacturers, any retailer, or any known human being, alive or dead, real or corporate. Just so we’re clear.

Obsessions

From time to time, I become obsessed with something or other. I’ve probably always been that way, but it was noticeably different in the Covid lockdown era, but then it morphed again, turning into something different and quite useful. But noticed that change only recently.

I should explain what I mean by “obsession”. I don’t mean that in the way that online influencers use the word to describe their focus on the latest trends in fashion, home decor, food, skincare, whatever. On the other hand, what I’m talking about is about a kind of hyperfocus on things, but mine is about stuff for my personal life and usually it isn’t remotely connected to anything trendy.

That out of the way, what I become obsessed with usually refers to things for projects or to solve some problem or other in my home. Like lamps, for example.

During the first Covid lockdown I became obsessed/hyperfocused/whatever with lamps to put on the nightstands either side of the guest bed. This was odd because during lockdowns I couldn’t have guest, so bedside lamps were irrelevant. I ended up ordering a couple inexpensive ones from a discount chain rather than the ones I actually liked because I wanted to see those in person, which I couldn’t do, obviously.

I think the reason I was so obsessed with lamps was because at that time we were all powerless against a disease that we still had no vaccine against. Maybe it gave me a feeling of some control at a time when we had very little of that.

I still have those lamps, so ordering them wasn’t a terrible decision. However, there was one other purchase born of obsession that was a huge mistake: A garden shed I bought online in February 2021. In the weeks that followed, I eventually realised that it was a mistake. In 2022, I sold it at loss just to be rid of it.

That shed debacle was both a low point and a turning point: Since then, I’ve never ordered something expensive merely because I was obsessed about something. I’ve ordered a few things I ended up regretting, but none of them were the result of an obsession, nor were they expensive.

As time has gone on, there’s been a change. I may become obsessed with something and do hours of research to to find the best option—and then I stop without buying anything. I saw a YouTube video in which the person described that sort of thing as enjoying the shopping without actually spending any money. I think that’s true, but it’s also true that doing all the research can make me realise I don’t want the solution I thought I did, but sometimes I realise I already have a usable solution.

The photo up top shows a grill named after a famour boxer. Nigel and I bought it many years ago, and we’d also had an early version of the grill (which was quite large). We used it mostly for making things like Rueben sandwiches, though we also sometimes used it to grill meat. We used it less often as time went on, and I think I may have used it only once since shifting to Kirikiriroa-Hamilton, though my lack of use was mainly because it was hard to get out of the cupboard (I had to get down on the floor and reach into the back of the cupboard).

I recently became obsessed with buying a sandwich press (this Google search shows examples). It’s a kitchen device for making toasted sandwiches, like Reubens and what Americans call “grilled cheese” (called a “cheese toastie” in New Zealand). I wanted to get one years ago, and Nigel didn’t want me to, though he never said why.

I don’t know why, precisely, I became obsessed with getting a sandwich maker, but I was. And then I remembered the red grill I already had. We used it as sandwich press, so I knew it was suitable for that. Last week, I used it to make ham and cheese toasties (using what the supermarket called "ciabatta pockets" instead of regular bread). At first I used the two ribbed grill plates, but then I remembered there was a smooth one for the top grill and switched to that. I think it worked better for the later sandwiches (like what's pictured).

I’ve also realised that the grill would be the best way for me to make burgers. I have a “grill pan”, which has ridges so the grease can drain. However, there’s often a lot of water added to the raw beef mince (aka “ground beef”), and that means the burger is steamed as much as fried. The grill machine has angled grill plates, which allows the grease (and added water…) to drain out. The thing is, I can’t remember if we ever used it for that, but we may not have because we used to have cheeseburgers and melted the cheese on the burger in the pan, so I may need to experiment a bit.

There have been times that similar things happened, but this particular reuse of something I already have is the most recent. I like that I’m getting use out of stuff I already own even more than that I'm not spending money I don’t need to. That’s what’s changed the most for me—and it's so thrifty, too!

Seriously, though, it really is satisfying to come up with solutions for my home using stuff I already have. Sure, I still sometimes spend a lot of time researching options to buy, and sometimes I still buy things, too. As long as it’s not a garden shed, I’m okay with that.

One of my origin stories

Many of us can point to a moment, person, place, or thing that shaped the course of our lives. I have something from my childhood that was one of the starting points for my cooking adventures. And I was able to recapture it.

In October 2023, I wrote about what I called Memory meals”, and in that post I said in passing that “There was also a cookbook for kids in our house”, and that cookbook, first published in 1957, was called Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys and Girls. That cookbook is seared into my mind because it was the first one I ever used, when I was around 7 or 8 at most.

Last year, I was planning on writing a blog post about memories of how I learned to cook various things, and that made me think of the long-gone cookbook I used in childhood. I Googled it thinking there might me an online version of it somewhere, only to find that I could buy an authorised “facsimile edition” that was a faithful reproduction of the original, though the original as a fully spiral bound one. Nevertheless, I ordered the reproduction (pictured up top).

I don’t think I’ve ever been happier with an impulse buy. But more about that later.

I made many things in that cookbook, but the main thing I remember about it is using its recipe to make scrambled eggs (image at right), and I’m pretty sure I made that for my mother as breakfast in bed at least once. In any event, I followed the recipe precisely, because I thought it was important. I was like that for many years after that, until I realised that cooking is about experimentation as much as—or possibly even more than—precision.

My mother was also a big influence in teaching me to cook, and I talked about one specific thing: THE Beef Stew (our family recipe), in a post in July 2023. I still make that, and scrambled eggs, but both are now without a recipe. I’m such a renegade—well, no, I’m just well-practiced—and “practice” is the important part.

The cookbook reproduction looks exactly like what I remembered, with the same charming late 1950 drawing style, a few somewhat oversaturated colour photograph pages, and what must’ve been radical for the times: It featured both boys and girls making the various recipes—well, line drawings of them, but still. I grew up seeing that, and that my dad cooked, too, but the reinforcement from those simple cartoon illustrations shows how much representation matters in pretty much everything.

However, there is a significant difference. The last page in the reproduction, right after the index, is a page entitled “Enjoy your cookbook today”, because “some ingredients are no longer available or have changed.” For example: “Please use only pasteurized eggs or pasteurized egg product…” in two recipes, one of which was eggnog—and as a kid I made that with raw eggs as the recipe called for. Quelle horreur! I survived, apparently.

There aren’t many things I can point to as a starting point in part of my life’s journey, but that cookbook was one of them. And that’s why I was so glad I followed my impulse and bought the cookbook. I’ve said a few times that I have very few “treasures” from my childhood and youth, and so, I have very few touchstones for the journey on how I came to become me. That means I treasure the few things I do have, and that includes this facsimile cookbook. As well it should.

When I mentioned the cookbook in that October 2023 post, it was in the context of a dish I made that, as I remembered it, the cookbook called “eggs in a frame”. It turns out, it really does call it that (and the recipe was on page 66, for the record). Sure, my memory was more reliable when I was decades younger than I am now, but there’s a part of me that’s especially happy to be able to verify that, in fact, my childhood memory was correct. Maybe that, too, shows what a big part of my young, impressionable life that cookbook was. I’m glad about that, too.

Unexpected updates

Apparently, I sometimes do Updates posts. Who knew? At any rate, there are a couple posts that have updates, and both of them were totally unexpected.

The big cover-up

Of my many (many, many…) conundrums (mostly about food), there’s one that has kept popping up: The best way to cover may patio table. Part of the reason I wanted a roof over my patio was so that I wouldn’t have to keep my table and chairs permanently under a cover, but even after it's installed I’ll probably still use a cover in the winter, when it rains a lot and I’m less likely to use the table. However, until then a cover is required at all times.

On May 23 of last year, I talked about needing a new cover for my patio table and chairs, and how I wasn’t sure what I’d do. In the end, put the old patio cover on top of the one that was wearing out, and just taped over the holes. It functioned well for quite awhile, but a few months ago I noticed it was starting to fall apart, and several storms with winds started to shred it. I needed a new cover.

I went to the big box hardware and home centre store where I bought the two old covers, and then I noticed that a higher quality one was on special, and it touted its resistance to UV light, which was the main culprit in the old covers’ deaths. So, I bought the more expensive option (pictured in the photo above, but it’s actually a very dark gray, not the silver gray the photo suggests).

The new cover is the best yet: A kind of heavy vinyl, it doesn’t get whipped around by the wind like the old ones did, and, being a dark colour, it dries quickly when it gets wet in the rain. Had I known, I’d have bought this cover in the first place. When I put it on the table, I put it on top of all the old covers, mainly because storms were on the way. Then I looked around and found chunks of the old cover that the wind had ripped off and thrown into the weeds at the edge of the patio. When the new patio cover is installed, I’ll permanently get rid of what’s left of the old covers.

I changed my mind about food. Again.

Back in June, I published a post called “Cereal selection” about high fibre breakfast cereals I tried. I was pretty dismissive of the Woolworths own-brand, “High Fibre Bran”. However, one thing in that post stuck in my mind. I wrote: “The bottom line for me is that [High Fibre Bran] was better than All-Bran in all the things I monitor, however…” and yet I chose to not switch. I later decided I may have been too dismissive, and I recently tried the High Fibre Bran again precisely because it is healthier for all the things I track, things related to my particular health needs/problems.

So, I decided to continue to buy it—for now: If history is any indicator, it probably isn’t forever, because Woolworths has a habit of dropping it’s own home-brand products, though for all I know, they may just stop exporting them from Australia to New Zealand. In any event, it may not be around forever, but, for now, it’s my choice. [March 31, 2026: This update has an update. Follow the link to see it.]

I probably don’t update posts as much as I “should”, but sometimes updates to old posts surprise me so much that I need to do updates. Both of these two topics are definitely in that category.

My eggs-entricity

I made scrambled eggs on toast for my brunch today. There’s nothing even remotely unusual about that, of course, because I have eggs once or twice most weeks. However, there IS one thing that is a bit unusual, and it’s all about the yolks.

I have eggs several different ways: Poached, fried, scrambled, boiled (soft boiled in Americanese), and hard boiled, as well as using them as an ingredient in various dishes. However, there are times when even the idea of runny yolks repulses me, so on those days poached and fried are out of the question. I should mention here that today’s scrambled eggs were not an example of this: I was just in the mood for scrambled eggs.

This has pretty much been a lifelong thing. For example, back in 1973, when I was 15, my parents took me to the United Kingdom with them. My dad was attending a church-related summer programme in Canterbury, and staying on campus, so my mother and I stayed at a B&B. The host usually served a “full English” breakfast (eggs, toast, bacon, perhaps a sausage, along tea, coffee, or juice. While she sometimes mixed it up a bit, eggs were usually part of it.

The host noticed that I cut the whites away from the yolks, and ate only the whites. Sometimes my mother would have the yolks, but she didn’t usually. My mother told me she could practically see the “wheels turning in her head”, and the host eventually started serving me scrambled eggs (we never asked her to, and I never complained—I don’t think I ever actually spoke to her, actually—my mother spoke for us). I ate all of the scrambled eggs. Unfortunately for me, the host didn’t work out the solution until near the very end of our stay.

The thing about that time (or earlier, for that matter) is that I don’t remember actively disliking, much less avoiding, runny yolks, and the only reason the B&B story is because my mother noticed and talked about it for years afterward. At some point I obviously started eating runny yolks, but I have no idea when that was or why, however, I think that maybe it was because my friends and I would go out for breakfast after we went to the bars, and I wouldn’t have wanted to seem weird by avoiding yolks. I don’t know that for sure, of course, but it’s pretty much the way I would’ve thought in those days, a decade after I avoided yolks at a B&B in Canterbury.

However, there are still some days when the very idea of runny yolks really does repulse me, and on those days scrambled eggs are the only eggs I’ll make. Yes, even I think that’s odd, but it’s also just a part of who I am, so I’m certainly not embarrassed about it (clearly…). But there’s one more odd thing about this: I often think about it when I’m about to cooks some eggs—but only on the days I don’t care about runny yolks (on those days, all options are open). Yeah, it’s weird. And I don’t really care about that.

Another food conundrum, but for Leo

I’m not the only one in this household who has issues finding appropriate food: That problem now includes Leo, too. That’s my boy! Or, something.

For more years than I can remember, we’ve fed our furbabies dry food made by Eukanuba (owned in by Mars Incorporated, except for Europe, apparently). I was recently in the pet store to get Leo some more of his food, and there was a sign saying that “due to changing customer demand” they were discontinuing most of the brand’s dry dog food, though it said they’d be carrying at least one for a dog the size of Leo, though they were out of stock on that day.

Most premium dog food in New Zealand’ is sold through two Australian-owned pet store chains, and I checked online with the other one and found that they, too, seemed to be eliminating all or most of that brand. No other online retailer seemed to sell it, either, but I confirmed that the pet shop I go to still had some of the adult version of Leo’s dry food, but he’s actually been on the senior formula, which is slightly lower in calories, for a bit more than a year. I was running out of Leo’s food, so I bought the adult version to tide him over, and even used the transition method normally used when changing brands—just in case.

In the meantime, I researched alternatives. Many of the dog foods available are made by big US-based corporations, and I was concerned about ongoing availability: If an established brand can disappear, for whatever reason, it could happen again.

I decided to restrict my search for dog food made in Australia or New Zealand, in the hope the shorter supply routes may keep it more available. I chose the Australian one because they have a small dog senior formula, but I’m also going to buy a small bag of the NZ-made one (which is freeze-dried, not a dry food) to use as treats. Hopefully, between the two of them I should be able to keep the same brands for Leo for several years, just as we used Eukanuba for at least 17 years.

This whole thing has required a lot of research, time, and energy, and now I’ll just have to wait and see if Leo likes the new (to him) brand. That transition is still several weeks away, though, because I only bought the stop-gap bag of food a couple weeks ago. On tyhe other hand, that means I can have a few weeks of normality, too, and that’s a good thing.

This is the first time I’ve had to make decisions about Leo’s food—or any furbaby’s food in New Zealand—by myself, and, yes, I found that reality challenging and a bit confronting. I just approached it the same way I do when I need to find a food substitute: I researched the alternatives, found what I felt was the most nutritious option, and made a decision.

I’ve been doing a lot of that deciding thing lately. Huh.

Sunny side up

It’s been extremely rainy in New Zealand lately—shocking news, I know. As usual, I had work-arounds. Eggs among them.

Early last week, I looked at the extended forecast, and saw it was supposed to be rainy until this past Friday. But, we had a run of a few days without rain, so I mowed the lawns on Tuesday—and that went well, fortunately, and on one battery charge.

It was fortunate I mowed the lawns when I did, because the extended forecast kept changing, and the sunny days kept moving farther away. By Friday of last week, the entire week was supposed to be rainy, then by this past Monday we were warned of big storms, especially for the top of the South Island. I decided I wasn’t going anywhere that day.

I started the day by making fried eggs (photo up top). When I shared it on my personal Facebook, I wrote: “My brunch today, the only 'sunny' thing I’ll be seeing today. 🙁”. I then added:

Kirikiriroa-Hamilton is under an Orange rain storm warning, with the potential for very heavy rain and strong winds until the wee hours of the morning. The top of the South Island, however, is under a Red Warning. Basically, an Orange Warning means “be prepared” because storms may be bad, and a Red Warning means “take action” because the storms WILL be bad.

The weather Monday was truly awful: Sometimes heavy rain, strong wind gusts, and steady rain even when it wasn’t raining heavily. I definitely made the right choice to stay home that day.

The extended forecast has pushed out next sunny day out again, to one week from today—July 20. There’s like to be sunny periods over the coming week, but rain is predicted for at least part of every day/ So, yay.

I’ve fully embraced my winter adaptations: I run the dishwasher, washer, and dryer only after 10pm whne the power rate drops to the lowest amount. I need to do this because there aren’t enough sunny hours to get free electricity, both because of all the rain we get in winter, and because the daylight hours are still pretty short.

I’ve also felt cold much of the time this winter, more so than I have in many years. I have no idea why, since the daily high temperatures, while cold, aren’t particularly unusual. Maybe all the rain has made things unusually damp?

Still, one does what one must to cope, and for some folks—like me—it requires a bit more effort. Sometimes even something as simple as well-made “sunny side up” fried eggs can help, too. Just another of my winter adaptations.

A meal built on chance and memory

On Friday night, I made a meal that was one of Nigel’s signature dishes (in the photo at left), one that was his version of a dish served to him in a restaurant when he was living in in Australia. He called it “chicken, mangoes, and cream,” though we usually just called it “CMC”.

He taught me to make it very early in our time together, and I made it dozens of times over the years. In his last years he used to say, “you’re the second-best at making it!”, after him, of course. But none of that is why I made it: I was bored.

It was a Friday night, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted for dinner. I thought about ordering pizza, but the only one I like is a premium NZ chain, and kind of expensive, which wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for the fact the quality varies a lot: Sometimes it’s great, other times, well, they were clearly having a bad night. I decided I wasn’t in the mood to throw the dice.

Instead, I thought I should make something I haven’t made in a long time, and CMC was the ideal choice. It wasn’t my best batch, but that was because the tinned mangoes were a bit sour, which happens sometimes. Even so, it was nice, and I was able to use up a bit of chicken I had in the freezer, and it ended up being a good meal for one.

When I was making it, I remembered some of the times I’d made it over the years, and how much Nigel loved it when I did. He also sometimes “complained” about how when he’d visit a sibling for dinner how he’d often “have it served up to me”. In reality, he was pleased that the family loved it, too. In fact, his mum still asks me to make it.

So, I got to have a meal I seldom make for myself—I think it may have been only the second time I’ve done that, though I’ve made it for family several times. I also used up some chicken in the freezer (I’ve been trying to use up stuff in the freezer because it was WAY overstuffed). Even the UHT cream I used was nearing its “best before” date, so that was a bonus (and the sort of thing that would entice me to say to Nigel that “‘best before’ and ‘use by’ are NOT the same thing,” because he thought—or maybe he just pretended he did—that they were the same thing.

And all of that was because I was dissatisfied with my dinner options last night. I ended up with a yummy win.

Cereal selection

I’ve had many food conundra over the years, including peanut butter, pizza, and bread, among others, but I never expected to have one over my morning cereal. Fortunately, my testing provided the answer.

I have cereal for breakfast several times a week, something I’ve done since childhood. Several years ago, I bought Kellogg’s All-Bran cereal because I wanted to make some bran muffins for Nigel and me. I also had it as cereal because it is a good source of fibre, something that’s important, among other reasons, because it helps control cholesterol.

At some point, I started mixing it with lemon yoghurt and sliced banana, and I really liked it. In more recent years, I started to have the company’s All-Bran Flakes for variety, and sometimes, especially in winter, I had porridge (what in my corner of the USA was called “oatmeal”). The main consistent menu item was the All-Bran, though I had to give up on bananas when my blood pressure medication was changed to one that’s potassium-based (I’m supposed to be careful about potassium, apparently).

A long time ago, I learned that the fibre in my cereal is considered a “prebiotic” which feeds gut bacteria. The live cultures in the yoghurt, are probiotics, of course, which provide good gut bacteria, though somewhat different than the ones that normally live there (the ones in yoghurt generally help with digesting dairy, but they also assist the fibre in helping to keep one's “shipping department” to, um, empty…).

I genuinely liked the cereal, especially when combined with the lemon yoghurt, but it wasn’t perfect. For one thing, if I had it in milk instead of yoghurt it turned mushy pretty quickly. Also, a box seemed pretty expensive, especially as prices started rising, though I bought it anway.

A couple months ago, I was shopping at Woolworths and noticed they had an own-brand cereal that was similar to All-Bran, called “High Fibre Bran”. I was interested because the own-brand was $2.30 a box cheaper, which ain’t nothing. So, I decided to give it a try.

The first thing I noticed was that the box says “Delicious & Crunchy”, and when I tried it, I immediately agreed on the second part of the slogan: It was very crunchy. I tried it with milk, too, to see if it got soggy like All-Bran, and it didn’t. It’s the first part of the description I didn’t agree with: I did not find it “delicious”.

There’s an irony here: Many people I know personally have screwed up their faces at the mere mention of All-Bran, declaring, "it tastes like cardboard", which made me wonder how they knew that. As it turned out, once I tried the Woolworth’s cereal, I understood: It’s not necessary to actually taste cardboard to get the sense that something must taste like cardboard would. To me, the High Fibre Bran was exactly like that. However: Just as I like All-Bran, which many people I know don’t like, it’s logical that other folks may love the High Fibre Bran cereal. To each their own.

I finally ran out of the Woolworths cereal over the weekend and resumed having All-Bran. It turns out, though, they really are quite different.

Both cereals are made in Australia, presumably using some Australian ingredients, but their nutritional profiles are different. To compare products fairly, I never look at the nutritional information per “serving”, but rather per 100g. Since most values are expressed as weight in grams per 100g, that can give us a good idea of what percentage of the product is sugar, fat, etc.

Here’s how the two compare (information comes from their nutrition labels, and was correct at the time I was doing this test). Since they’re both “high fibre” cereals, I’ll start there: My regular brand, All-Bran (“AB”) has 28g of dietary fibre per 100g, and High Fibre Cereal (“HFC”) had a whopping 42.1g per 100g. Another thing I always look at is sugars, and AB has 15.7g of sugars, while HFC has 13.4g. I carefully watch sodium because of my specific health issues, and AB has 330mg of sodium, and HFC has 300mg. While I don’t personally pay that much attention to fat content, AB had total fat content of 3.6g, and HFC had 2.6g of total fat.

The bottom line for me is that High Fibre Cereal was better than All-Bran in all the things I monitor, however, the difference wasn’t necessarily huge, though, for me, the sodium difference is pretty significant. There’s also obviously a very big difference in dietary fibre, but I’m not certain I need that much fibre. Even so, I think it’s safe to say the name of their cereal, “High Fibre Bran”, is fully justified.

Cost was another motivator when I tried it, because All-Bran was $7.79 for a 530g box. The High Fibre Cereal was $5.50 for a 500g box. If High Fibre Cereal was sold in a 530g box, and the unit price didn’t change, it’d be $5.83, still around $2 a box cheaper than All-Bran.

Neither the difference in their nutritional profiles nor the different prices matters if I don’t like the cereal with the better profile and lower price. Facts. So, while the Woolworths own-brand has a better nutritional profile and costs less, I like All-Bran much better and I’ll stick with it. It’s only part of my weekly breakfast menu, anyway.

This was one of the rare times when I tried a new (to me) product not because I didn’t like my normal brand, but because I was curious if I’d like a similar alternative. Now I know. On to the next experiment!

November 10, 2025: This post has been updated. Follow the link to see the update.

March 31, 2026: This post has been updated again. Follow the link to see the update.

Important Note: The names of brands/products/companies listed in this post are all registered trademarks, and are used here for purposes of description and clarity. No company or entity provided any support or payment for this blog post, and all products were purchased by me at normal consumer prices. So, the opinions I expressed are my own genuinely held opinions, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the manufacturers, any retailer, or any known human being, alive or dead, real or corporate. Just so we’re clear.

Sometimes, it’s not the eggs

Over the past few years, I’ve shared a few photos both  here and on social media (especially the latter) of meals I’ve made, like the photo above of my poached eggs this morning. For no particular reason, I rarely share such photos now, but I realised recently that’s probably a mistake. These days especially, it’s seldom about the eggs.

I’ve done cooking experiments of one sort or another for decades, but especially in the last ten years—and even more frequently beginning with the first Covid lockdown. Those experiments were a way to beat the boredom of lockdowns, but I also I thought it was an interesting and creative thing to do.

Time moved on, and my enthusiasm waned a bit, particularly during challenging times, and I found myself focusing on very specific things, like consistently making good poached eggs (because sometimes it is about the eggs…). And yet, the experiments continued.

Today’s eggs were perfect, as they usually are, so I feel I’ve now pretty much mastered making them—as long as I pay attention to what I’m doing, because a wandering mind is a ruinous thing. Getting things right—even a meal—feels really good, and while I could joke about the “dopamine hit” this activity actually really does help: Accomplishing a goal, especially one that results in good food, can absolutely increase dopamine levels in our blood.

When times feel bleak, as they have for me off and on over the past 18 months or so, succeeding at a small task—even a very small task, like making eggs—often ends up being the biggest help. It’s actually the main reason I talk about celebrating “small victories”: They matter.

I think it’s deeply embedded in human nature to not see what’s positive and to instead focus on worries, dreads, and possible dangers. I think we all do that, at least sometimes, and I certainly do it, too. It’s like ignoring the beautiful sunny tropical ocean beach we’re standing on because off at the distant horizon we see dark clouds and storms. We ignore what’s right in front of us and instead worry that the far-off storm may turn and hurl itself right at us, even though it may never do that.

When times are especially rough, we’re more likely to have this happen, even repeatedly. This is why celebrating small victories is so important: Making a point of focusing on good, positive things can help break the miasma of negativity, maybe not at first, and maybe not individually, but the benefits of celebrating positive things, especially repeatedly, makes it easier to break the negativity loop.

This has been on my mind a lot lately, not the least because I wanted natural, non-pharmaceutical approaches to help me cope better with the occasional rough times I was experiencing, and I pretty much managed that. My daily walking routine helped, and so does spending time with family or friends, and, maybe especially, playing with Leo. But celebrating small victories, especially repeatedly, has definitely played an important part.

I first realised this when I was a young boy, though not for this purpose. I used to write “to do” lists for projects (some things have never changed…), most memorably for tidying my bedroom. I realised that instead of writing “tidy bedroom”, it worked better to write small tasks, like, “clean top of dresser”, or for a bookcase I might even put tidying each shelf as a separate task. Then, as I checked off each completed task, I got lots of check marks on the list, and that, in turn, encouraged me to keep going to check more tasks off the list until the whole thing was done. Without knowing it, I was celebrating small victories over and over until they led to an even bigger accomplishment, the completion of the whole job.

Many (many…) decades later, the lessons I learned in childhood still matter, and so does celebrating small victories. I don’t always succeed in doing that, but sometimes I do, and that makes the difference.

Which brings me back to those eggs this morning. I took the photo, something I often do simply for practice alone, which is why I don't share them. I began to think that such photos were too shallow, which figures since I’ve backed away from posting much of anything on social media. That’s where the mistake is.

Because of all the things I said earlier—especially about celebrating small victories—me not sharing this photo (or the many others) means I was not celebrating small victories, and that was a mistake. To be clear, it's not important that I have a small victory, however, plenty of other people are looking for reasons to be hopeful, and me hiding mine under a bushel does no service to them—or me, actually.

Sometimes, it’s not about the eggs, and sometimes it is, and it’s really not up to me to determine which it is. This is about more than photos of food, it’s about giving hope and an example to others when we can, yes, but it mostly means celebrating the small victories we get. Today I had one, and it was about eggs. Tomorrow? No idea.

Food storage teaches me

Life habits are a lot like Rome: They’re not built in a day. They’re also not changed in a day, either. Carrots showed me a way that such things can change.

Changing decades of habits isn’t easy, even when it comes to food. For much of our life together, I did the cooking for Nigel and me, and for our last fifteen years or so I did nearly all of it. That meant I built habits to make that easier, and to ensure we didn’t run out of things.

Running out of things—hooboy! Nigel’s breakfasts nearly ruined us. He might get grumpy with me if we ran out of margarine to put on his morning toast (he could use butter…), but if we ran out of peanut butter, I might need to plan on moving out. I’m exaggerating, obviously, but for many, many years he had the same breakfast nearly every morning on work days (and sometimes on weekends): Toast with margarine, peanut butter, and strawberry jam. Sometimes I made it for him, but he often made it for himself—and he let me know his displeasure if we ran out of one of the ingredients.

So, I started having not merely one margarine container in reserve, I often had two. Similarly, I always had at least one unopened peanut butter jar on hand in addition to the open one, and when I noticed the open one was getting low, I’d buy a new jar so that there’d still be one in reserve. I learned and improved—from Nigel’s perspective, anyway. Jam tended to last longer, but we usually had one unopened jar in reserve.

Everything changed when Nigel died—everything except my buying habits. I kept making sure I had two tubs of margarine in the fridge, and at first it was because I was on autopilot, but as post-Covid prices soared, I started buying a new reserve one when they were on special—but that sometimes means I have two in reserve, which even I know is stupid. Peanut butter is different: I only ever have one in reserve, and I’ve even run out a time a two, but that’s also how I ended up with extra peanut butter when Nigel died: I had two in reserve and the opened one. I think that underscores how quickly my life unravelled, and may it even point to why it took me so long to change my ways to meet my new reality.

And that brings me to carrots.

I had a years-long habbit of buying bags of fresh carrots (1.5kg) because, back then, it was cheaper than buying a few at a time, and because we went through them reasonably quickly. I kept buying those bags, and I kept doing that once I was alone. However, the carrots would frequently start to rot or become mummified before I could use them all. This was not good, and I knew it: The media and my local council often tried get us to reduce food waste, but there I was, a poster child for wasting food. This shame could not remain unaddressed.

My first thing attempt at self-improvement was to switch to buying a few carrots at a time, since the unit price (the price per kilogram or gram) was similar to the larger bags. However, I kept running out of carrots, and if I bought more, the old problems returned. There simply had to be another and better way!

So, I did what any self-respecting Digital Immigrant would do: I googled “best way to store carrots”, or similar, and may even have added “NZ”, though I don’t remember for sure. At any rate, I ended up on a New Zealand site, “Love the Food, Hate the Waste”. There, I read that globally, one-third of all food is lost or wasted,” which is pretty abyssmal, and I bet it’s much higher in at least some developed countries. The site adds that food waste “has a profound environmental impact and is the third-largest contributor to global carbon emissions.” Yikes.

Fortunately, their site also had information on how to store carrots (summarised in the graphic below). I took it to heart immediately, and pulled out a small airtight container, and I bought a few fresh carrots to put in it, and they were perfect to the very last one.

Next, I bought a 1.5kg bag of Woolworth’s “The Odd Bunch” carrots, which are called that because they’re considered “imperfect” because they’re too small, too big, too misshapen. I buy a lot of “Odd Bunch” produce primarily because it keeps them out of landfill, but they’re also a bit cheaper: 1.5kg bag of “The Odd Bunch: carrots is currently $3.10 ($2.07/kg) while the “normal” bags of the same size are $4.29 ($2.86 per kg). The middle price would be for loose carrots, which are currently $2.59/kg. So, buying “The Odd Bunch” bag is cheapest, but, more importantly, it may help reduce food waste, too.

I then bought a larger NZ-made plastic container (at left in the photo above), which was able to store a 1.5kg bag of carrots, though I bet sometimes that may be harder than other times (the carrots I buy aren’t uniform in size or shape, after all). However, I could get away with keeping a few carrots stored less ideally for a short time, so Im not worried about this potential problem actually being a problem.

I’ve been using the new system for several weeks now with no complaints—in fact, I no longer have rotting or mummified carrots. That’s good news in itself, but it reminds me, yet again, that there’s always a solution to challenges if I look for them. Sometimes I just need to realise I need to look for a solution. Carrots showed me a way that can change.

More peanut butter trials

There are two ongoing food sagas in my life: The search for decent pizza, and for peanut butter I like (not together…). I still have no real solution to the pizza issue, apart from maybe experimenting making them myself—maybe. It turns out, thought, that peanut butter keeps presenting challenges for me, even if they’re sometimes self-selected. It happens.

This time, my peanut butter search was about trying a different variety of the brand I use, but it was an experiment, nevertheless. Maybe not a wise one?

First, though, a recap. Back in 2018, I talked about my search for a peanut butter, and, at the time sodium content was a major consideration, so I eventually settled on “Pic’s No Salt Added Peanut Butter” (I purchased all brands mentioned in this post myself at normal retail prices; this post is not sponsored). After Nigel died, I decided I liked the brand he liked, “Woolworth’s Select American Style Peanut Butter”, which I also mentioned in that 2018 post. This was not to last.

It turned out that Countdown (now called Woolworths) discontinued the peanut butter Nigel liked, and in 2023 I wrote about searching for a replacement. I briefly tried an American brand I used to eat when I was a kid groing up in the USA, but 30-odd years later, I couldn’t stop thinking about all the weird additives in it. So, I ended up adopting the regular version of Pic’s peanut butter (which has salt added).

A few months later, in April 2024, I tried the large size of the Pic’s peanut butter so it would last longer, but that, too, was problematic. As I said in an Update Post at the very end of last year:

The jar lasted much longer than the ordinary (small) jar I’d been buying, but it lasted a bit too long—months, I think. The problem was that by the end, the peanut butter at the bottom of the jar was too hard to spread, probably because I didn’t properly stir it when I opened it. At any rate, that wasn’t what I wanted, so I’ve gone back to the small jar I’d been using.

And now this saga is up tp date. So: I was in the supermarket recently, and I noticed the squeeze bottle of Pic’s (photo above), and I was intrigued. I thought that maybe I could shake the bottle to re-mix the oil into it, meaning I could keep it at room temperature, which would make it easier to spread. The first time I opened the bottle and removed the seal, I immediately noticed that there was a peanut butter plug at the bottle mouth—because it had separated. So, the first thing I had to do was manually stir the contents, just like always, before squirting some out.

The oil separates at room temperature.

Since then, I’ve tried shaking the bottle and it seems to work as I expected, but it’s a little odd to have squiggles of peanut butter on my bread, Still, I just spread that with a knife and it was like “normal”. So, maybe its a good choice? Yeah, well…

I was hesitant to buy it because the bottle may be recycled (I’m sceptical about that, a subject in itself), but the red top to the bottle absolutely is not. The jar I normally buy is clear glass (and desirable for recycling), and the lid is metal (which may not be recycled—part of that subject in itself again…). However, the jars are also useful for reuse, and I quite like the black star on the red lid), so I’ve re-purposed several into small storage jars, as I have with so many others (hmmm, that, too, is a subject in itself—why am I making more work for myself?!).

This experiment had mixed result. The bottle seems to work as expected, and since I spread the peanut butter, anyway, the squiggle business isn’t bad. Actually, the fact it’s easy to spread is a very good thing. It’s the waste—specifically the fact the top isn’t recyclable—that bothers me.

I guess it’ll come down to whether, all things considered, I think it’s good value for money. At the moment, the ordinary price per 100g is the same for both options, and the squeezy bottle holds a bit more. However, I only buy peanut butter when it’s on special because Pic’s is probably a “premium” brand, and so, more expensive per 100g than mass-produced brands. I don’t know if the squeezy bottle will be on special as the jar version often is.

I have a few more servings to go before I get through the bottle, so my final decision is some while away yet, but if I was to bet, it would be that I’ll go back the glass jar. I guess I’ll have ot make more work for myself: Another Update post.

Not just about bread

I don’t often share food photos any more (and clearly not much of anything else, for that matter…), because it’s all so trivial. Yesterday, though, I decided to share a photo (at right) of my trivial lunch to my personal Facebook. In this case, at least, there were reasons.

I made two poached eggs severed on a wedge of homemade (bread machine) wholemeal bread, and topped it with freshly ground salt and pepper and yum-yum sauce (Japanese mayonnaise), which I use on poached eggs because hollandaise sauce is too much work, tbh (I usually just use S&P). All of that is very ordinary, but the bread is the real reason I shared the meal (I make poached eggs most weekends).

I was never satisfied with the ordinary breadmaker bread I used to make, so much so that I even considered getting rid of my breadmaker. However, among my local supermarkets, my local Woolworths doesn’t stock my preferred brand/variety of commercial bread (just the brand’s gluten-free variety),and while the nearby New World does stock it, it sells out quickly. I don’t like the in-store bakery department breads at either chain.

This is an issue for me because the commercial bread I’ve been buying instead of my preferred brand sometimes gives me indigestion, and the ordinary breadmaker bread sometimes did, too (my preferred brand never did, but maybe that’s just because it’s so hard to get that over the past year or two I haven’t had it often enough to find out?). It’s early days for the wholemeal bread experiment, but so far it’s been fine. On the other hand, I’m out of practice cutting it (it makes a tall loaf), and have cut a wedge-shaped slice twice in a row, which isn’t ideal. If I tolerate this bread, I may try using the breadmaker to knead the dough, etc., and then finish it off in bread pans in the oven (to get better sized and shaped loaves). I do hope this works, though.

Occasional indigestion from bread wasn’t the only reason that I stopped posting food photos, though—there were several reasons. First, the same sort of ennui that’s kept me from cretive pursuits like blogging and podcasting, has also left me unspired to cook anything new or different, and so, there hasn’t been anything ne to share. Another reason, though, was eggs.

Prices for all food items when up in the Covid-related economic challenges and supply chain distruptions, and the massive spike in inflation when all the restrictions ended. Eggs were among the things with higher prices, of course, but we also had a fire at a major egg farm that killed thousands of hens, and egg prices shot up. However, egg prices in New Zealand eventually stabilised and have been stable for many, many, many months—despite even bird flu at a South Island farm. All of which means I can have eggs whenever I want, and at reasonable proces. However, I’m aware of how expensive eggs in the USA have become (another all-time record retail price was set just recently). It felt kind like bragging to share photos of my egg means (possibly the most common I’ve share over the past few years).

Eggs also get at another reason I’ve backed off posting things like food photos: All that sort of thing seems so utterly banal and trivial given the slide into fascism in the country of my birth. I’ve shared some things I find funny or interesting, but have deliberately avoided most things that touch even lightly on politics in the land of my birth—mostly, because I have shared expressly, and even sharply, political things to Reels (via Instagram).

It’s fair to say that there’s no reason I should avoid posting about things I’m doing, even if it’s only lunch, but with the world in such dire shape, it’s at least understandable. On the other hand, maybe the distraction of a freshly-made meal or a shopping excursion (or whatever) can help make the bad times just a little more tolerable, even if only for a moment or two. Maybe.

At any rate, I never would’ve guessed that finding a tolerable bread would be so difficult, but, as I often say, I’ve learned that growing older is a never-ending series of aches and pains in places I never knew could have them, and suddenly finding I don’t always tolerate some food I’ve had all or most of my life. C’est la vie, apparently. But all of that is still better than the awfulness all around the world, and maybe that makes celebrating everyday life that much more important.

Intended updates

There are many (many, many…) posts I’d planned on doing this year, but never managed to get done, and for lots of reasons. In several cases, I began rough drafts that never went anywhere—again, for lots of reasons. One of the ones that kept popping into my head was doing an Updates post. It turns out, the last time I did a post with multiple Updates was in July 2023, though I’ve done more specific posts with that tag/label—and it’s entirely possible I did one after that but forgot to tag it properly. In any case, here we are.

The ongoing peanut butter saga

Back in April, I published ”Kitchen experiments abound” about a variety of food items I’d been trying, but one of them was just buying the peanut butter I prefer in a large jar. That wasn’t a success.

The jar lasted much longer than the ordinary (small) jar I’d been buying, but it lasted a bit too long—months, I think. The problem was that by the end, the peanut butter at the bottom of the jar was too hard to spread, probably because I didn’t properly stir it when I opened it. At any rate, that wasn’t what I wanted, so I’ve gone back to the small jar I’d been using.

One day I was in a supermarket and saw the smaller jar was on special. The unit price per gram was lower than the unit price on the large jar (ordinarily, when neither is on special, the unit price for the large jar is lower, as I’d expect. I realised that if I buy a small jar when it’s on special, and before I need one, it’ll be a good compromise, giving me a somewhat lower cost, and helping me ensure I don’t run out. Hopefully, this is the end of my peanut butter saga.

Tabling a change

On May 23 of this year, I talked about needing a new cover for my patio table and chairs. In the end, I chose a third option: I took the old patio cover and put it on top of the one that was wearing out, and just taped over the holes. It’s functioned well ever since. In fact, in one way it’s been much better: Whenever the breezes were strong, the cover would billow and make a lot of noise, but when I put the old cover on top, that pretty much stopped—maybe it was the added weight? This isn’t a permanent solution, of course, but it at least gives me more time to figure out what I want to do without spending a single cent to buy that time.

This topic has been updated. Follow the link to see the update.

Some unusual updates

In February 2019, I published a post called “A kitchen failure” in which I talked about unsuccessfully using a plant-based chicken substitute from a company called “Sunfed Meats”. I next tried their beef mince (hamburger) substitute in October 2022, and that was somewhat more successful. Finally, in November 2022, I tried their bacon substitute, which I thought was boring.

I mention that to underscore that I was both utterly surprised, and also not at all surprised, that in April of this year, it was announced that Sunfed Meats was closing down. According to RNZ:

Sunfed’s CEO, Shama Sukul Lee, said the "plant-based bubble" had burst. She also said Lee said Covid, staff shortages, supply chain disruptions, and skyrocketing costs had left the business "pretty battered and bruised" and in need of a cash injection, which they couldn’t obtain.

The second part is undoubtedly true, because it was for many companies in various industries, but the first part? There are more plant-based options now than ever, so if the bubble has really “burst”, it didn’t destroy the entire industry. When I first saw the news alert, my first thought was how unsurprised I was, based on my experience using their products. Still, I’d moved on not long after my final experience with their products and I not longer use meat substitutes, making meat-free meals instead.

It turns out, I also have an update about a meat-free meal without meat substitutes. Back in July 2018, I wrote about a lentil-based bolognaise recipe we’d tried, and I mentioned where I found the recipe, the BBC Series Eat Well For Less. At the end of November of this year, the co-presenter of the series, Gregg Wallace, was accused of "inappropriate behaviour" that allegedly rises to the legal definition of sexual harassment. That caught me by surprise.

Speaking of TV presenters, back March of 2018. I talked about a trick to make a bitter cup of coffee better, something I’d learned watching the BBC Two series, The Secrets of Your Food with presenter Dr. Michael Mosely. In June of this year, Dr. Mosley died while on a hike in Agia Marina, Symi, Greece. Following an inquest into his death, the coroner said that the cause of Dr. Mosley's death was "indeterminate" and "unascertainable", and that it "was most likely attributable either to heatstroke (accidental) or non-identified pathological cause". I still use the coffee trick I learned from him, but never the intermittent fasting he also advocated. Mostly, I was surprised by his unexpected death.

So, there was an update to several older posts that didn’t surprise me, and two updates to even older posts that did surprise me, and all of those updates happened this year. I can’t remember such major updates to old posts happening in the same year before.

• • •

There! I finally got around to to the updates I wanted to get done this year. The Update backlog is now clear for the new year.

Onward.