TV you enjoy

[santaman2000]

Despite the name, sweet potatoes aren't all that sweet (slightly sweeter than regular potatoes, yes; but not overly so) Much mushier than regular potatoes when baked or fried (yeah, for some odd reason sweet potato fries are getting to be a fad here) but to make them really sweet enough for the dishes considered a sweet dish (sweet potato pie and sweet potato casserole or candied sweet potatoes) you have to add loads of sugar and/or molasses.

Yep, lots of people use the words "sweet potato" and "yam" as synonyms; and they aren't. real sweet potatoes are king.

 

[santaman2000]

Heaping soil around potato plants increases the yeald in Northern Europe.
And prevents the top tubers getting a greenish tint.
Many people think those tubers are poisonous. The Solanine level is slightly increased yes, but still very safe to eat.

Potatoes are the singly most important source of carbohydrates and Vit C in several European countries.
Delicious too!

Sweet potato is still a novelty for people my generation.

I've never had a problem with either yield or coloration. Potatoes are just so easy to grow and generally yield far, far more than a family can eat anyway. We rarely planted more than three rows and always harvested more than enough to feed a our multi-generational family cluster of 12 and with the excess getting sold in my grandfather's country store.

Our only real problem was that there aren't any ways to preserve them for the off season that also preserves the taste. We made jellies and home canned all the fruit we grew or foraged (apples, figs, apricots, pears, plums, blackberries, and huckleberries) and froze all the staple vegetables (corn, peas, and butterbeans) Strawberries were divided with some being canned as jam and others being frozen. But potatoes? They well and truly suck when frozen and they don't can well. Dehydrating would probably work but they wouldn't taste like real potatoes anymore.

 

[Robson Valley]

The Inca were freeze-drying potatoes a couple of thousand years ago on steep cold mountain sides. Should ask for lessons.
Be very mindful of which potato varieties you are growing. Maybe the wrong ones altogether????????
Again: there are several hundred different varieties of potatoes to pick from.
I have 4. For what I make, I use different varieties which grow here.

I have a walk in cold room. For the potatoes, carrots, onions and the garlic, cool basement is better than 4C cold room.
Might get 6 months of dormancy. My climate is a big help and you don't have that luxury.

Yam fries are no fad here at all anymore = have quickly become a fries staple.
3 minutes, 30 seconds and you are done to dip in seasoned mayo.

Sweet potatoes, the real thing, look like potatoes with rounded, not tapered, ends like a Dioscorea yam.
They are quite sweet but don't have an appealing taste at all. Pale yellow inside.

 

[Janne]

Grandmother stored root veg in a cold humid cellar, in a kind of boxes whete the root veg was layered with humid fine sand.
Potatoes in open airy boxes in same cellar.
Same with apples and pears.

Apples, pears and potatoes slowly dry out and go wrinkly. Lasts if I remember correctly into March/April.
Potatoes start sprouting.

The root veg does not dry out, but starts sprouting. The sprouted bit was eaten.
Frozen whole potatoes are kind of ok-ish, they go sweet and can go grey.

 

[Janne]

Wife and me just finished watching Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets we saw over the internet on the tv.
Luc Besson. A joy to watch. Like all his other movies!

 

[Bishop]

Witnessed The Happytime Murders last night and part of me wants to watch it again, the other half will be seeking therapy.

 

[Broch]

Wife and me just finished watching Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets we saw over the internet on the tv.
Luc Besson. A joy to watch. Like all his other movies!

Yep, a surprisingly entertaining film; I enjoyed it too. It didn't receive very good reviews but it ticked most the boxes for me

 

[Broch]

Witnessed The Happytime Murders last night and part of me wants to watch it again, the other half will be seeking therapy.

Ooh, might look that up - pretty surreal

 

[santaman2000]

The Inca were freeze-drying potatoes a couple of thousand years ago on steep cold mountain sides. Should ask for lessons......

Yeah I've had freeze dried potatoes. They suck (the only exception being kiddie food like freeze dried hashbrowns or tater tots) But real, whole (or cut) potatoes that you would make real dishes from (fries, boiled, or baked) just doesn't work. The Incas were concerned about living through the winter; not taste.

Grandmother stored root veg in a cold humid cellar, in a kind of boxes whete the root veg was layered with humid fine sand.
Potatoes in open airy boxes in same cellar.
Same with apples and pears......

Yep, but again they taste horrid when they're old (and mold takes over pretty quick in a humid climate) Frozen loses all taste and texture. The best that can be said for them (like freeze dried above) is that "they're edible."

 

[Janne]

I do not remember they were mouldy, but they shrink a bit and go soft. Same with apples and pears.

I recall that in around May, when the last ones were consumed, she usually made mash with them.

People had no choice in those days, in the mid 1960's beyond the Iron Border......

The worldwide transportation by ship was not developed yet. Nor was the storage we have today, when apples and oranges can be stored over a year and still look like picked yesterday.
We live in a happy and good times, foodwise!

Rutabaga was also stored over winter.
Cabbage, the most eaten veg in the old days in Europe, was fermented. Other veg too of course.
Most countries have forgotten those foods though, and the 'fashion chefs' today are reintroducing them and charging a fortune....

Saw several TV programmes with various celebrated and starred chefs that are talking like they invented Lactic Acid Fermentation..

Still common in Germany, Austria and countries adjoining it, including Elsass in France.

 

[Robson Valley]

What was the name of the British TV series about food management and preparation on a pre-medieval farm?
As much as they could, food was prepared as it might have happened 500 - 1,000 or more years ago.
Meats, milk & cheeses, fermentations, fruits. Cheese is milk storage.
The main presenter was so fond of talking about "experimental dinners," still gives me a giggle to think about him.

Finesse is not at play. Starvation and food security in the off-season from harvests were the game changers.
Inca had no practical beasts of burden, no wheels, extreme 3D scenery. Freeze dried potatoes were easier to transport
where you must carry everything.

Coastal First Nations in BC would make a great core for a TV series on food preservation.
I consider the region to extend from Oregon up into Alaska.
Oolican oil (you have to smell the decomposing fish to understand this one.)
Smoking and drying made up much of the rest of their food preservation.
So, their bulk harvesting methods become something to watch as well.

My next trick in the city, possibly next week, will be to cook 100 mussels or clams or both, over a fire outdoors.
I will cut out the meats with either other shells or my copper-bladed crooked knife.
Then I will string those on a cotton cord and run them through the smoker BBQ in tandem with some other meal preparation.
I have no idea how long they take to dry with heat. Have packed the camera for pictures of this fiasco.

 

[Janne]

How did they open the clams? Crush the shells? The middens should tell. Crushed shells or mainly whole shells? They must have done it on an industrial scale, quickly and painlessly ( to themselves!)

I do not remember that TV series. I am sure many here would love to see it. Please try to remember the name. Or year.

There was a recent series about a farm in Devon. Quite interesting. Kind of 1800' living. Some weird lapses in the knowledge, knowledge any old farmer could have taught them. .

 

[Janne]

Cookery TV today seems to be mainly about fancy, Michelin star type of cooking. Or competitions with hugely skilled 'amateur' cooks.
This when large parts of the population has no idea about how to boil an egg.

 

[Tengu]

Yes. like my friends Pro Chef book...First recipe...a lobster.

I lost interest after that. (Lobster is nice though)

I enjoyed `Valerian` too. (Strange use of a pomelo and one I will never get out of my head...)

Based on a French comic book series, said (but I dont think this has ever been proven) to be an influence on `Star wars`

Its kind of an anti Star Wars story...but then so is `Rogue One` (or Solo)

Would you like to go exploring in Big Market? (Maybe not shop, as it seems to sell a lot of tat)

 

[Robson Valley]

I hope somebody can come up with the name of that British TV series.
I'd binge watch that again in a minute.

The clams, mussels and oysters here just pop open when you heat them.
One recently discovered midden on the BC coast is 20M wide and 200m long. Oyster shells.
One midden that I know of out west near Prince Rupert on the coast is known to be more than 20m deep in shells.

The First Nations (now the Bonepart band of the Thompson Indians) between Loon Lake and downstream
as far as the Thompson River were fish eaters. All their middens are fish bone to the bottom.
Deer bones are rare, maybe because the bone was a useful material..

I think that just about every sandy spot on the BC coast has been "culturally modified" over millenia.
The beach rocks are all in rows, out to waist deep water, infilled with sand = clam beds.
You don't even have to dig in it to know what it is. Left and right ends of a sandy beach cove.
All the main ones in Burrard Inlet at Vancouver have been wrecked by development.
The rats took over when Expo finished and now there's nothing alive above the low tide mark.

 

[nitrambur]

Iron age village TV show? Living In the Past, broadcast in 1978

 

[Janne]

Thanks, will try and find it online!

I did like the old, pre Politically Correct comedy of old. Todays comedy is a joke.

 

[Mr Wolf]

Heston blumenthals medievil feast is the only one i recall

 

[santaman2000]

How did they open the clams? Crush the shells? The middens should tell. Crushed shells or mainly whole shells? They must have done it on an industrial scale, quickly and painlessly ( to themselves!).....

....The clams, mussels and oysters here just pop open when you heat them......

^^^Exactly^^^ Bivalves open voluntarily when they get hot.

 

[Janne]

I thought they were strung up raw, then smoked/cooked on a smoky fire!