@Huy soooo broad

@Huy Minimal is pretty much just wooden spoons for stirring and some kind of synthetic material spatula in a shape you like for basically everything in skillets.

You usually want slotted spatulas since they stick less, and thin is usually a good idea. Slanted seems silly to me since you can always just use the corner of a straight one.

A metal spatula can be nice for cast iron but isn't really required.

Add some kind of heat safe silicone spatula if you wanted something to scrape liquids around in hot things.

Hi rumi!

hi Jolene!

I was busy gazing at baby pictures :)

and a little bit at maple syrup book pictures

We haven't chatted for a while. Yes, isn't that fun?! (the baby, I'm a bit meh about the maple syrup)

Wish me happy birthday!

I was thinking on the weekend that he may be already around, but only logged in today.

Happy birthday @jolene! I wish you a lovely year ahead of you.

Thank you! I guess since I was born in Germany, I should consider time zones. I've been 49 a while then!

What hour were you born, local time?

I don't know, for some reason I think it was like 3 AM.

Then, you're 49 years and 8 hours old.

I've got my hospital birth certificate around here somewhere

A hospital birth certificate? I don't have such a thing.

Are you planning something special for today?

Not a thing.

Other than nagging chat buddies to wish me happy birthday.

You won't be baking yourself a cake?

not this year, my kitchen is a mess.

My whole apartment, actually.

I made some progress on it today, so tomorrow I will probably just bask in that.

Haha, look what happened when I decided to make you my "contact" so I can save your birthday

I only noticed something's off when I looked at the screen, not while typing

Just the two word name? Or am I missing something?

Yes, it is the name.

I think of you as "jolenealaska" but I am not accustomed to seeing it as a name.

I never knew you had a middle name. Renée (and forms of it - in Bulgaria "Reny" is short for Irena) is one of my favorite names.

I'm starting to get really sleepy. I'm probably about to head to bed.

I like the name too :)

Can you think of anyone here who's ever mentioned experience with horses?

In the first season of Game of Thrones, a horse returns to the wall without the rider.

There is some idea that the horse was separated from his rider a long ways away.

I know dogs will do that, even cats (less commonly), but horses?

sorry, I am back to work, have to get something organized

np

I need to go to bed anyway.

Goodnight!

Wishing you a very happy birthday and all the best for your fiftieth year, @Jolenealaska!

Happy birthday @Jolenealaska! Hope you have a great day!

Happy birthday!

Anyone have good ideas for dishes with leftover ham?

I don't have my Food Bible :(

ham as in the slices, or a shank of ham?

not slices, slow-cooked, kind of shreddable

"shreddable" sounds good as a filling for something

maybe your inlaws will enjoy a Texmex showoff, some kind of tortilla with shredded ham in it?

also preferably low-carb... hm

Hmm, low carb :( My next suggestion was going to be to bake it with rice, balkan style

@Jefromi so basically a spoon to stir stuff and a spatula to move/flip stuff in pans. why do you recommend a wooden spoon?

Or when I say "Balkan", you could make a hearty salad with it

Yeah, I tend to not be very low-carb in general.

there is a salad we eat as a main course, usually takes the slices type ham cut into small pieces, but shredded baked ham should work too

I will have to look up the exact ingredients, it has ham, mushrooms (originally from a can, but you can use them raw or quickly roast them), cooked egg, olives, and some vegetables. I think carrots and tomatoes, I'll have to look them up.

@Huy cheap and durable - they don't flex like plastic, you can scrape hard on the bottom of the pan, and so on. And if you do manage to wear them down too much they were a couple dollars anyways.

@Huy I actually prefer to stir with a spatula too.

I see.

Something very wet doesn't matter, but if you have something starchy, you have to remove a layer of starch from the bottom before it has burnt on

Wooden spatulas are nice for that kind of thing too (but not as much for flipping things).

yes, that is not working well with wooden spatulas (for me)

and a spatula's bottom is flat, so it covers a wide path in the pan

@rumtscho that sounds good!

a spoon ends in a rounded point, so it doesn't remove potentially burnable substances from the bottom

how can you distinguish this and this? they're both called spatula, right?

I dunno but if someone asks you to borrow a spatula be sure to figure out which kind they want before you give them a non-heat-safe one :)

recepti.gotvach.bg/…

so if we talk about spatulas, which one did you mean?

You were asking about cooking utensils so I assumed you meant the flipping in pans kind.

the former? the latter seems less suited for flipping

I see

2 tomatoes, 150 g fresh cucumber, 1-2 baked peppers (skin removed), 1/4 bulb of red onion, 100 g canned mushrooms, 120 g feta, 120 g ham, cut in small pieces, 100 g yellow cheese, 2 hard boiled eggs. Dressing: 4 tbsp oil, a few sprigs of parsley, vinegar and salt to taste, 5 olives for decoration.

@rumtscho oh, thanks! Sorry, should've said, google translate seemed to be doing pretty well :)

This is the original recipe, I would say you can use more olives.

and tongs? do you have two pairs of tongs, one just metal and one with plastic ends for nonstick?

Yeah, you don't have to convince me to eat more olives.

and for the roasted peppers, I'm sure you can use them from the can too, the antipasti style ones.

@Huy I don't use tongs all that much but I have somehow ended up with metal for barbecue, silicone for basically anything (cooking or serving), and plastic just for serving.

@Huy it depends on whether you flip stuff in your nonstick pans

yes, sometimes

but theoretically, it would also work with a spatula, just more cumbersome

@Jefromi is there a way to get Chrome to translate the site even though I have told it to not ask me for Bulgarian? I want to see how well it is doing really.

@rumtscho It's always in the right click menu for me, dunno if it'll be there for you.

I have "Translate to English" but not sure how that works if you have multiple languages.

It's greyed out.

Not as shiny, but you can also just go to translate.google.com and stick in the url.

translate.google.com/…

The next site says to use the same amount of cucumber, but 300 g tomato (this is more the amount I'd expect), 150 g of each meat and cheese, 4 eggs, and 3 heads onion instead of 1/4

it's not set in stone of course, you can vary the proportions.

On a totally unrelated note, I'm going through a favorite comic strip's archives

Is that SMBC?

yes

Yup!

I used to read it, then dropped it a year or so ago

I like the nerdy ones like that :)

and now I thought of restarting, and didn't remember where to pick it up again. Then decided to go to the start, and that was good, because I've forgotten most of them.

umm, do you mean nerdy ones like the picture above (as opposed to other SMBC issues) or nerdy ones like SMBC itself (as opposed to other comic strips)?

I don't find this picture nerdy. Don't know if this is a good sign or bad.

Okay oversimplified, I like the SMBC ones that take topics that a lot of people would call nerdy, combined or exaggerated in fun ways.

Not really nerdy by my standards though, agreed.

That's what I suspected you mean. I was a bit surprised, because for me, Superman is mainstream culture, not nerd culture.

Fair! I guess I put it in the category of comic book heroes, sitting around taking them more seriously than most, putting them in real world situations and pretending it makes sense.

anyways got to go get groceries back in a while!

Grocery shopping in Montreal, I'm envious (in a good way)

@rumtscho Might not be as glamorous as you were imagining, we're out in the suburbs and just went to a regular big grocery store and a produce one, but still a nice change!

and then there are things like that

Also, good salad!