Random Thread Of The Week! Tinned Food & Saucepans.

There were also the tinned pies from which you removed the lid and then baked in an oven.

Apparently not enough potential customers now know how to remove the lid from a tin that does not have a peel off lid and tinned pies do not do very well in a microwave…

Now it is a majority plastic this, that and the other to contain them. Best remove the plastic before the oven stage in many, not all cases.

Just one comment from a Food Inspector friend. Always wash a tin lid (or bottle neck) before opening it. As a minimum give it a wipe with an Anti-bacterial wipe.

The reason is that warehouses and stores are rarely rat-proof, and a rats pees all the time if it urinates on the tin lid/bottle neck and that touches the food/drink then you could get in deep doodah with Wiel’s disease.

Drinking out of a bottle/can is a bad habit, as is letting a tin lid drop into the food.

Richard wrote:

There were also the tinned pies from which you removed the lid and then baked in an oven.

They’re still about. I’ve got a few of the Fray Bentos pies in the cupboard. The steak & kidney are the best 🙂

In response to Richard’s comment – Fry Bentos tinned pies – lovely BUT they need a special can opener to open them – even FB suggest that – it costs about £8-10 depending where you buy it. FB say that the can is strengthened so a bog standard tin opener won’t do the job – been there and saw the amount of metal chards in the pastry after struggling to open them.

Until FB sell a canned pie that doesn’t need an expensive opener to open it – they can stay on the shelf. The above advice came from FB after I complained to them – love the pies but the metal grinds my teeth!!!!

I have not had an FB pie since the early 1970s to the best of my recall, but I never remember anything very exotic in the opener stakes. OK it was not a great idea idea to use one of the stab and go openers, (anyone remember those?) but one of the ‘modern flash’ wheel drive ones, I think mine cost  70 pence in Woolworth or the like. It was like a utility version of yours Tippon and nowhere near so flash, but used with a modicum of care, i.e. grip the *&^%$£ can first it ‘just worked’. Have they changed the cans I wonder?

(I have just checked, you can still get a ‘stab can opener’ I thought that ‘elf and safe-tea had banned them see an example at https://www.amazon.co.uk/stab-opener-FASHIONED-PUSH-OPENERS/dp/B004AFELB0/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1530512406&sr=8-16&keywords=can+opener,

One crazy situation regarding saucepans came from many years ago when the MiL was alive.

It was her birthday coming up and we were determined to get her something useful as a present as opposed to another brass ornament for her hubby to polish. We saw that she needed some new saucepans so we went to John Lewis and bought a prettily enamelled set of Tower non-stick saucepans. Best part of £150.

We’d also been on holiday and brought her back an onyx smokers set – ashtray, cigarette box and lighter.

Bonus pressie – a snazzy ironing board.

Well – she thought the smokers set was too pretty to use, so it stood on the coffee table in her “posh” front room, that she used for visitors and anybody that went to use the ashtray or lighter got told off!!!

The saucepans were such a pretty pattern that she sellotaped the lids on and hung them from the kitchen ceiling. Not long after she did that, the condensation and heat that is ever present in kitchens de-stickied the sellotape and one of the lids fell down on the old man’s head, so she superglued the lids on!!!

She did however get 10 years out of the ironing board.

I told the wife never again and resorted to buying her knick knacks from then on.

The first home that the current Mrs. W and myself shared, was an ex-NCB estate home, newly taken over by a new Community Housing Association. Single glazed windows, coal fires, much like the one in which I grew up in, unchanged for decades. The winter of ’90 or ’91 (can’t recall which) was a really bad time: heavy snow cut the village off for days, accompanied by deep frosts. The power  failed for 3 days and we had no way to cook except by a small calor gas ring and the saucepans we had, which were newly bought. The oven that had been in for decades, had been removed by the previous occupant and replaced by a temporarily useless electric oven. I knew that I had made a very good choice of lady, when I came home after overtime from the workshop and Recoveries in the snow, wet through and cold, to find that my SWMBO had knocked up a full beef dinner, complete with veg and dessert,  on the coal fire and the calor ring. Have to say here that my Gert had also been to work, having done a full day as a PA to 3 bosses in a furniture factory.

Unfortunately the saucepans were now ruined, being made to use on a gas or electric oven. Shortly after this, we bought and modernised another NCB house, with GCH and electric cooker, but we also bought a full camping oven, with a large calor gas bottle: just in case! We also bought a set of stainless steel pans and steamer tower from Boots and they are still with us, still in very good condition and used almost daily.

Early struggles we had aplenty, but it just made us stronger.

Carnation’s sickly sweet cousin, Ideal Milk was used a lot in the Middle East for making Chai, it had to have the addition of extra sugar before the brew was considered complete. They might also have made coffee that way in the Suq but I never was much of a coffee drinker so did not test that one out.