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Hi, my name is Frances and I am honoured to be your guest blogger for today. Those of you who have visited my blog or follow on Twitter will know me as Fannyfanackapan. I always get asked 'Why Fannyfanackapan, where does that come from?'. Well, in Victorian times, Fanny was an accepted short version of Frances and Fannyfanackapan was an extension of that used as a term both of endearment and chastisement. I adopted it because it was what my Father often called me as a child and I loved it when he did as it made me feel really special, although I never understood why.
But enough about me, I am here to guest blog and guest blog I shall. I would point out to all readers before they start correcting my spelling that I am blogging to you from the jolly old British Isles, United Kingdom, England, Blighty (you choose, your preference) and will be using the British spelling for words where our two languages diverge. So no specialization for me, we shall specialise (if the need arises) and if I decide to add colour to my prose it will be with a U inserted, and so on.
Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to subject of this post. Recipes.
What, I hear you cry, do recipes have to do with spelling for goodness sake. Well, quite a lot actually. It is all about cultural differences. I recently purchased a CrockPot slow cooker and was keen to find lots of interesting recipes that I could try out in it. Many of the cook books only have a few recipes which are easy, chuck every thing in and leave it for a few hours types of meal. They then fill the book with recipes for special dinner party, fiddley, I will never try it out, types of dishes. Why will I never try them, because lovely husband is a truly excellent cook and therefore ALL dinner parties are catered by him. I just clear up afterwards. So of course, I started to look on line for recipes and as slow cooking is much more popular in the USA than the UK, a lot of the stuff I found and liked, were American recipes. (I have said recipes too many times in this paragraph but stick with it). Which brings me nicely around to C.Beth's Slow Cooker Granola which she blogged about on July 30th. (If I were sticking to my insistence on being British I would have said 30th July, but I will allow some concessions). It sounded delicious and as I too make my own yoghurt, I really wanted to try it, but there were a few problems:-
1. I have no idea what granola is (but it sounds nice).
2. How do I convert quarts to litres. My slow cooker is a 3.5 litre is that big or small?
3. How big is a cup????? I have lots of cups, they are all different sizes.
4. Milled or ground flax seed (I though flax was made to stuff seat cushions in olden times)
5. Canola Oil (oh come on now, I think you're making stuff up just to confuse me)
I could go on, but I think you get the idea by now.
Please let me know which cup to use.
I need help. I really want to make granola, whatever the hell it is.
I hope you enjoyed my ramblings and if you would like to read more, please do visit me at http://fannyfanackapan.blogspot.com/
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Frances, this post was hilarious! Thanks for starting off the guest posting on such a great note!
13 comments:
Ha! Wow--y'all don't have granola? It's amazing how things differ around the world...and if I'm correct the US are the only ones in the world that use the measurements we do--is that right?
Kris - thanks for your comment. No we have granola bars, a snack thing, but I Beth tells me it's kind off what we call muesli, only nicer.
And yes Cups is definitely an American thing! Still don't know which one to use. :-)
LOL - I love it; great guest post. My sympathies go out to a life without granola ...
Thanks Lyndsay - not for much longer I hope.
I usually go with the cup that holds the most beer. I'm not sure that's going to work for this.
Lovely! I'm a Canadian expat in the UK and I am having a terrible time trying to figure out how to change all the grams (a measure of weight) in recipes to cups (a measure of volume). It's enough to drive any cook a bit barmy (crazy). I feel your pain, Fanny!
wait, british
is this part 1 of the secret plan to get your colonies back?
A 3.5 litre cooker is the same as 3 quarts.
I believe you might find this site a bit helpful:
http://www.metric-conversions.org/
I had the same problem you had - except I was going from US to metric. It took a conversion calculator (and paper and pen) to figure it all out. It was worth the effort - I made some of the best blueberry muffins.
Good luck with the granola. :)
1 "cup" of canola oil (vegetable oil would be fine if you have that) is 224 grams.
1 "cup" of oats is roughly 90 grams
Skip the flax seed, I always do.
A 3.5 litre slow cooker is about average size. CBeth somehow has a 5 quart (4.7 litre) crock pot, which is HUGE, and I want one. You will need to half the recipe. Good luck with that. :)
I see you understand my frustrations growing up, my teachers would try to teach us both kinds of measurements, some would even have us convert one to the other, very confusing. Great guest post!
Thank you all for your great comments and for the advise on converting the recipe. I really enjoyed being a guest blogger and do hope to repeat the experience some time. I got to get me one of those giant crock pots like Beth's!!!!!
Canola oil is rapeseed oil. It is interchangeable with vegetable oil.
If you have measuring cups, 1 cup is roughly 237 mL. So in a recipe like this, you could use 250 mL.
In this case, I believe flax seed is just there for nutrition (and maybe taste, if you like it.) You can leave it out. But if you are trying a recipe from a vegan blog or cookbook, be careful - often flax seed and water are used instead of eggs, and are really important.
Aren't you glad C.Beth's sister is a science teacher? :)
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