And be careful not to do your good deeds when there's no one watching you

[venta]

Tut, tut. I have, up til now, regarded ebee as one of the world's most well-prepared people. She can produce a first-aid kit which would shame a minor hospital from nowhere, and remains unflappably calm and competent if required to use it. On a recent holiday, some mischievous guests attempted to manufacture circumstances she hadn't catered or allowed for. We They failed.

I'm briefly camping out at her house just now and was about to make myself a sandwich (using a foodstuff which has been provided for me even though she doesn't eat the item in question).

This is why you can't trust a vegetarian to equip a kitchen. They don't treasure those vital, purpose-built little bits of metal which are so hard to do without. They don't, apparently, keep a pair of pliers[*] in case emergency intervention is called for. Bluntly, they don't have a strategy for dealing with corned-beef tins which have lost their keys.

Yes, yes, I'm sure you're all carnivores, and the reason that you're not equipped for this particular brand of crisis is just because you're southern or middle-class or something. So sue me.

[*] Long-nosed pliers, known in the family house as "81s" (after their part number on my Dad's original GPO tool-list). Useful for any number of cookery-related things, including tricky jobs like getting the funny stringy bits out of the legs of turkeys or opening corned-beef tins.

Comments

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I believe there is a pair of pliers in a kitchen drawer here, should you ever find the same crisis arising in our house. *checks* Yes, there is. You can rest assured that this southern-middle-class household meets your standards. :D

[venta.livejournal.com]

I have to say, it's normally a crisis which only happens in one's own house. It's actually comparatively rare for me to visit friends and then attempt to make corned-beef sarnies at them :)

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Well, I imagine so, but I needed to refute the suggestion that middle-class southerners may not be equipped for such eventualities. Some of us are, at least. :D

Not that there's any corned beef in the house. But that's a small detail.

[venta.livejournal.com]

No corned-beef ? Goodness me. Where will you be when the apocalypse strikes ? You'll be telling me next you don't have any condensed milk...

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Nope, it's a fair cop. We have plenty of balsamic vinegar, sun-dried tomatoes, and pesto though. :D


But we also each have an Italian parent, which I think exempts us from utter smug pretentious middle-class-dom.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

As a carnivore who always snaps off the key from corned-beef tins, how do you open one with a pair of pliers? I'm always faced with the problem of coaxing a tin-opener to go round corners.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Either grip the remains of the key and carry on turning, or just grip the end of the strip with the pliers and wind it round them like you would round a key. Must be long-nosed pliers (http://www.e-directrade.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13_424&products_id=193&zenid=2a2a2c1e5b6e45c4d2240f88320ac5b0) for it to work sensibly.

The hard part is unwinding the strip from them without taking your fingers off :(

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Smart! Thanks!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

A big hammer also works, if you don't mind the corned beef coming out rather squashed.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

My pliers live in my toolbox :p but you're right that I don't eat corned beef, or for that matter spam or luncheon meat. Life is too short to eat cows from tins.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Obviously my other, non-cookery pliers live in the toolbox :)

I'm right with you on spam and luncheon meat (which I think are actually pigs in tins) and many other forms of meat in tins are best avoided. Corned-beef, however, is brilliant stuff. Completely unlike beef, of course, but one of the things I think I'd really miss if I were ever to give up meat.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I have a theory that corned beef is indispensable because it has a taste which isn't quite matched by anything in else. In the same way as, for example, Marmite.

So if you're exposed to it as a kid it's got you for life!

[venta.livejournal.com]

It is a very distinctive taste. Which made it all the more disappointing when I ordered a Reuben sandwich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuben_sandwich) in the US. I got quite excited at the idea that there was a corned-beef speciality.

Sadly, US corned beef ain't the same as UK corned beef. The sandwich was pretty good otherwise, but such a disappointment.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

I respectfully submit myself as a counter-example. Corned beef hotpot was on our rotation, but I'm happy to see at least the corned beef part of it consigned strictly to my personal dietary history.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I must concede that some forms of cooked corned beef[*] are actually quite nasty. I always regard corned-beef hash with great suspicion, since I've never quite worked out what the defining cooking technique which makes it nasty is.

[*] Obviously, it's all cooked. I mean stuff which has been cooked more once it's been wrestled out of the can.

[erming.livejournal.com]

Mum keeps a pair of long nosed pliers in the kitchen despite being a peskitaream (sp?).

She finds it very useful for extracting fish bones from incorrectly filleted fish.

[zotz]

This is why you can't trust a vegetarian to equip a kitchen.

No, this is why you should never trust anyone who isn't at home with pliers.

[venta.livejournal.com]

In fairness, Ebee may be perfectly handy with a pair of pliers, she just isn't here to ask.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

shame a minor hospital from nowhere

This one? Quite easily shamed, IIRC.

It's a great pity there's no veggie equiv to corned beef¹; I really used to like it. I've often wondered if there's still any functional benefit to its unique packaging, or is it just a tradition thing these days? See also: tinned ham, sardines, and those strange tinned pies from Fray Bentos.

---

1 Quorned beef perhaps?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Was there ever any functional benefit to the packaging ? I have always wondered why the tins are such a damn fool shape - and, come to that, why they're so hard to open.

Despite my pro-corned beef stance, those strange tinned pies scare me. I don't believe I've ever eaten one.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

So that when you are in your nuclear bunker under the stairs, which is the only situation in which sane people would ever eat corned beef :p you can still eat corned beef if you forgot to get the tin opener out of the kitchen drawer before you spent 4 minutes madly barricading the cupboard under the stairs with mattresses and sandbags.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Good question -- I assumed so just because all the mfrs seem to do it the same, and it would seem a bit weird if they came up with it arbitrarily.

I suppose it would be quite (ie. even more) difficult to take out of the tin if it didn't taper away. And perhaps the fact of the taper militated against early tin-openers? We could speculate for hours.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I maintain it would be relatively easy to get out of a standard cylindrical tin (using a knife, in much the same way you can get cat/dog food out of a tin).

I have a feeling that the reason for the traditional tin-shape is just the sort of useless dross the mother will know, hopefully she will happen by and answer.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

it would seem a bit weird if they came up with it arbitrarily

But it would be way less weird if they all just imitated each other for marketing reasons.

Although that's allegedly not the real motivation.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Hmm... clearly cuboidal ones would pack tighter than eg. cylindrical ones, but I don't think the present frustum shape really packs all that tightly.

I think that even if just one mfr came up with it arbitrarily and the others all imitated for marketing purposes, that would still be pretty weird. I can only see it happening if that one had had a lengthy stranglehold and so completely "owned" consumers' ideative corned-beef-space before anyone else made an impression on the market. Which is certainly possible, but in that case it's weird that they've since disappeared from memory, leaving only their packaging legacy behind.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I bet it's to do with manufacturing the actual corned beef. Hmm, I wonder how they put the beef in the tins - do they squirt it in as fluid, or stamp out from a lump of beef using the tins, or what?

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Here are 90,000 anecdotal reasons - one of whom imposes the incorrect spelling of Sharpe onto THE ADJECTIVE and should therefore die, preferably of clostridium botulinum from a tin of corned beef.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

We really like the strange tinned pies. B prefers steak and ale to steak and mushroom, though. Also, I am fond of goblins (tinned meat puddings).

My husband has a habit of buying corned beef in chilled packets. That's really weird.

[hendybear.livejournal.com]

I have a phobia about Fray Bentos pies..... I loved them when I was on holiday with my parents in the Caravan. Until we spent 12 weeks living as gypsy's waiting for our new house, when they became part of our "staple" diet....

Now I shudder at the thought of them, I guess the old adage of "to much of a good thing applies"

[venta.livejournal.com]

On the subject of weird tins, I observed the other day that some tins of wild salmon in Tesco were messing with my head. They were rather posh-looking, and clearly wanted to be normal cylindrical tins but had been made with one end very slightly larger in diameter than the other. The overall perspective effect was one of looking at very tall tins, which just happened to be quite short. It was rather disconcerting.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Short Tins That Look Tall -- the new Square Sweets That Look Round.

They sound like a big stack might be a mite precarious.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

They're gearing up to jump up a set of rapids, clearly.

[reddragdiva]

Dremels are also essential culinary equipment. And blowtorches.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Good lord, man, what do you use a Dremel for ? Apart from clearing the kitchen so you can get on with cooking...

[reddragdiva]

I dunno, but dremels are the sort of thing that just make you want to use them for ANYTHING YOU POSSIBLY CAN.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Fair point. Wikipedia tells me that you can get a pumpking-carving bit for your Dremel.

[reddragdiva]

SEE!

[condign.livejournal.com]

Dremels aren't tools. They're addictions with a power cord.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Corned beef used to be my favourite sandwich filling when I took packed lunches to school. Key-losing seemed to happen one tin in ten.

corned beef tins

[(Anonymous)]

No, sorry , the mother doesn't know the reason for the shape. She asked Google and it said did she mean the shape of corned beef TIMES.
Is this some weird edition of the Thunderer?
However, she has seen corned beef in round tins the shape of tins of tuns, only slightly bigger - totally unknown make from obscure country so not bought even by someone wth no brand loyalty whatsoever.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry - finger trouble - tins of TUNA

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

Ah, but you can open a tin of corned beef with a Swiss Army knife tin opener attachment.

Unfortunately, corned beef is one of the things that sets off my IBS :(

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

I don't have a pair of pliers in my kitchen draw, but there are a few pairs in the house....But then i have quite a large and varied tool collection.

To be honest i'm stunned when i go to a house and they seem to be lacking some of the more rudimentary DIY tools.

[mr_magicfingers]

I have a set of long nosed pliers for deboning salmon fillets after I've filleted a salmon. There are several other pairs in various tool boxes too, but just the one pair for the kitchen, don't want to get the wrong sort of grease on the fish.

[ebee.livejournal.com]

I demand a retraction of this given I DO HAVE A PAIR OF PLIERS IN THE KITCHEN!!

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I don't get it - what's wrong with your regular tin opener that it won't do corned beef tins, hence necessitating the pliers?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Going round corners with tin-openers is tricky, and getting the corned beef out without a bit of it protruding is tricky. Though in fairness I haven't tried in years, so maybe tin-opener technology has improved or I've become more ept.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I guess I can't argue with whether your tin opener goes around corners. To get the beef out, open both ends and push.