These days, I do a lot more cooking than I used to. As the Mild Wife has often pointed out, I should probably know how to cook some of my favorite dishes. Plus, we both enjoy the process, and I make a decent sous chef. In the process, there have been quite a few amusing stories. I can now pick out the ingredients in my food with better-than-zero odds, I get to plate the food however I want to, and we even managed to find some funny Amazon reviews in the process.
Ultimately, the point is that cooking is an enjoyable process for the Mild Wife and me. I suspect that's a big chunk of the reason why we enjoy watching the Great British Baking Show. I fully realize that baking is not the same as cooking savory food, but it's still fun to see people create things. And in some ways, the fact that it's a different skill set makes it easier to sit back and watch. I am not realistically going to make royal icing any time soon, so it's fun to watch it appear when someone else makes it.
However, this also has the side effect of introducing me to all sorts of new ingredients. I don't use much regular sugar in my food, so there's no way that I'm going to keep any caster sugar on hand. Hell, I had to do a quick Google search to even figure out if it's just a British name for an ingredient with a different name in the United States (it seems to be). Incidentally, I now know that there is such a thing as "Muscovado sugar." That first word simply wasn't a part of my vocabulary a couple of years ago, and I have that show to blame for that.
At some point, though, I started to question why there were so many versions of these ingredients. I can believe that Muscovado is a different type of sweetener, but if you start using dark Muscovado sugar in your recipes, I may not be able to suspend that much disbelief. While we're at it, the varying recipes on that show call for either plain flour or "strong" flour. At a very high level, I can wrap my head around the difference between all-purpose flour and bread flour, but introducing yet another term or type of flour throws extra complexity in the mix.
Now, I fully recognize that part of the problem is that Americans and Brits use different words for what are probably the same ingredients. Arguably, that just makes the problem worse. It's the same actual object, but now there are two different words for it. Doesn't that sound like people just decided to start messing with me? Worse yet, there are continent-specific ingredients that don't have a one-to-one match on the other side of the pond. As best as I can tell, baking powder seems to be one of those ingredients, since it's much more commonly used over here. Caster sugar, however, seems to be the opposite.
It's gotten to the point where any time the contestants or the hosts mention a new type of sugar or flour, I just shake my head. I swear, it's like they're making stuff up. The Mild Wife has noticed this, of course, so she pokes fun whenever something like this comes up in the show. I think she was actually the one that pointed out that they were using dark Muscavado sugar for one of their recipes.
Regardless, keeping track of all the various names and types of ingredients is starting to cause full-blown laughter in our household. Normally, I would suggest that I need to stop watching this show, but I suspect that's not going to happen. So, instead, I will demand that people use the same word to describe the same flippin' ingredient. It's really not that complicated, people. I don't even care whether we use the American or the British word, so long as we stick to one. I'm going to end up learning a bunch of new vocabulary no matter what. It might as well be a word that everyone can use so I don't confuse myself when trying to bake something.
Ultimately, the point is that cooking is an enjoyable process for the Mild Wife and me. I suspect that's a big chunk of the reason why we enjoy watching the Great British Baking Show. I fully realize that baking is not the same as cooking savory food, but it's still fun to see people create things. And in some ways, the fact that it's a different skill set makes it easier to sit back and watch. I am not realistically going to make royal icing any time soon, so it's fun to watch it appear when someone else makes it.
However, this also has the side effect of introducing me to all sorts of new ingredients. I don't use much regular sugar in my food, so there's no way that I'm going to keep any caster sugar on hand. Hell, I had to do a quick Google search to even figure out if it's just a British name for an ingredient with a different name in the United States (it seems to be). Incidentally, I now know that there is such a thing as "Muscovado sugar." That first word simply wasn't a part of my vocabulary a couple of years ago, and I have that show to blame for that.
At some point, though, I started to question why there were so many versions of these ingredients. I can believe that Muscovado is a different type of sweetener, but if you start using dark Muscovado sugar in your recipes, I may not be able to suspend that much disbelief. While we're at it, the varying recipes on that show call for either plain flour or "strong" flour. At a very high level, I can wrap my head around the difference between all-purpose flour and bread flour, but introducing yet another term or type of flour throws extra complexity in the mix.
Now, I fully recognize that part of the problem is that Americans and Brits use different words for what are probably the same ingredients. Arguably, that just makes the problem worse. It's the same actual object, but now there are two different words for it. Doesn't that sound like people just decided to start messing with me? Worse yet, there are continent-specific ingredients that don't have a one-to-one match on the other side of the pond. As best as I can tell, baking powder seems to be one of those ingredients, since it's much more commonly used over here. Caster sugar, however, seems to be the opposite.
It's gotten to the point where any time the contestants or the hosts mention a new type of sugar or flour, I just shake my head. I swear, it's like they're making stuff up. The Mild Wife has noticed this, of course, so she pokes fun whenever something like this comes up in the show. I think she was actually the one that pointed out that they were using dark Muscavado sugar for one of their recipes.
Regardless, keeping track of all the various names and types of ingredients is starting to cause full-blown laughter in our household. Normally, I would suggest that I need to stop watching this show, but I suspect that's not going to happen. So, instead, I will demand that people use the same word to describe the same flippin' ingredient. It's really not that complicated, people. I don't even care whether we use the American or the British word, so long as we stick to one. I'm going to end up learning a bunch of new vocabulary no matter what. It might as well be a word that everyone can use so I don't confuse myself when trying to bake something.
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