Posts about food
The Delightful Diversity of “Cup” Sizes in UK/US/AU/NZ Cooking
Volumetric measurements (using the volume of a container) are inferior to Gravimetric measurements (i.e. weight) in most ways. Weighing is faster (for a given pareto-optimal degree of accuracy), can achieve greater accuracy, and most importantly there will be less dishes to clean up afterwards.
Most irritatingly, “cups” and “spoons” mean different amounts in different countries. Even worse, sometimes three “thirds” of a cup are less than one cup…
[Updated 2020-03-22: Added cup densities for wheat bran and oat bran]
10 Minute “Meaty” Vegan Moroccan Pilaf
10 minutes cooking time, that is, so to be honest it’s about 12-15 minutes total.
- This is my usual standby meal because it meats (heh) all my requirements:
High in fibre (wholegrain burgul and veg)
High in protein (soya mince and wholegrains)
Relatively low in calories
Filling meaty taste, but no animal products
Each serve contains two 75g Australian “serves” of vegetables
Only uses non-perishable ingredients, so no need to plan ahead
Faster to make from scratch than to get takeaway
Only uses one pan/pot

Vegan-Microwave-Wheat-Free-High-Fibre-and-Protein-Low-Carb-Apple-Crumble
Pastry and Cookie Doughs Reference Table
This is a reference table for deciding what to make, or making batches of dough for later use. It was going to be part of a page on Doughs and Batters for the Cooking Reference Tables section of my old site, but I never finished the rest of the dough/batter tables, so posting this one here on it’s own.
Cooking Reference Tables and New Blog
At the start of the year I started assembling some cooking reference tables - reference lists of cooking times, types of fillings, sauces, doughs, herbs and spices used in different cuisines, etc. I never got around to finishing the doughs and sauces, and I was going to wait until they were all done before “announcing” it. But it looks like it’s not going to get done anytime soon, so this post is the belated and incomplete announcement.
Due to my tardiness in making updates here, I’m considering creating a new blog-type site where I can have a fresh start and post little snippets every now and then.
Introducing the Price And Nutrition Tracking System
In early 2017 I had just gone onto disability pension. Desperate to improve my health despite being broke, I was looking for a way to get the maximum fibre and protein from my food for the minimal cost and calories. I started entering in all the nutritional data from food I bought into a spreadsheet, calculating and plotting those protein:fibre:cost:calories ratios.
Later that year I started to create and analyse recipes which combined different ingredients. This quickly became cumbersome in a spreadsheet, so I started a Django project initially called the Price And Nutrition Tabulation System (P.A.N.T.S) for storing and visualising the data for both recipes and ingredients.
Soon I also realised since I was entering in all my recipes here it would also be easier if I used it as my daily calorie counter and added a “food diary” to the system, renaming it the Price And Nutrition Tracking System.
Example screenshot of the diary view:
