Friday, January 21, 2022

All steamed up

About a couple of items. I did a bit of online research, the car maker being useless on this point, about my mysterious self-opening car windows.

My single window issue isn't the usual problem. Many people have found all their windows, including sunroof, wide open. 

One in a huge rainstorm, insurance company said no hope of avoiding rust and malfunction, several inches of water in the car, declared it totaled. And a lot of other sad accounts.

Turns out it's a feature of the fob. If you tap the door open function twice, the windows all open. It can happen if the fob's jostled in your pocket. One report was the family cat stepping on it, and the owner looked out to see all the windows opening. 

Honda offers no way to disable this useless "feature".  They don't even mention it in the fob instructions. What they call a feature others consider a design flaw.

Handsome Son had suggested that maybe I engaged just the rear window with my elbow, which I'll test, since the button's    very close. But since the windows won't open from the button unless the engine's running, I wonder. While I drive, my elbow's nowhere near the button. 

Anyway, high alert is the order of the day. Good thing I live in a quiet neighborhood where people are very unlikely to take advantage of an open car window. 

In other exciting news, I seem to have reverted to the food of childhood. First that pasta milk pudding recently, then barley pudding, and yesterday steamed pud.

Just got an urge. So I looked up a few sites for recipes and instructions. I vaguely remember my Mom doing this, using a pudding cloth and a steamer. 

My big pan is a steamer, too, with the second storey pierced pot sitting on it, the way I steam vegetables 

But what most of the sites called steaming was really a covered bowl standing in boiling water. No references to pudding cloths at all. So I thought I'd try it.

Recipe involved honey, sugar, butter, egg, flour, baking powder, promising mixture.

I put on the water to boil, wondering if I'd be waiting for it after assembling the bowl of pudding 

I needn't have worried. By the time I finally got the paper secured with string and the tinfoil over the lot, the water had been boiling merrily quite a while.

One host commented that getting the string on and knotted was the hardest part of the recipe. I even saw one chef channel where two people at once couldn't do it! The paper would jump away just as the string was being knotted or the  string would slide off after it was tightened. Over and over again.

Anyway, finally got it assembled.
















Lid on, let it steam, they said, for twenty minutes. Which may have been a typo for sixty minutes, since that was the earliest it was edible 

It turned out of the bowl nicely, and














tasted fine. This was so filling it turned out to be two helpings. I dressed it with some of that barley milk, which had thickened to make a sauce, but which didn't look appetizing in a photo.

Verdict: this was far too much effort for a tiny result. Probably a lifetime supply of doing it. Unless I find pudding cloth instructions from some historical reenactment channel, anyway.

For now my inner child is satisfied. 

If you've been wondering, and I'm sure you've had little else to concern you, about my Sock Knitting Ministry, it hasn't yet got under way. 

I checked yesterday with the sister who was supposed to send yarn, and she'd been suddenly called out of town, just got back, will send yarn ASAP.  So my ministry will get started whenever it arrives. It's been over three weeks. I could have finished at least one pair, but oh well.

Happy Friday. I may not check in with my Zoom knitting group today since I have zero work on hand to do or show.

Happy Friday anyway, well, Saturday summer day to Kiwi and Oz friends. 












23 comments:

  1. I've never steamed a pudding although I have baked custards in a bain marie. Fancy term for a simple thing.
    Have you ever steamed bread? Like Boston brown bread? I had a friend who used to make it and it was so very good. She used used food cans.

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  2. Have you ever made tapioca pudding? One of my favorites, but I haven't made it in decades.

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  3. I have a Toyota Camry. It has a switch on the driver's side door that allows the windows to be rolled up or down for oh maybe a minute (I forget that actual time length) after the engine is turned off. I was mystified one day when I left the little dog in the car while I ran into the grocery store to get something and she greeted me in the store. Got back to the car and one of the back windows was down when I knew I had rolled them all up. Husband told me of the function he had accidently discovered. Little dog had managed to roll the window down by standing on the button. Fortunately the function can be turned off and so I did.

    Seems to me setting a bowl in boiling water is more akin to poaching than steaming.

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  4. The few times I've had steamed pudding I've also found it VERY filling! That's bewildering about the "feature" on the key fob. It doesn't seem like a very useful feature, and obviously it's a risky one!

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  5. Mary, yes I did make that bread in a can long ago. It seemed a bit gimmicky in a way. I don't remember that we liked it.
    About tapioca pudding, no, I haven't. But you never know. Watch this space.

    Ellen, yes, exactly. But at least you could disable it once you figured it out.

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  6. I agree that standing the bowl in boiling water is not steaming. Yet they're all saying it. Puzzling.

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  7. Your Zoom presence, I think, is as important as the work you do.
    Thank you for the fob weirdness tip!
    VW also has a fobness with the gas cover opening. I always check to make sure it is closed. If the fob beeps in my hand full of stuff, I have to go back and check again.

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  8. Thank you for the Zoom comment. I will rethink this.

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  9. That is an awful design flaw. Have you managed to dry out the car? Happy weekend.

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  10. I got it down to mildly damp, so I think we'll live. I can't offhand think why you'd want to open all your windows at once.

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  11. I enjoyed reading about your steamed pudding! I have never made it but I looked it up in two antique cookbooks I have from my family. Neither one said anything about a pudding cloth. They did say to steam them on a rack in a covered pan for one-two hours. Maybe one day I'll get brave enough to try it!

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  12. Steamed puddings were really popular in Newfoundland in my youth. I haven’t made one in ages. Hmmm…

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  13. Bonnie, thank you for the research. I really appreciate your following up on that. I think the pudding dough was poured into s cloth lined bowl, then the cloth was drawn up and tied tightly, then I think a plate was put on top. After that the procedure is probably as we saw, in boiling water coming halfway up the bowl.

    Marie, are you thinking of trying it?

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  14. Hi Boud, The short story is that I got into blogging by inspiration from my grandmother. She kept a daily written diary the last few decades of her life. I inherited those diaries and found them to be full of lots of great memories. So, when I started my blog it was with the thought I’d post things worth remembering. That has been one of my projects for the last decade. Based on my own experience, I've rarely been able to post daily, but I admire those who can. Your blog is quite amazing. You write up your daily experiences in a most interesting way. I just looked over your last week of posts. Congratulations on so many interesting posts. Most curious: The windows and fob, which when clicked twice, puts all windows down. I've never heard of that before, and I do think it sounds more like a flaw than a feature. John

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  15. John, thank you for your nice words. Interesting that your blog was inspired by a handwritten journal.

    I blog when I have something I want to share. That often seems to happen, though I don't plan on daily blogging. I seems to go that way, though. Probably from a lifetime of making art, writing, walking, observing, laughing mainly at myself!

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  16. Yeah, that steaming process looks like a lot of rigamarole. The only steaming I remember my Mom doing was the Christmas Pudding once per year. That's probably why.

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  17. Well, I had to go down the Google rabbit hole of pudding cloths. This was a helpful site: https://www.paulcouchman.co.uk/how-to-make-a-traditional-christmas-pudding-in-a-pudding-cloth/

    Not that you need to try it - as you say, huge effort for small reward (except perhaps a Christmas feast). Yours looks quite delicious and yes, filling!

    Speaking of steam - I wonder if on the first hot day of summer, your car will be a little steamy from the last remains of the snow/rain debacle.

    On an artistic side-track: Children's author and illustrator Steve Jenkins has sadly passed away. However, his NYT obituary led me to his website, which explains a lot about his marvelous paper collages. I thought you might be interested: https://www.stevejenkinsbooks.com/

    Cheers,
    Chris from Boise

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  18. What a crazy function on the key fob. We have two Hondas currently and we haven't experienced this. Makes me want to go play with the fobs just to see. Or maybe the function is turned off on ours (as a commenter mentioned above). I always enjoy your cooking, Liz. I imagine it's even better in person. ;^)

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  19. Oh I do love some treacle pudding and custard though.
    And that car thing is definitely a flaw not a feature! Husband tells me we can the car windows with the fob but I don't know how.

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  20. I am on my second Honda CRV and neither of them have done that. But even this one is an old 2010 and doesn’t have a window opening function on the fob. My daughter has a new model. I must ask her.

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  21. I'll look at the pudding cloth site, Chris, and see if it's how my mom did it. I was pretty sure I wasn't dreaming it. It also comes up in Christmas Carol, I think.
    And I didn't know that illustrator, but I'll check, thank you.

    Becki, I didn't see any indication of what years the fobs had this function, do that might be a thought. They could have discontinued it.

    Liz, probably better not to know what other mischief the fob can work on your car!

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  22. Our Rav4 has a button on the door handle on the driver's side that disables the rear windows so they won't open (it's called a 'child proof' lock)...maybe your car has the same thing? I think, if the key fob were mine, that I'd make sure the rear windows were up and then run some crazy glue into that button on the fob so it couldn't be accidently pushed. That solution (?!) would only be of use if you never planned on using the fob to open those windows. NEver mind - not such a good idea after all. Maybe...you could wrap something like duct tape around that part of the fob so it was rendered non-functional?
    As for steaming puddings - my mother used to do a Christmas pudding (the one with all the yucky 'peel' that made me gag) and she used several layers of cheesecloth around it before she steamed it.

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  23. The reason you can't disable the button is that it's the door opener. One push opens the door, two the windows. Hence the awkwardness of the situation. One of the functions is vital.

    I'm glad to hear you know about pudding cloths, too.

    The food historian I looked up said the technique went out in the 1800s. I'm also pretty sure it's referenced in the Miss Read books, about the WW2 community boiling of the puddings in a big boiler at the parish hall.

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