[Auld Yin]

Originally Posted by Editha I agree with you. I use the Celsius setting because more of my cookbooks use C than F, but I have quite a few old British cookbooks that use F, and a few American cookbooks that use F too. It's not a difficult conversion, but I have a table pinned up on the refrigerator, so that I don't have to do it in my head each time. Steve P's offer of a conversion of Gas Therms to Fahrenheit was just a bit bizarre, and a giveaway, since if he cooked he'd know that even old cookbooks always give the temperature setting as well as the gas therm. I'm happy to play along and pretend we're having a serious conversation here. There's nothing on TV. There are three differences between a European oven and a N.American one. The most important is the direction of the heat. In a European cooker the heat is from the side. In a N.Am cooker it is from the bottom. This means that the floor of the oven is the coolest part of a European oven, but the hottest part of an American oven This has two consequences. Firstly if you are roasting meat and fat spits and falls to the bottom of the oven, in a European oven it will just lie there, but in an American oven it will be burn and the oven will smoke. The second consequence is that instructions in a British cookbook for which shelf of the oven to use may not be correct for an American oven and vice versa. There are ways to avoid a smoking oven. Canadians often roast meat at lower temperatures than in Europe -- but there are health risks. They also use deeper roasting pans. It is also necessary to keep the oven spotlessly clean. However, I've asked around, and find that most Canadians seem to use their ovens less than in the UK, use their barbie's more, and simply accept that their oven smokes occasionally. The second difference is in cleaning method. Most American ovens are cleaned by a high temperature cleaning cycle. This was briefly fashionable in the UK in the nineteen-seventies but never caught on. It takes hours, uses huge amounts of gas or electricity and gives off noxious fumes. It's also a very unpleasant thing to have to do mid-summer when the house is already hot. European ovens generally have catalytic, non-stick, liners. Fat bounces off the liners and collects on the floor of the oven, where it can be cleaned up with a cloth, or the aid of oven cleaner if necessary. Thirdly, standard American ovens are huge, which is probably great if you have ten children to feed, but ridiculous given the small size of the modern family. We replaced ours with a double oven, each of which is smaller than standard.

WOW!!! I bet hubby is glad he's got a job to go to most days.

[gryphea]

Originally Posted by Almost Canadian I'd love to know what it is about North American ovens that one can not solve after 5 years.

I've been here nearly 4 and I can wholly sympathise with this. Sure we've been in rentals and have proabably had worse than average, but our current is ceramic hob / convection and its still pants.

I had a double britannia range in UK; gas top, 6 rings and two ovens. Fabulous. I miss it and went back to our house this summer and virtually hugged it.

[Piff Poff]

Originally Posted by Editha I agree with you. I use the Celsius setting because more of my cookbooks use C than F, but I have quite a few old British cookbooks that use F, and a few American cookbooks that use F too. It's not a difficult conversion, but I have a table pinned up on the refrigerator, so that I don't have to do it in my head each time. Steve P's offer of a conversion of Gas Therms to Fahrenheit was just a bit bizarre, and a giveaway, since if he cooked he'd know that even old cookbooks always give the temperature setting as well as the gas therm. I'm happy to play along and pretend we're having a serious conversation here. There's nothing on TV. There are three differences between a European oven and a N.American one. The most important is the direction of the heat. In a European cooker the heat is from the side. In a N.Am cooker it is from the bottom. This means that the floor of the oven is the coolest part of a European oven, but the hottest part of an American oven This has two consequences. Firstly if you are roasting meat and fat spits and falls to the bottom of the oven, in a European oven it will just lie there, but in an American oven it will be burn and the oven will smoke. The second consequence is that instructions in a British cookbook for which shelf of the oven to use may not be correct for an American oven and vice versa. There are ways to avoid a smoking oven. Canadians often roast meat at lower temperatures than in Europe -- but there are health risks. They also use deeper roasting pans. It is also necessary to keep the oven spotlessly clean. However, I've asked around, and find that most Canadians seem to use their ovens less than in the UK, use their barbie's more, and simply accept that their oven smokes occasionally. The second difference is in cleaning method. Most American ovens are cleaned by a high temperature cleaning cycle. This was briefly fashionable in the UK in the nineteen-seventies but never caught on. It takes hours, uses huge amounts of gas or electricity and gives off noxious fumes. It's also a very unpleasant thing to have to do mid-summer when the house is already hot. European ovens generally have catalytic, non-stick, liners. Fat bounces off the liners and collects on the floor of the oven, where it can be cleaned up with a cloth, or the aid of oven cleaner if necessary. Thirdly, standard American ovens are huge, which is probably great if you have ten children to feed, but ridiculous given the small size of the modern family. We replaced ours with a double oven, each of which is smaller than standard.

So you've figured all this out - why is it still so much trouble? Maybe you should get a toaster oven for the smaller things.

I love the self clean function on mine. I love the big racks for cake baking etc, I don't love that some of my English recipes just don't work, but that is more to do with the altitude and not the oven.

You do come across as fairly grumpy and I don't know why I'm bothering with a suggestion really....

[Steve_P]

Originally Posted by Editha Thank-you, but I can actually do that calculation in my head. Clearly you are not a cook, or you'd know the difference between a European cooker and a N.Am one (the former being about 30 years in advance of the latter). Go back to your barbie Steve.

Clearly you missed the sarcasm. No not a cook.

But if you can do those calculations in your head then why is it you cannot figure out N.A. Stoves? Thirty years advanced eh? Then it should be really easy for you to figure out our basic >30 year old technology.

You're right I have no idea what the differences are I've been here since I was 16. But in a few visits back I didn't see anything too different in the way they operate.

Geez all this above for stoves and we haven't even got to climate, house design, and furnaces yet. This thread could go on forever.

[Almost Canadian]

Originally Posted by gryphea I've been here nearly 4 and I can wholly sympathise with this. Sure we've been in rentals and have proabably had worse than average, but our current is ceramic hob / convection and its still pants. I had a double britannia range in UK; gas top, 6 rings and two ovens. Fabulous. I miss it and went back to our house this summer and virtually hugged it.

Oh, I get how they may be different and how they may not be as good here as in England but, if such an issue was so important to me, I would find a work around for it, particularly if I was retired. Trial and error and all that.

Look at what Jamie Oliver is able to do with a couple of barrels of charcoal and a rusty old drum. I don't recall hearing him say that the reason his cooking in rural Europe is pants is because he doesn't have access to the fabulous equipment he has at 15

[gryphea]

Originally Posted by Almost Canadian Look at what Jamie Oliver is able to do with a couple of barrels of charcoal and a rusty old drum. I don't recall hearing him say that the reason his cooking in rural Europe is pants is because he doesn't have access to the fabulous equipment he has at 15

Jamie Oliver is slightly more talented than me!

[iaink]

Originally Posted by Piff Poff I don't love that some of my English recipes just don't work, but that is more to do with the altitude and not the oven.

Could well be the difference in flour gluten levels and fat content of milk/ cream ingredients too, its usually the sum of lots of small things.

I love my North american convection oven, but Im not going to make a decision about a country based just on that.


But on reflection maybe this thread should just be allowed to die if people cant take the gist of Sues message.

[Steve_P]

Originally Posted by iaink Could well be the difference in flour gluten levels and fat content of milk/ cream ingredients too, its usually the sum of lots of small things.

Strange Mrs_P has all of her mothers old recipe books from the UK and she has no problems with the recipes.

Maybe it's because they're old recipes and with our old technology stoves they just work well together.

[dbd33]

Originally Posted by Editha Oh and I should have added that since both Canada and the UK converted to Celsius a long time ago, a gas therm to Fahrenheit conversion isn't terribly useful.

I don't believe I've ever seen a recipe, in English, that used the Centigrade scale. At my last house there were probably 300 English language cook books, all in Farenheit, some with gas mark equivalents. Now we find recipes on the internet, again I've never had to convert to match the Farenheit oven (new last year, btw).

Are you using only original French recipe books?

[Hermione]

Now I think about it, I don't have a particular love for our "American style" oven either, but not once has that even been close to a factor for me thinking about going home. Struggles with making friends, financial problems, missing family, absolutely! But the reasons we moved here and away from the UK are all still there.

What are the reasons you moved here in the first place? Was it just for your other half? If you're seriously that unhappy here, then it's time for a serious, card-on-the-table conversation, otherwise it'll just continue to drag you down more & more....

[Japonica]

Originally Posted by iaink But on reflection maybe this thread should just be allowed to die if people cant take the gist of Sues message.

No, I don't think that people are missing the wider picture. They're just shaking their heads at the whole situation. I mean, most expats say they miss some particular food from home, or some aspects of life in their former country (whether rose-tinted or not) but when you start listing the tar sands and ovens as reasons why your life is unbearable, well, it's bad, right? And the "problem" is never THE problem. It's not the tar sands, the salty food, the defrosting dog turds, the terrible ovens, the intrusive sales people, the bad house design. It's just about the bigger issue behind all of that. And everyone can see it.

I hope the OP can either find a way to make peace with her surroundings and make the best of it (I lived all of my adult life in Edmonton, so I can sympathise) or else can have that talk with her husband about leaving. If someone can't find a positive or redeeming feature about where they're living (aside from the library or GP), it's time to move--sooner than those three or four years originally planned. Life's too short.

P.S. Canada may be the most boring country on the planet, but I'd be grateful that it employed your husband when no one in the UK wanted to. Does your husband know that you loathe this country with every fiber of your being? I'd imagine that being Canadian, spending his childhood here has imbued him with many intangibles of Canadianishness that you probably find irritating in everyone around you but I assume you find tolerable in him, enough to marry him anyway. Just a thought.

[mardyarse]

I never get that if you're not happy in one place the whole of Canada gets the blame!